On Sunday, in an interview on NBC, national security adviser Jake Sullivan cast the war not just as a defense of Ukraine but also an opportunity to deliver significant blows to the stability of the Russian state. “At the end of the day, what we want to see is a free and independent Ukraine, a weakened and isolated Russia, and a stronger, more unified, more determined West,” he said. “We believe that all three of those objectives are in sight, can be accomplished.”

As Ukraine and its Western allies accuse Russian forces of heinous war crimes and crimes against humanity, including massacres of large numbers of civilians, Putin’s government and media apparatus is waging an all-out campaign to denounce the allegations as lies and fake news.

Biden has officially accused Putin of war crimes and suggested he should face a “war crime trial.” Russia, like the U.S., has steadfastly refused to ratify the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court, so it is unclear how or where the administration believes such a trial would take place.

This week, renowned dissident and linguist Noam Chomsky joined me for a wide-ranging discussion on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, holding the powerful accountable, the role of media and propaganda in war, and what Chomsky believes is necessary to end the bloodshed in Ukraine.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Jr0PCU4m7M
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, logician, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes described as “the father of modern linguistics,” Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy, and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He has spent more than half a century at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he is Institute Professor Emeritus, and is the author of over 100 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, mass media, US foreign policy, social issues, Latin American and European history, and more. His latest books are Failed States, The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy and Hegemony or Survival, both in the American Empire Project series at Metropolitan Books.  noamchomsky@​email.arizona.edu

Jeremy Scahill is an investigative reporter, war correspondent and author of the international bestselling books Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield and Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria, the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere across the globe. Scahill has served as the National Security Correspondent for The Nation Magazine and Democracy Now!. His work has sparked several Congressional investigations and won some of journalism’s highest honors. He was twice awarded the prestigious George Polk Award, in 1998 for foreign reporting and in 2008 for his book Blackwater. Scahill is a producer and writer of the award-winning film Dirty Wars, which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and has been nominated for an Academy Award. jeremy.scahill@​theintercept.com