BUCK: The biggest story in the world right now is clearly the situation in Ukraine. You have Ukrainian defense forces putting up some serious resistance, but already the Russians are entering the capital of Kiev. This was a multipronged attack yesterday. You’ve probably seen video — if you’re on social media — of Mi-8 Russian attack helicopters, transport helicopters trying to take a key airfield.

This is a situation that is evolving minute by minute, and we’re gonna bring you the most up-to-date information we can. There’s already gunfire and explosions as of right now in the capital city. The president of Ukraine, Zelensky, has said that he is target number one of the Russian Federation, and his family — has said this — is target number two. They are in secure locations in the capital city, but they are choosing not to leave.

You have a lot of Ukrainians who are being handed weapons. There’s essentially a civilian defense force being created in real time. They’re saying they’re gonna fight ’til the very end. You have members of the Ukrainian Parliament putting on bullet resistant vests and taking AK-47s and saying they are gonna defend to the very end. They’ll defend the parliament building itself. And you also have video of Chechen, quote, “hunters,” right now who are being deployed in parts Ukraine and given a stack of cards with Ukrainian politicians on them that they are supposed to find and either capture or kill.

Clay, this looks like it is about to get very ugly, over a hundred casualties in the first day, a hundred killed Ukrainian military and civilians. That’s the official number. I think it was 127 is what I saw. You could see this turn into street to street fighting very quickly. Putin says maybe there is a negotiation could be had, but some are saying that’s a head feint. And I think in the background we’re all wondering, “Why is it that the Biden administration hasn’t even been willing to use SWIFT sanctions against the Putin regime?” This looks like it’s about to get a whole lot worse and I want to know what you think should be done at this stage.

CLAY: Everything that that Joe Biden has tried to in his entire tenure so far has failed. And this seems like the latest example of that, Buck. And I was reading this morning, we talked yesterday during the prevention availability, Biden dodged a question on China, and he was specifically asked because he hadn’t mentioned China having any influence or any impact on trying to get Russia not to invade Ukraine.

This morning, early — I think it was late last night — the New York Times broke a story that for the past three months the United States has been trying to persuade China to join them in putting pressure on Russia not to invade Ukraine, and that instead of doing that, China has been taking intelligence shared with them about the dangers in Ukraine and telling Russia what the United States was taking to China about, basically spoiling all of the intelligence that the United States was gleaning and immediately sharing it with Russia.

And so as big of a mess as Ukraine is, the bigger mess that I think we’re gonna have to deal with for many years to come now, Buck, is there is an unholy alliance now that seems quite clear between Russia and China. And maybe at some point it also is going to expand and include Iran. And given the power that China has on the global marketplace, any sort of sanctions that you’re trying to levy against Russia are not going to be very effective if China remains the partner.

Also, Buck, this is also crazy, and I think it deserves more attention. This embargo, the sanctions, however you want to classify it against Russia, is not, for the most part, impacting actual Russian oil and petroleum products. They’re still able to sell to Europe because they have such a tight control over the European oil and gas population that they don’t have the ability to have energy independence. So Russia knew this. It doesn’t seem like anything we’ve done has surprised Putin, and certainly it hasn’t been consequential enough to get him to change in any manner his behavior so far.

BUCK: We’re wondering right now… I think everyone who’s following this — and I know, I said this to Clay before the show, and I really mean this. I just miss having President Trump, certainly compared to what we see with Joe Biden. I believe what the president told us earlier this week was true, which is that Putin just would not have done this with President Trump in office because of his unpredictability, Trump’s unpredictability, and the fact that you’re dealing with somebody who had a whole lot of punch-back in him.

I feel like that in and of itself was going to be something of a barrier to Putin’s machinations here. That was gonna be something that would slow him down. But looking now at what’s going to happen — ’cause you point out, the sanctions. How seriously can you take sanctions that don’t go to the heart of the Russian economy? How seriously can you take sanctions…? The SWIFT system, which is based out of Belgium, is essentially the clearinghouse for all international financial transactions.

Thousands of financial institutions around the world have their transactions cleared through the SWIFT system. You cut Russia off from that, it no longer has an international economy to speak of, really. It will still do stuff with China. Fine. But there will be enormous financial consequences. What are we waiting for? There’s video of Russian tanks rolling over Ukrainian civilian cars! There’s already video of Chechen, quote, “hunters” getting ready to go find not just Zelensky but his family.

Look, we’ve all understood that this is not America’s fight in the sense that we’re gonna get involved militarily. But if you’re gonna take the actions mechanically to try to change the calculation for Putin, wouldn’t now be the time to do it with all the seriousness you can possibly muster? What are we waiting for? You almost wonder if Biden thinks that Putin can achieve his objective so quickly that it won’t even really extend out beyond a few weeks or perhaps a few days as they’re already in the capital of Kiev. So I have to say, I view this as indicative of a lot of failures of international institutions. Also, do you feel like the Biden regime really thought that this was going to happen?

CLAY: No.

BUCK: We’ve been talking about it for a few weeks but, Clay, I did a special on The First TV in the end of December about the upcoming war in Ukraine. People can go see it. We had all these guests on saying it, ’cause it looked like that’s what was going to happen. That was in December. We’re in almost March now, obviously February 25th. The Biden administration had a lot of time. This wasn’t a sneak attack that came out of nowhere. This wasn’t something that we should have been totally unprepared for.

