Samantha Power

This is Putin's MO.

And so that's the question of the people around him and when his cost benefit calculus is gonna be affected by all of this and the sanctions that have been brought online and the unity

you know, make the cost much more evident to him than I think anybody expected, including perhaps him.

Well, first of all, Russia's economy is massively dependent on Europe and the United States, as is China.

Russian manufacturing, and so many of the industries that keep the economy afloat.

And so the dollar economy is still the animating force of the global economy.

I think when it comes to China's reaction, first of all, because of the relationship that President Putin and President Xi have built, a relationship predicated on not wanting any country to question what they are doing to their own people.

You know, wanting to be able to crack down and repress and round people up.

I mean, that is something they have in common and that has brought them together among among other dynamics.

But given the the increasing closeness of that relationship, many people expected that China would join Russia in vetoing a recent U.N.

Security Council resolution condemning what is happening.

And instead, to your point, China just said, actually, we're going to abstain.

And we're going to say all parties should have cooler heads or whatever.

And so I actually think that it doesn't look like isolation.

Of course, we think it's outrageous that any country would miss an opportunity to condemn a full-on invasion of its neighbor.

So an abstention is not

the desired posture that we would wish China or any member state of the United Nations to take.

At the same time, it is a signal to Putin that China is not attaching its mast to this sail.

It is putting some distance in there.

And that, Trevor, I think is partly also because China has its own global project that it has embarked upon.