'The Five' on ongoing attacks in Ukraine

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'The Five' react to Ukrainians' fierce fighting against the Russians

'The Five' unpack Russian President Vladimir Putin's motivations and offer analysis on what could come ahead in Ukraine. 

This is a rush transcript from "The Five," February 28, 2022. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

JESSE WATTERS, FOX NEWS HOST: Hello, everybody. I'm Jesse Watters along with Jeanine Pirro, Harold Ford, Jr., Katie Pavlich, and Greg Gutfeld. It's five o'clock in New York City, and this is THE FIVE.

Fierce fighting continues in Ukraine's two biggest cities as we enter the fifth day of Putin's brutal war. Russian troops shelling residential buildings and killing civilians in Kharkiv as U.S. defense officials warned that a frustrated Russia could switch to more aggressive tactics.

And a massive convoy of Russian troops is bearing down on Ukraine's capital, talks happening for the very first time today between Russia and Ukraine. But not seeming to have an impact on the violence. Trey Yingst is reporting live from the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. Trey?

OK, we don't have them right now, but I'm sure that we will get back to him shortly. Mr. Gutfeld, we have not heard from you for a long time. What is your reaction to what you have seen over the last five days?

GREG GUTFELD, FOX NEWS CO-HOST: Well, I mean, it's soul crushing. I mean, I have tried to get my mother-in-law out of Kyiv. And you know, I have friends that are Russian. I have a lot of friends who are Ukrainian. It's obvious that this is an unprovoked war, but it's also a family squabble.

You know, the big picture has always been, you know, who is Ukraine more important to you? Is it Russia or is it us? Obviously, it is Russia. It's that border, it's those people, its long-standing family, it's long- standing love as well as disputes that have been going on. It's not us.

However, we are involved because we are allies to Ukraine and we also work with Russia. That's the way the world is now. So, we can't help but get involved, even if -- even if it is like a fight that's happening on the other side of town between two families, and it's none of our damn business. But it is our business. It's hard to watch.

You want to root against the bully, Putin, but I'm afraid if we emboldened the bully's target, the bully increases his brutality. You can root for Zelenskyy and the heroic Ukrainians and we should, I hope they win, but this isn't a sports team. This isn't fiction. We have no skin in this game.

Unfortunately, I have skin in this game, so it makes me look a bit differently. But picking sides and cheering right now it's too soon and I hope Russia loses, but I don't know. I mean, if I had to choose between Russia losing in this ending quickly, I would just say end it quickly, because it is tragic. These are two countries with extreme similar -- similarities in their lives, in their histories, in their religions.

Putin always wanted Ukraine, we know that, but that's not even debatable. If that's the end game, then what's our end game? Right? I mean, do we fight for the Ukrainian freedom our goal back to the question which is who is Ukrainian more important to? You know, Russia or us?

WATTERS: I'm sorry to hear that you have family there and we all wish --

(CROSSTALK)

GUTFELD: It is my mother-in-law, so technically, that's a joke.

WATTERS: We right now let's go back to Trey Yingst who is in Kyiv with the latest. trey, can you hear us?

TREY YINGST, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Guys, I've got you now. Tonight, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is calling once again on the international community to close the airspace over Ukraine. We've seen more missile attacks against this city tonight. Air raid sirens sounding out sending people once again into bomb shelters.

And it comes amid some concerning new satellite images from Maxar Technologies indicating there is a 17-mile-long convoy of Russian troops, logistics troops and ground forces headed towards the capital of Kyiv and they're just 15 miles outside the city as we speak.

This is significant as the air and ground campaign against the capital and other major cities like Kharkiv, the second largest Ukrainian city continues. Now we do know also the civilians here are preparing for the worst. They have seen over the weekend a direct impact from this war, missile slamming into an apartment building killing at least two people.

And many women and children are waiting out in hospitals and other facilities they hope won't be targeted, some heart-breaking images of mothers waiting with their children in these facilities and the words of one really standing out amid the mix. Listen to what she had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNKNOWN (trough translator): We've received all of the medicine we need that we are running out of food. Local charity funds promised to bring some. We are waiting that they will come and bring us bread, essential, and some juice for children.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YINGST (on camera): The words from these Ukrainian civilians come amid the backdrop of peace talks that took place today along the border between Ukraine and Belarus between the Ukrainians and the Russians, a stark contrast in what the two sides look like.

The Ukrainian showed up wearing military fatigues, the Russian suit and ties. We also know that the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy once again is calling for the airspace to be closed over this country. He wants this air campaign to stop so his forces have a better shot at winning this war. Back to you.

WATTERS: Thanks, Trey. So, Judge, similar to last week we saw it coming the move towards the capital. It's not going as fast. I think as the Russians thought it would be, but as you can see from the reporting they are going in and they are amassing around the city. At this point it's just a matter of how long can the people there hold out and can Zelenskyy survive that encirclement?

JEANINE PIRRO, FOX NEWS CO-HOST: Well, the amazing part of it is that Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people have been incredibly strong. They have taken Russia and the world by surprise and I think it speaks to the issue of the comments that, you know, Zelenskyy is, you know, just a comedian who ran for office?

