Welcome back to Potsay of the World, I am Ben Rhodes. It has only been three days since

our emergency pod and that feels like about three years because a lot of things have happened.

We began Monday with a call for a potential summit between the President of Russia and

the United States and that feels like a really long time ago because we saw Varmar Putin really

cast the die yesterday. We saw him hold a Russian Security Council meeting with his top advisers

in which they each looking very threatened and uncomfortable, endorsed the idea of recognizing the

so-called People's Republic of Danyetsk and People's Republic of Lohansk, the two Russian separatist

controlled regions of Ukraine that we talked about on the last podcast. Then after that meeting

came a very long and very troubling and rambling speech by Varmar Putin in which he seemed to question

Ukraine's very right to exist. And we get into that today in a very fascinating conversation that

I have with Max Sedden who's the FT Financial Times reporter in Moscow. Then on Tuesday we saw

Putin double down on his announcements from Monday as Russian lawmakers gave him permission to

use military force outside of Russia to back the separatist and to back the claim of the separatist

to the entire Donbass region. And so you'll recall from our last podcast. Right now the Russian

back separatist only controlled a portion of that area. Russia has now authorized the use of

military force to essentially claim the independence of the entire region of Donbass. And I think

based on Putin's rhetoric, they're obviously worries that he's going to go farther than just that.

Putin also gave a list of three demands that had to be met by Ukraine and the West,

international recognition of Crimea as part of Russia, an end to Ukraine's NATO membership bid

and a halt of all weapons shipments to Ukraine. So Putin continuing to set the diplomatic bar

far above where he knows the United States or the West is willing to go. And certainly the people

of Ukraine have been willing to go. The world's leaders and diplomats have decried the situation.

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