00:00Mr. Secretary, can I follow up on your meeting with Lavrov yesterday?
00:03Have you had a chance to speak to the President about the ideas that were discussed in that meeting?
00:08And what did you discuss with the Foreign Minister this morning?
00:11Which? Lavrov?
00:14I went to talk to him about another topic.
00:17It's not big or mysterious, it's just another topic.
00:20So we'll leave it at that.
00:22I did speak to the President last night, but I have no news to report to you on it right now.
00:28But like I said, I thought yesterday's meeting, I don't want to oversell it.
00:33But it was constructive and there were some things that perhaps we can build on.
00:37Maybe not, I don't know, we'll find out.
00:38But there are some things that we will potentially explore.
00:42And I relayed that to the President and our team last night.
00:45The President says that there's going to be an announcement coming relevant or relating to Russia on Monday.
00:52Can you tell us a little bit about what his thinking is based on your conversation last night, where things currently stand?
00:57No.
00:58No.
00:59I mean, that's what Monday will be about.
01:00He did say that there's a new agreement between the U.S. and NATO to get new U.S. weaponry through NATO to Ukraine.
01:10And NATO's going to fully pay for that, according to the President.
01:13Can you explain to us exactly, number one, how that's going to work and when those weapons, as part of this agreement, will actually get to Ukraine?
01:20Well, I think what you're referring to is something that Ukraine has already offered and so has Europe.
01:24And that is to buy weapons from the United States and then provide them to Ukraine.
01:28At the end of the day, some of the systems that Ukraine requires are systems that Europe doesn't make.
01:33They would have to purchase them from the United States.
01:35In addition to that, I would point to the fact that a number of the defensive weapons that Ukraine seeks, our allies in NATO have them.
01:45So as an example, Germany, I believe, has 13 or 14 Patriot batteries.
01:49Other countries do as well, Spain, others, and some have placed orders for that.
01:55And so we've continued to encourage our NATO allies to provide those weapons, systems, those defensive systems that Ukraine seeks,
02:03that they should provide those weapons to Ukraine since they have them in their stocks.
02:07And then we can enter into financial agreements with us where they can purchase the replacements.
02:12So these are existing systems? This is nothing new?
02:14It could be both.
02:15I mean, but at the end of the day, I mean, it's a lot faster to move something, for example, from Germany to Ukraine,
02:21than it is to order it from a factory and get it there.
02:23So there are a couple of different ways to approach it.
02:26But the key is that there are existing capacities within existing U.S. systems within Europe right now that could be transferred to Ukraine,
02:33and then the Europeans could purchase the replacements from the United States.
02:37That's one aspect of what I think the president was referring to yesterday.
