“The Russians have put in place a full occupation of Crimea…” fmr NSA Donilon to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria

On the Sunday, March 09, 2014, edition of FAREED ZAKARIA GPS, featured interviews with former U.S. National Security Advisor Tom Donilon about recent developments between Russia and Ukraine, Israel’s Minister of Economy Neftali Bennett on whether there is hope for peace between Israel and Palestine, and a panel discussion with Canadian MP and writer Chrystia Freeland, Princeton and New York University Russian and Soviet studies professor (emeritus) Steve Cohen and Princeton University Russian studies professor Stephen Kotkin on the role that history and culture play in the current crisis in Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.

On the current level of crisis in the Crimean peninsula, Donilon said, “The Russians have put in place a full occupation of Crimea.  They are intensifying their position there.  They’re reinforcing their position there.  They’ve become much more aggressive.  They turned away monitors from the OSCE and the U.N. yesterday again through firing shots.  It’s an exceedingly dangerous situation right now.  And you have a dynamic where you have Ukraine soldiers on bases basically held hostage by Russian soldiers.  In a situation like that anything can happen.  And I think it’s just an exceedingly dangerous and tense situation right now because if you did have, God forbid, an exchange of fire, between Ukraine and Russian soldiers, you would have a real escalation of this crisis…”

The full transcript of today’s program may be found here: http://bit.ly/1hYtrLs

FAREED ZAKARIA GPS airs Sundays at 10:00am and 1:00pm on CNN/U.S. and at 3:00pm on CNN International.