now let's bring in general jack keane general you heard that we got a report from the brits that you've got 30 train loads of russian troops in belarus 60 battle groups around ukraine it looks like an invasion is imminent do you agree with that no i don't i don't think so i the the troop deployments to belarus are not complete yet they won't be complete till maybe as late as the second week in february the ground is certainly ready in terms of it being frozen for heavy armor warfare

but putin is off to the beijing olympics on february the 4th that's his colleague and cohort who's going to be on a world stage until february the 20th he spent billions of dollars this is a huge propaganda victory for president xi i don't see putin distracting by for that by starting a major war in europe and taking all the media attention away from the chinese so i don't believe it is imminent i think we're actually entering a fairly serious diplomatic phase right now

uh because the united states and russia and european partners are talking again but this time talking a little bit more seriously in terms of negotiations there's never been negotiations before everybody's stamping out what it is they want and what it is they won't do now we're beginning to talk about where the middle ground is so that tells me something about putin he's still looking for what he's still looking for concessions okay concession short of using military force he'll take that

deal every single time it may because those forces the consequence of those forces being there was to intimidate and get concessions out of the united states in the west he has not in my judgment given up on on that now listen we can't take lightly the 125 000 forces that are surrounding ukraine and the fact that what they can do what that reporter described is the obvious i mean they can absolutely take control of ukraine and and change that

government and change the entire behavior of that population as a result now earlier on the program just a half hour ago we interviewed former ambassador kurt volker he'd worked with mike pompeo on the ukraine situation he said we america should immediately deploy those troops and immediately put sanctions in place in other words take action now what do you say general oh i totally agree i believe president biden had made a serious strategic error here and that is not to use preemption

actions prior to an invasion to deter after all he has gone to the option of using the threat of consequential action after an invasion to deter the invasion and that has always been fundamentally flawed in my view yes those troops should have been in nato countries weeks ago secondly we should have put increased american trainers inside of ukraine we have 150 in there we should have increased that training capacity we

should have significantly increased the arms to ukraine we're giving them small arms nice to have certainly we're given anti-tank weapons we've been doing that since the trump administration what do they want in addition is what we should have been giving them missile defense anti-drone missiles anti-aircraft missiles anti-ship missiles artillery and mortars consequential items that would truly make a difference and get putin's attention and yes

put the troops in our allied countries to reassure them and also send a message to putin that he's not going to move on nato in any way and we should have slapped some serious economic sanctions on him and tell them we'll remove those economic sanctions as soon as you de-escalate okay we did none of that so and that was a strategic mistake but do it now okay general keen out of time but always good to talk to you we'll see you again soon