And this is the best we can muster? But if he can’t stop this, you have to wonder what’s the point of the U.N. Security Council? What’s the point of some of these institutions that we’re supposed to believe have some sway in the international scene? I feel like it’s very frustrating to watch this play out because of the human suffering in Ukraine. You already see the refugee flows on the way to Romania and then Poland. This is gonna get a lot worse, especially if the Ukrainians fight, Clay.

If they continue to fight even after the government capitulates, you’re gonna see large numbers of casualties on the streets — and we’re gonna see it, too, ’cause everyone has their own video- and audio-dispersal tool with their phoning in their hands. Everybody’s gonna be able to cover this live as it happens. It’s gonna get very ugly, and I think the Biden administration is just not prepared for this at all.

CLAY: Well, the incompetence of the U.N. was on stark relief when the invasion was ongoing while Russia was chairing one of the U.N. discussions surrounding this incident. I don’t know how much more of a worthless organization you can have devoted supposedly to the idea of world peace that’s being chaired by a member of the organization that’s invading another member. And to your point on the sanctions, it feels like the Biden administration gets surprised far too often in the first year and change of its tenure.

It’s surprised by the fact that inflation skyrockets. It’s surprised by the fact that murder skyrockets, that the border in the South continues to have people spiral across it, that covid surges have continued. And all of those surprises are further failures. So they really believed in some way that these sanctions… Remember they didn’t even put the sanctions in place beforehand! They thought the mere threat of the sanctions was going to keep Vladimir Putin from undertaking this invasion.

And then they seemed to hope, “Okay, maybe it’s just going to be a relatively benign — in the grand scheme of things — takeover of the eastern part of Ukraine.” And now, Buck, I wonder, and I think for everybody out there who’s listening to us, the question is, “Is this the extent of Putin’s ambition?” Is he truly going to say, “Okay, now I’ve got Ukraine.” We know what happened in Georgia.

We know what happened in Crimea. But the suggestion here would be that Putin’s not done and maybe the Baltic states could be next on his chopping block. In other words, that he seems, as if every time you think, “Okay, well now he’s satisfied…” Appeasement has failed with him time after time. Why is he suddenly going to decide, “I’ve had enough”?

BUCK: We don’t even know the full extent of his ambitions in Ukraine, as we have gunfire right now ringing out in Kiev, in the capital city, and you have seen this pretty major military operation underway. Is it just to get rid of Zelensky and the existing government and replace it with Russian puppets, and then they’ll say, “Okay,” and they’ll probably retreat? My sense is — and I could be wrong. My sense is that the Donbas region is the Russian Federation now always and forever in their minds as actual territory.

So they’ve taken those are the breakaway provinces. I’m talking about what Putin’s position will be on this. But then the rest of Ukraine, does it become effectively Belarus where you have… Look, Belarus is a staging ground right now for this invasion. So you have all the advantage, in a sense, of having a client state that’s also a buffer state between the actual Russian Federation territory and NATO. Clay, the alternative, though, is that he goes, “No, no. This is actually gonna be the whole country now,” like what we have seen in Donbas and Crimea, whereby it is Russian passports handed out to everyone, you’re under Russian law, this is part of the Russian Federation.

CLAY: Talking about 40 million people. For people who have forgotten about population, it’s a fairly substantial number of people.

BUCK: What he has done in the past, places like Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, those were the breakaway provinces. You’re talking about a much, much smaller area. Let’s be honest. How many people have any idea of where those things even are on a map? It’s, like, tiny. That’s like breaking off Rhode Island instead of breaking off Texas, right? This is a very different situation, and do they have the military wherewithal to do that? So, yeah, while we’re looking at those further down-the-line considerations about — as you brought up — Taiwan, and now the conventional wisdom is if China’s had a better time to go after Taiwan, doesn’t seem like it.

CLAY: It never existed.

BUCK: It’s not apparent, yeah. It’s not apparent what that would be other than the next few months, let’s say. But even the expansion of NATO… Biden has made it very clear: There’s no way on to walk away from a Russian incursion into a NATO country at this point without the complete collapse of what we know of as the international order, ’cause that’s treaty, right? That’s actually a contract. We are all in this together.

CLAY: Versus Russia at that point, and it spirals into, I mean, close to almost a world war, in some way, right, if that occurs.

BUCK: That gets very ugly. Look, the unified might if the U.S. and all the EU countries together against the Russian military, that’s actually a fight that we win in a conventional sense very quickly. What gets everyone so frightened is, is Putin crazy enough to actually go nuclear? Remember, there’s low-yield nuclear weapons. There’s escalation even within nuclear force, right? So that’s not… That’s where everyone gets very, very concerned. Right now, though, is it just…?

Is he trying to topple the government and then essentially withdraw for an negotiated settlement, or is he taking the entire country of Ukraine as part of the Russian Federation? And what are we going — “we” being the West, I mean. What is the…? What are the EU countries and the U.S. going to do about this? Notice the Biden administration just feels like it’s deer in the headlights on this whole issue, and I don’t think that’s gonna get better anytime soon.