C&B Analyze the Latest Developments in Ukraine and on MSNBC

BUCK: We’ve spent some time updating the latest from Ukraine as the Russian invasion seems to have at least come to a point of temporary halt around Kiev. There’s still rocketing. There’s not a ceasefire, but the Russian military, the Russian war machine’s momentum has certainly slowed down considerably. And now there are more reports than ever about what that Russian war machine is willing to do to try to take territory and break the Ukrainian resistance.

“Atrocities Prompt Calls for More Sanctions as Russia Pummels South.” So southern Ukraine still very much being bombarded. But around Kiev, which it seemed the plan for the Russians was going to be to encircle the capital then command a surrender and concessions — territorial concessions, among others — neutrality concessions from the Ukrainian government.

Now we’re seeing that the Russian military is not only indiscriminate in its use of indirect fewer, of artillery and rockets, but will execute and engage in widespread atrocities against civilians. This is now prompting calls for war crimes investigations and eventual prosecution, all the way up to Joe Biden saying that Vladimir Putin is a war criminal.

Clay, we’re going to reach this point, I think, very soon where we realize, first of all, the military reality on the ground in Ukraine is what is determining this conflict. For all of the talk and all the things that have been said by external actors about sanctions and now there’s a call for even more sanctions, of course, yeah, that’s putting pressure on the Russian government. Putin is dealing with a military reality on the ground.

That’s what’s actually determining where he stops and where he goes and sends the military with this situation. So everything else is secondary to that military reality in the mind of the Kremlin — or of Putin at the Kremlin — and now we have our own president calling Putin as a war criminal.

And I just have to say, who will enforce this? Because on the one hand while it is true that these are atrocities, if you’re gonna go after Putin specifically, how can you have a peace deal when you’re going to say the leader on the other side should face a criminal tribunal in the Hague?

CLAY: Well, and can he leave this country, Buck? ‘Cause that’s the first thing I think of. Are we going to have Vladimir Putin either locked into Russia, or if he leaves the country are there gonna be people who storm him to try to arrest him for war crimes? And you’ve been, I think, really kind of plugged in on this from the start, obviously, with your background.

So now that we have effectively the war shifting almost exclusively to the east of Ukraine, do you think at this point that it’s just a battle over whether Ukraine is willing to cede this territory to Russia? Is there any way that Ukraine can — and I’m using quotation marks here — “win,” i.e., expel Russia from the territory that they already owned up to this point, or are we effectively now to the point where the battle is going to be over how much of eastern Ukraine is going to be given up to the Russians as a way to end this conflagration? How do we get this done, basically?

BUCK: Yeah. The answer is I think just what we’ve seen in the Donbass region stretching back now seven years. It’s one thing to defend bravely and admirably your home in a city environment, your hometown, your home city as Ukrainians have been doing. But once the Russians have taken an area fully and dug in, going on offense against that is a different situation.

CLAY: Expelling them.

BUCK: If they weren’t able to do that with a much smaller paramilitary Russian infiltration — or I shouldn’t say paramilitary, but essentially false flag Russian incursion into the Donbas, it’s unlikely I’ll honest happy to do that it here with the full Russian military. You can see it on maps. There’s a lot of maps popping up on TV; there’s substantial shelling in the south. Maripol, the city, looks like it’s essentially been turned to rubble.

CLAY: It’s basically been leveled.

BUCK: They’ve destroyed the city. But what they’re doing is creating a corridor from the east, the Donbas region — which is a region that has had fighting now for years — all the way down along the coastline to the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea, so that they cut off Ukraine from maritime access.

Which is a big deal for a country. But the Russians also have a land corridor to bring together the territory that they would want including Crimea, right, ’cause that would stretch into the Crimean Peninsula too. So is it likely that there’s going to be any future in which the Ukrainians kick the Russians out of those areas? I think militarily no.

And then you have to ask, “Well, do we have the diplomatic leverage to get those kinds of concessions from the Russians?” I think the answer to that is also, no. There’s a big question right now as to whether the Russians… Are they backing away because they think they can’t take Kiev or are they backing away to just regroup and come at it again? Here is Zelensky. He appeared over the weekend at the Grammys — which, just as a side note, I didn’t even know the Grammys was a thing that was happening. But regardless, here is Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine.

BUCK: So Zelensky, obviously, able to address a whole lot an American international audience there, and, Clay, you have to wonder at this point. We’ve given the Ukrainian a lot of emergency services; there’s a huge humanitarian relief effort underway. I have a family member — not in my media family but a family member — who’s gone over to Poland to help with the relief efforts now.