Patriotism is not something that defined by being a politician. As a patriot you can be -- you can be determined and you can love your country and you can lead your people to fight. And that's exactly what we are seeing.

The Ukrainians are freedom loving people. And Greg, to a certain extent I agree with what you say and that, you know, it's kind of can be conceive as a family fight. One of my best friends is from Russia, but her mother was born in Ukraine.

GUTFELD: Yes.

PIRRO: And so, they are part of the same --

GUTFELD: Exactly.

PIRRO: -- that kinship there. But you see, this isn't anything that we can look at and say, let them do their thing. This is about raw power going after the map of Europe. And now we're seeing for the first time since World War II Russian tanks on the plains of Europe. And they will not stop here. They will continue to go.

So, the question is, you know, it is Vladimir Putin holding back? Is he just doing the 1,100 military installations not affecting the infrastructure because he wants to occupy and therefore use the infrastructure? And you know, is he intentionally going a little slower, but is he now saying, these people are stronger than I thought. Now I'm going to hit civilians? We'll see.

WATTERS: Yes. I mean, of course they could have screwed up supply lines and the bad initial strategy, because the Russians usually are sloppy and slow, but brutal, Katie. And we just, I think we gave the Ukrainians a bunch of Stingers for the very first time --

KATIE PAVLICH, FOX NEWS CO-HOST: Yes.

WATTERS: -- and our javelins are having a huge effect.

PAVLICH: Well, Greg brought up the question of who is Ukraine more important to, the United States or Russia? And right now, the president of Ukraine believes Ukraine is important to the Ukrainian people and they want to be their own sovereign country. And he addressed this issue of Russians living in Ukraine, being born in Ukraine, Ukrainians being there the night before the invasion, and that speech when he spoke in Russian directly to the Russian people and said we are two different countries, but we share many different cultures and we can live next to each other in peace and we don't want this war.

And you are seeing in Russia now a number of thousands of people protesting the streets against what Putin has done. Now there's been this question about what Putin's frame of mind is. We don't know. People are calling him crazy. We don't know what he is thinking. But we have a history of the way he's behaved in other parts of the world and what he has been able to get away with in places like Syria.

And so, as you see reports of him using cluster bombs, for example, that does not bode well for what's to come. However, you are seeing this resupply of the Ukrainian military from places like Germany who haven't been giving arms to anybody for decades for obvious reasons.

So, the Ukrainian people are clearly the ones who are not fighting, not making Molotov cocktails, not being able to (Inaudible) the guns. The ones in the basements are in a raw, pure, human form of survival and time is running out when it comes to getting supplies, water, and food and watching these orphanages is just heartbreaking.

But I think that in terms of the question of who it matters who right now, it's the people who are fighting in the streets. And they are going to hold out as long as they can and as long as they have the military ability to do so.

And the 17-mile-long convoy that you are seeing seems like a pretty good target for the jets that they are about to get from the E.U. So, we'll see how it goes.

WATTERS: Yes. I love the --

(CROSSTALK)

PAVLICH: Their fighting spirit is certainly admirable.

WATTERS: The convoy just blasted to smithereens. Do you think that Putin underestimated the ferocity of the civilian population and their patriotism to stand up and fight?

HAROLD FORD, JR., FOX NEWS CO-HOST: I think he has. My prayers go out and the best to your mother-in-law and your family, Greg, there on the ground. But a differ -- a little bit in terms. I think this is important to people who believe in the independence and freedom.

This is a sovereign line Putin crossed. There is a lot of pain, there is a lot that we have to deal with and wrestle with here. But you think about where we are. I think we are closer to the ending that many of us want. It may still be a little painful to get there, but I think that we are closer to where we are -- where we want and those of us would like to see him removed from there, perhaps even remove from power in Russia.

Think about this, the miscalculation that he's made, Putin has made may cost him power in his own nation, may cost him the opportunity to lead his own nation. Number one. Number two, Greg, part of what you were saying, think about this. We've invested since World War II and the architecture there. I don't need to tell you this. This is not a history lesson.

But we've invested trillions there, then after '94 what we have invested. And these people not only in Ukraine but all across Europe, think about the Marshall Plan to where we are today. This was all about building an architecture that based on independence and freedom and democracy.

Without question the most surprising thing has been the Ukrainian desire to own their own land, to their own freedom and to own their own futures. And I can only hope that what we are doing, what Germany is doing and what NATO is doing and what others are doing in terms of providing them with resources and even now weaponry, we can debate it should've happened sooner.

These are all -- I thought that is what's happening now. And my prayers are with them and I hope they use these things we send them in a way to not only repel Vladimir Putin, but to propel their democracy and their independence even more.

WATTERS: They're here. Straight ahead, the world reuniting to punish Vladimir Putin with crippling new sanctions.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GUTFELD (on camera): American allies slapping more crushing sanctions on Russia aimed to crippling Vladimir Putin and his economy. The latest target is the country's central bank and limiting its ability to make financial transactions.

