Hello from Washington. I'm Chuck Todd with a special edition of Meet the Press. This Sunday, my interview with Ambassador Bill Taylor. We conducted this conversation at the United States Institute of Peace on Wednesday, June 1st. By the way, if you've never seen that building, it's on the corner of Constitution in 23rd.

It is an amazing piece of architecture, and it's a terrific place to have this conversation.

Bill Taylor is a part of the Institute of Peace.

He, of course, was U.S. ambassador Ukraine twice, once from 2006 to 2009, and then again from 2019

to 2020, and he's now a vice president at the Institute of Peace.

He covers Russia and Europe. It is a terrific conversation, and we go deep on Ukraine.

Let's get started. We got a lot of news this morning, Bill, from the president himself in the op-ed.

And I want to sort of take it piece by piece. First, I want to talk about the specific,

the decision. There apparently was a debate about whether to send this new advanced rocket

system to Ukraine. And apparently the Russians had let it be known that somehow if we did this,

this was an escalatory move.

President Biden decided to try to split Harris here and said, we're going to give them this system.

They've pledged not to use it to fire into Russia.

My question is, so what?

Like, the Russians are offended that Ukrainians might actually launch a rocket into the other side?

What are they doing?

So there's that aspect of it.

But how important is it?

Chuck, first of all, it's great to have you in this building.

I've been in your building a couple times, and it's great to have you here. And George,

thank you very much for getting us started here. It's great to have this opportunity. I think this is a big deal. The war in Ukraine, as George indicated, unprovoked, unjustified by the Russians invading their neighbor

for no reason that they can even identify, has gone on now into its fourth month. And it's shifted

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