People are getting involved all over the place. He’s gonna be trying to helping the refugees, bringing them food. A friend of mine I use work with over at The Blaze, he’s also over there now, Brian Sack. He is trying to just do his part to help. But, again, it comes back to this military reality on the ground in Ukraine. We should help and do help refugees. We should help and do get munitions and weapons to the Ukrainian fighters. But if we’re not doing a military intervention, we’re also at some level in a bystander capacity here.

CLAY: And it’s gonna be more difficulty, I think, Buck. We’ve talked about the emotion and the way it’s going to dictate in many ways the response of the United States and other Western allies. Buck, the war crime evidence is, it would appear, nearly 100% certainty now, as you’re aware of seeing all of these civilians, many of them bound up, buried in mass graves, shot with their hands tied behind their backs, all of these things as the Russians are pulling back from the Kiev area.

And that is going to further, I think, embolden the emotional response, which is going to continue to press us towards, “Hey, be as aggressive as you possibly can in providing sustenance, support, and maybe a continued push towards the idea of American military intervention in some way.” I’m not saying I support it. I’m just saying the emotions that you’re going to see brought to bear from all of these mass casualty events is going to continue to weigh on the way that America responds.

BUCK: Yes, and of course, there are still some in this country who are trying to find a way to make this about a domestic political score-settling situation. What Putin is doing is horrible, but the history of the Russian military — when it was Soviets and now the Russians but — is one of extreme brutality. I mean, the notion that they’re going to abide by Geneva Conventions is unfortunately repudiated immediately with a brief look at history.

That’s just the way the Russian military fights is in this way, with extreme brutality, viciousness and targeting of civilians. But put that aside for a moment. As you call him, Clay, the de facto president, Ron Klain. We’re looking at what’s going on with Putin and the Biden White House is saying the real enemy are like our friend Tucker Carlson at Fox for… Well, just listen to this.

BUCK: Okay. Can we just…? I think it’s Nicolle Wallace who is one of the… Am I right on that one? Is that Nicolle Wallace?

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: She’s one of the dumbest and most dishonest people in the political space on television. Just put that aside. She’s up there.

CLAY: By the way, that’s saying something.

BUCK: She’s like top 10 dumbest and most dishonest. When has Tucker ever given Vladimir Putin safe harbor for dropping bombs on civilians? I do watch. That is a show that I do watch, right. I watch Tucker’s show and I’ll watch the opening monologue. I’ve seen him countless times. I can’t remember how many times he’s said we stand with the Ukrainian people in their…?

You know, stand with them in a moral sense, in an unethical sense in their fight Benson Russian aggression. It’s horrible what’s going on. But the Democrats can’t help themselves. Their real enemy, Clay, is always here at home. It’s not even Vladimir Putin abroad. The real problem is always right next door to them.

CLAY: Well, the amount of just lying that goes on. I mean, you’re seeing it. Certainly, we’ve seen it the last several weeks out of Florida over the parental rights bill. People you don’t even watch… This happens to us to a certain extent. People who don’t listen to our show criticize us for things that we never said, and I think the positive here is Tucker is such a part of the conversation that they consider — the de facto president of the United States does, Ron Klain — Tucker to be such an equally that he’s attacking him directly.

I always say you know you’re over the target when the bombs start getting dropped right on you, right, like when they’re coming after you. And Tucker makes a lot of logical sense on a night-to-night basis. It’s why, Buck — and this is a tremendous fact that doesn’t get enough attention — more Democrats often watch Tucker Carlson than watch the counterprogramming on MSNBC and CNN.

BUCK: Yeah, well, it’s also a function — it’s a vestige, really — of all the lies told about Trump for four years as Putin’s puppet, that that audience —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — the CNN and MSNBC audiences, the New York Post, New York Times, et cetera, then all the lesser dumber versions of those platforms, they’ve convinced their audience that the Republican Party is somehow in bed with Putin and Russia and we love Russia and all this stuff. I mean, you know, we do our own show here.

I’ve written at Fox News about how we should give arms and munitions to Ukraine — the whole thing is just not rooted in reality, but they tell their audience what they to want hear. The point I really want to hammer home is for the Democrats on the left, the real threat, the real enemy is always here at home. Vladimir Putin is not as scary to them as “white nationalists in America!” and all the other stuff that they cry about and pretend is some huge threat.