Now we turn to Nick Schifrin, who has more on this day's developments.
As we reported NATO announced today that it was increasing the number
of troops in four NATO member countries the they're either border
Ukraine or are near it with me to discuss these new deployments and
what's come from the snap summit at NATO, retired Lieutenant General
Doug Lute. He had a 35 year career in the Army and served on the
National Security Council staff during both the George W. Bush and
Obama administrations. He was also U. S Ambassador.
Two NATO during the Obama ministrations, Douglas welcome back to
the news hour. So as Jane just said, the NATO is deploying more battle
groups to southeastern Europe to four countries on the Black Sea,
or Ukraine that Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria that doubles
the number of battle groups that have been deployed in the past to
North Eastern Europe, which were deployed in 2014. So what difference
does it make?
Sending NATO troops to South Eastern Europe.
Well, I think these troops have a twofold purpose, Nick. First of
all, to the NATO allies themselves, It's a visible physical tangible
reminder.
That NATO has their backs. These are now frontline states because
they have either land borders or black sea borders with Ukraine and
so their frontline states with by way, the conflict there, and the
notion here is that NATO has your back. There's a second message,
though, and that's to the other side.
To President Putin that in fact, NATO is right there alongside these
four allied states. And he should disabuse be disabused of any notion
that he could take some sort of limited incursion in these NATO states
without actually encountering NATO forces themselves, So it's a twofold
message.
NATO announced also today that it would send material to Ukraine
to try and prevent it and protect it from a chemical weapons attack.
Of course we as we noted in Jane's piece, President Biden said today
that the U. S would respond to a chemical weapons attack. But he
was ambiguous as to how the U. S and NATO would respond. Do you think
it's wise?
To keep that ambiguity.
I do. I think ambiguity is our friend here for two reasons. First
of all, any NATO or U. S response to chemical or biological tech
would be, uh, would have to be proportionate.
Could that attack itself, So it's not. You can't decide that proportionality
in advance. It will depend on the attack. And then second of all,
I think it's useful to impart a bit of ambiguity, a bit of uncertainty
in the mind of President Putin and his military planners as to exactly
what our response might be. It's not a bad thing to have him guessing
a bit.
And when you use a proportionality, I assume you mean that there
could be a minimal response by NATO. If there is a few will a minimal
chemical attack. I hate to even say that, but there's different levels
of chemical attacks, and there would be different responses based
on that, right, right.
Exactly right.
Yeah. And of course, you know if the US responds to some kind of
nonconventional attack does that not increase the chances of us NATO
forces being in direct confrontation with Russian troops?
Without doubt, and that's why this is such an important step. I think
it was important today to hear from both NATO leaders, but the president
himself that there will be a response. But as we've already discussed,
this question of ambiguity is also useful.
Multiple senior officials tell me that Russian goals remain the same
at least according to what they see that Moscow Putin, the Kremlin
still want some kind of regime change in Ukraine. But does the Russian
military have the capacity to actually achieve that in Ukraine anymore?
I don't think so. Based on the performance their performance in this
first month, I think they're offensive capability is largely grinding
to a halt, and the option they have now is to hunker down around
the Ukrainian cities and essentially besieged those cities with artillery
fires, rocket missile fires and so forth.
But the aim, I think initially was to actually control those cities
and in place a Putin friendly puppet regime, and those aims are simply
now ought to reach.
And senior U. S. Officials tell me that the Russians are running
out of precision guided missiles. Some of them have failed because
of corruption and manufacturing. And they do fear exactly what you
just said that the Russians will dig in and be able to pommel cities
and unfortunately, they say Ukraine will be
unable to offend, effectively evict the Russians if the Russians
Hunker down. What does that say about where we're going in this war?
Well, I think it underlines the importance of logistics, which is
too often sort of missing, misinterpreted or discarded a factor in
warfare, but a siege campaign. The Rockets, the missiles and the
artillery rounds that the Russians will depend on have to come from
Belarus or Russia, and they have to transit relatively vulnerable.
Logistics lines. Basically, they are road bound, and that's these
road bound resupply convoys that are exceedingly vulnerable to interdiction
by the Ukrainian forces, and that's where the Ukrainians have an
advantage.
And they have been taking that advantage. Thanks to a lot of Western