These outrageous acts for what they are. Putin claims he had to act because Russia was threatened. But no one threatened Russia. And no one other than Russia sought conflict. You're welcome, someone now who is an authority on foreign affairs generally and Ukraine in particular, John herbs. He's senior director at the Atlantic council, mister herbs earlier served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. So mister ambassador, thank you so much for being with us. Let's go back to President Biden really invoking the powers of the UN to do something about Ukraine. Are they going to do anything about it? It's very hard for the UN to act because the way to have effective action is usually through the Security Council. And Russia has a veto over anything Security Council must approve as does China. So the UN helped a little bit on the grain embargo that Moscow imposed on the shipment of Ukrainian grain. But that was only because Russia eventually agreed to it. Decisive action has to come from the United States. In the meantime, we heard from president Putin of Russia overnight, and he both had what he calls, I guess, a partial mobilization, is that right? As well as some pretty, I think intended to be scary talk. You're absolutely right. Putin has regularly invoked Russia's nuclear weapons in order to deter the United States and NATO and Ukraine. From taking resolute steps to help defeat Putin's invasion of Ukraine. And this is more of the same. The partial mobilization enables Putin to pull in more troops without, in fact, conscripting people in Russia do not want to fight. So it's only of limited political risk. The nuclear threat that Putin laid out, he laid out at the same time that he's endorsing sham referenda in parts of Ukraine that the Russians only partly control. So the idea is if these sham referenda include the resultant, a majority of people there want to join Russia, in theory, Russia may an exit. And Putin is intimating, but not stating explicitly that his nuclear arsenal would be used to protect those lands. Again, the idea is to intimidate the United States out of NATO out of sending Ukraine, the weapons they need to defeat the Russian aggressors in Ukraine. The summer semester, how do we know when to take president Putin at his word and take him seriously? Because I drew the same conclusion you just said. When you put together this sham election over in certain parts of eastern Ukraine, annexed them into Russia with his statement that he would use he didn't use the word nuclear. I don't think, but it was clear what he was talking about for an invasion of Russian soil until now we wouldn't be talking about that, but if they annex it, then he'll say, yeah, you're invading my soil if the Ukrainian forces try to retake those areas. Look, we have to pay close attention to this because Russia has is a pure nuclear power of the United States. But if you watch Putin's activities, he's always happy to threaten this. Because there's no risk in threatening. And in fact, he's gotten the United States to self deter from sunny weapons systems Ukraine by this threat. Not in all cases, but in some. So there's no risk to Putin and threatening. There's enormous risk to him and actually doing. And we've seen him make the threat and then not carry through. For example, he said when Finland and Sweden expressed their interest in joining NATO in months ago, he said, well, we could have a nuclear response. Well, NATO is now accepting Finland and Sweden. And you've had only a deputy minister of foreign affairs complaining about this. So that's what went out the window. Putin does not want to die in a nuclear Holocaust. So the fact that he might threaten is one thing, the fact that he would actually do is another. What do you understand that? What about the partial mobilization? How big a threat is that? I mean, it's something that I think president Putin didn't want to do because in part, it conveyed even to his own people, maybe things weren't going so well. Well, keep in mind, he's had a dreadful two months. Remember, they promised to take back to take all of Dunbar's in April and began an offensive to do that. And by the end of July, that offensive was stalled, then Ukrainians take back more territory in a counter offensive than Russia has seen since last April. So it's a two defeats in a row, then Putin goes to semicon for the Shanghai cooperation organization summit. He winds up apologizing to Xi, the leader of China publicly for his Ukraine policy, and he's chastised publicly by his pal Modi, the leader of India. So he said, he's had a dreadful several weeks. Now with this partial mobilization, which again does not threaten him politically in Russia, he can say I'm doing something. And then he's hoping that this nuclear threat will stay our hand. I don't think it will, but the Biden team has a timed and too timid when Putin has made that nuclear type of nuclear threat. So let me ask the unfair question, but I think it's all of our minds. How does this end? Because president Putin is going to have to come away saying to his people, he got something from it. Ukraine's not going to want to give him anything at all. How does this end? I think it ends when Ukraine takes back almost all the territories not all the territory that Moscow currently controls. Putin fully controls the Russian media. He can claim victory even if this were to happen. But keep in mind, some people want Ukraine to compromise by giving territory to Russia. But Russia has been conducting a war of war crimes with genocidal elements. They've been torturing Ukrainian civilians, raping Ukrainian women, abducting Ukrainian children. So if Ukraine was offered Russia territory, that means he's offering Russia Ukraine is offering Russian millions of Ukrainians who could be tortured and worse. We can not accept that. Ukrainians will not accept it. And Ukrainian arms, usually Ukrainian forces with American and NATO arms can win this war. Mister basil, let me come back to where we started, which was President Biden in front of the United Nations General Assembly. At this point, will this go down as a failure of the United Nations? I mean, a lot of us are not familiar with it the way you are, thought that that's why the UN was there. And it's not because you are going to do anything about this. Do you and was created to help avoid circumstances like this. But as long as major powers have a veto in the UN National Security Council, major powers that conduct aggressive wars, the UN can not serve that purpose. There are other things that you want can do, which are helpful. So it has a role, but it's just not a role to be the arbiter of who is right. Of arbiter imposing a piece when a major power turns to be and it turns out to be an aggressive. President Biden did call for