Why U.S. Soldiers Won’t Come to Ukraine’s Rescue

The Daily

The New York Times

News, Daily News

4.5 • 97.8K Ratings

🗓️ 17 February 2022

⏱️ 27 minutes

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Summary

Since the beginning of the standoff with Moscow over Ukraine, President Biden has been clear that he will not allow American troops to come into direct combat with Russians. Why has the U.S., a country that has intervened all over the world in various contexts, taken that powerful option off the table? Guest: David E. Sanger, a White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times.

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0:00.0	From New York Times, I'm Michael Barrow. This is Adale.
0:07.0	Today, throughout the tenth standoff between Russia and Ukraine, the United States has taken
0:18.7	its most powerful tool for stopping an invasion off the table.
0:25.2	I asked my colleague, David Sanger, exactly why that is.
0:32.2	It's Thursday, February 17th.
0:42.2	David, I want to begin by asking you to explain where the situation between Russia and Ukraine
0:47.6	stands at this very moment and how great the risk of war between them is, given what's
0:54.0	happened over the past 48 hours or so.
0:58.0	Michael, over the last 48 hours, what we've seen is a lot of improvement in the rhetoric,
1:03.6	largely from Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials, but we haven't seen a lot of change
1:08.3	on the ground.
1:09.3	The Russians say that they have ordered back to barracks a good number of their troops
1:16.0	who were engaged in these military exercises right on Ukraine's border, but we've only
1:21.4	actually seen that happen down near Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.
1:29.6	We have not seen it happen up in Belarus, where they've put their forces within striking
1:35.5	distance of Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, and we haven't seen it to the east, where the
1:41.3	Russians have a long border with Ukraine and would presumably come in as one of the main
1:47.2	factories of attack.
1:51.6	This is rhetorical or real, and you've heard both President Biden and Secretary of State
1:57.6	Anthony Blinken say that so far they haven't seen any evidence of de-escalation.
2:04.4	We think the possibility of an attack remains pretty high.
2:08.4	David, I want to move to the central question of our conversation here.
	...

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