Welcome back to Potsade the World.

I am Ben Rhodes, and this is a special episode with so much attention on the situation in

Ukraine and so much speculation.

And frankly, with the U.S. President being pretty forthright in saying that he thinks Russia

is not only going to invade Ukraine but try to conquer Ukraine's capital, Kiev, we thought

that it would be important to give you an update here.

So later in the show, we are going to hear from an extraordinary frontline reporter who's

on the ground literally along the front lines in eastern Ukraine, Christopher Miller from

Buzzfeed.

And we're going to unpack with him what the scenarios there are on the east, what he's

watching, what the recent developments are, because a lot of what has taken place in

the last just a couple of days, and I'm talking to you Saturday morning here, has felt like

exactly the pretext for war that Vladimir Putin would set up in eastern Ukraine.

So just to summarize here, because there have been a flurry of reports in the last day or

two, the pro-Russian separatist leaders of these breakaway regions of Ukraine, Lahansk

and Dignetsk have made a series of announcements.

They have ordered the evacuation of civilians to Russia on Friday, accusing Ukraine of

planning a large-scale military offensive.

You saw women and children beginning to be bust into Russia, and you also saw Vladimir

Putin indicating that Russia was prepared to provide support, including 10,000 rubles

to these refugees coming into Russia.

And so that felt like there was some pre-planning behind this.

...