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00:00You heard President Zelinsky there your heart has to go out to him. But isn't he right that in fact they have to fight for themselves and the people with the power including ISE states have to watch from a distance. Absolutely. We can not talk about putting troops on the ground but there are David things we could do. We could we could sell them the arms for them to fight for themselves. And I think that's what we should be doing more. We could have right now an emergency bill come out of Congress to send more sales of arms and help not even sales to give them arms to defend themselves because they are going to be in this fight by themselves. I think the president is right to have said upfront that we're not sending American soldiers in. But I do think there is an American interest here that is so important that all of us understand and that is we must take a strong stand. We must stiffen our spines maybe make sacrifices to have sanctions that will hurt us now that will protect us from the bigger sanctions. If Putin thinks we're weak and then begins to enter on the borders of NATO because then we'll be in the fight and our sacrifices will be from our own blood and treasure. Ambassador I just I'm glad you raised Congress there about a possible emergency legislation because all I've heard about is maybe 10 billion dollars in humanitarian aid and maybe some time next week. I don't have a sense of urgency do you. I mean you had a distinguished career in the United States Senate representing Texas. I think that talking about humanitarian aid as you said is very good but what people need now and what President Zelinsky said this morning is we need real help. I think all of us are standing with Ukraine. We want them to be able to fight for themselves. So how can we help them in that we can stiffen these sanctions much more having carve outs as your reporter just said is it. It is not the time for carve outs. It's time for a united front. Europe and America and all of our partners in NATO. We have 30 allies but we have 40 partners. So we could make a strong stand. Isolating Russia in a much stronger way right now. And we should do it to day. And there should be bills in Congress to send arms to to Zelinsky troops who are fighting for their country. Secondly we can unite much stronger on these sanctions and assure that there would be no exports to any of our partners or allies of any gas or any oil from Russia. It is their lifeblood. And that's why stopping the Nord Stream too was a very important step in the right direction. And I give President Biden a lot of credit for finally getting Germany to take that Nord Stream to off the books. And it should be permanent and Congress should pass a law and the president should sign it. There will be a permanent ban on Nord Stream too because we now see Russia. We've always felt like Russia was going to not adhere to treaties. We couldn't take their word. Just three weeks ago Russia was saying we have no intention of invading Ukraine. Are you kidding. If we don't get it now we are going to be in a much worse situation helping the people of Ukraine. Obviously is a priority although as you suggest we're limited in what we really can do. But another party surely must be making sure that NATO does actually not get involved. We don't have the Article 5 problem. It spills over for example into Poland whether advert in Italy or otherwise. What is the risk of that and what can we do to try to make sure this is confined. What we are doing and what we should be doing is sending more troops to all of the border countries with Russia particularly the ones that would be in the most jeopardy. Next to Ukraine such as Poland and the Baltics Romania. We need to shore up all of our NATO countries on the border to assure that there is no incursion on those countries. And I think we should be looking at cyber attacks as well as actual forces. And we need to look at the Black Sea because with Russia's activities in the Black Sea they have ramped up. We need to make sure that we have ships in there that will block any kind of effort by Russia to begin to dominate the Black Sea. Now you mentioned IBEX the tugboat the Straits of the Bosphorus because there was a suggestion that maybe President Selenski had asked Mr. Ertegun the head of Turkey to shut off the Bosphorus the passage there for Russian ships. Would that be a smart thing or is that too much provocation. Now I think there's nothing that's too much provocation right now. We are on notice that there will be no limits to what President Bush will try to do. He's testing us. He's testing NATO but nothing is now a provocation in my view. So finally if we could. Ambassador I'm curious about what comes next. We heard reports today that Russia now they're a news agency said that in fact they're suggesting some talks in Minsk maybe with the defense minister as well the foreign minister. We heard the president was the Lewinsky say he's not interested in doing that. What does come next. Is there some diplomatic move to be made here or do we have to let the war play out. I think you never shut the door but you have to set a perimeter around diplomacy and say OK. Retreat. Stop shooting. Stop killing people and we'll go to the table. You can't just go to the table and let them drag it out as they have been doing for the last few months. We've talked a lot. It's gotten us nowhere. So I think it is time now that we have some standard before we go to the table but never close that door to the table. Finally at Metro Besser I wonder whether in a tragic way President Putin actually helped us a little bit with that massive invasion. Did it actually make it more likely that all of our allies all those 30 countries will hang together if it had been more incremental. There might have been more debate. You know I think you're absolutely right. I think the increments were happening before our very eyes. But the fact that he went in not just on the eastern Donbas but surrounded with the troops in Belarus to come down and and really he is menacing toward toward got to. I'm sorry the capital of Kiev of course I'm sorry. But he is now coming into Kiev instead of just the Donbas where he was saying all of this time sort of holding us off by saying well these are really our people and we're protecting our people in the Donbas region. Now going into the capital that is full fledged and you're right it means that we cannot say oh well OK let's go to the table. We now have a united NATO. We have a united other partner countries. But we've got to have all of this spine that we can muster to make these sanctions really cut into Russia's economy. They have to suffer in order to stop them. And yes it has united us more clearly. And I think all of the countries are there saying well let's have a carve out so that we don't hurt our economy are seeing very clearly that that cannot stand. And that's what we've got to do right now is stiffen. That's fine. There is the unity. But to stiffen the spine of our European allies to not worry about maybe losing some business maybe losing some economic advantages. And even in America we will suffer some. We will not get supplies. We will not be able to export. We will not be able to export oil and gas from Russia which we have been doing will suffer some. But to your point I want to make one more. And that is we need to shore up our in the energy business to produce oil and natural gas to Europe.

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Hutchison: Putin Testing NATO

Former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison discusses Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Bloomberg Television's "Balance of Power With David Westin." (Source: Bloomberg)

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