Russia's currency the ruble has hit an all-time low and its stock market is closed today after crashing. Europe also very united. The E.U. is shutting down its airspace to Russian planes. They're also sending Ukraine military aid.

So, Harold, is it possible that what Vladimir Putin is leading his country into is a North Korean future where you kind of, I mean, he's got no friends to play with anymore. He likes to travel. He can't travel. There's no sports team. There's no World Cup. This is literally what -- if you want to be the next North Korea, he just chose that path.

FORD: One thing the Russian people are going to probably have to decide in the near turn, not the oligarchs, but the people that actually live in the Russia is how they want to live? Do you want to pay two times, three times, four times for things that you've already bought or things that you want to buy because the ruble is losing value and because your central bank can't borrow on the open markets?

Do you want a country where your energy is crippled because you can't sell any and you can't turn on anything? For the first time a generation of Europeans are understanding what it's like to live like their parents and grandparents and Greg grandparents who once told them what Europe was.

So, you know, I think at the end of the day, if try -- I mean, I'm sorry, if Putin wants Ukraine or any nation on the eastern block to want to be like Russia, then have them do something that makes them want to be like Russia, not go on and invade them and took a hammer over their head.

Our ideas are winning. And I think that bothers him more than anything. And what he has done could actually make your ideas more amongst -- win more amongst the Russian people than anything we could've done by attacking or spending more money. This may be a great boon for the ideas of independence and democracy are built on.

GUTFELD: Yes. The only thing I have to push back at hash tags aren't the same as bombs. You know? Like we do -- we do fall in love with the spirit of this thing. But they got the bombs. I mean, we were talking about in the break. Will Russians got. They got a ton of stuff they aren't using yet.

WATTERS: Yes, I haven't seen a lot of the Russian air force, when that comes in it's going to be a different landscape down there. But I'm happy to see the Europeans wake up over the weekend.

GUTFELD: Yes.

WATTERS: It looks like because Russia had an advance as rapidly as expected on the capital and they were on the phone with Zelenskyy who said, yes, you know, you might not hear from me again. That kind of made him face reality. So, these are tough sanctions. The SWIFT sanctions are strong and there is a carve out for energy transactions of course.

PIRRO: Yes.

WATTERS: And when the Germans decided to send weaponry and double their defense spending in two years, I was excited. And then I remembered what happens when the Germans ramp-up military. So, that gives people some flashbacks. So, hopefully, that can be balanced out there.

The attacks against the oligarchs, who knows if that's even going to work. They are targeting their private jet that seems to be good. And they're not going to let commercial aircraft fly over there. So, I guess people are going to be eating at home for a while.

The attacks against the central bank seemed to be the most devastating if you are holding Russian government debt right now that's like a junk bond. That's done.

FORD: Worse.

WATTERS: That's worse than a junk bond. That's goodbye. So, I don't know what they are going to do with that. But that's pretty strong. The food problems could be serious, because the last time they couldn't export wheat, I think they had the Arab Spring. Because that's who purchases all of the Russian and Ukrainian wheat, there was a famine and everybody went wild. So that's also something to look out for.

If they respond to this, all these crippling sanctions with cyber or I heard they could even cut our underwater cables that deal with our internet, that could get really crazy. Hopefully it doesn't escalate to that.

GUTFELD: Even, Katie, even Switzerland --

PAVLICH: I know.

WATTERS: Yes.

GUTFELD: -- sanctioned Russia. And that, I mean, their oligarchs have $11 billion. I guess dollars not rubles, I think it's 11 billion, let's have this, 11 billion pounds.

PAVLICH: Yes, something like that.

GUTFELD: Yes.

PAVLICH: But maybe gold bars.

GUTFELD: Gold bars, yes.

PAVLICH: Sitting in this but they can't --

(CROSSTALK)

GUTFELD: But they can't get them. I mean, everything is connected. They are going to have to get rid of Putin if they want their money back.

PAVLICH: You know that they've screwed up and that there has been an awakening when Switzerland and Sweden are getting involved, such as Switzerland with the banking and the sanctions on that money to not make money off of what's going on.

It's been interesting to look at this from a perspective of years Russia has been used as a political point, right? Ukraine has been used as corrupt playground for elites to go and get rich, Hunter and Joe Biden included. And now it's all kind of coming home to ruse when it comes to what's actually happening here.

And Europe does seem to be waking up. You have Germany saying of course the 2 percent they're paying more. But it's interesting to look at the map as well and who's been paying more all along because they took the Russia threat seriously from the beginning. Poland always pays 2 percent. Croatia, Latvia, Estonia, and Romania. And now you have western European countries waking up and going, this is actually a real thing that we are going to have to deal with.

And so, you've seen Europe come together and now you're seeing Finland wanting to join NATO. So, you've seen this effort by Putin to limit NATO actually expanding including Zelenskyy today signing that request to join the European Union. So, we'll see where it goes. But certainly, it has created unity among the Europeans which I, we have not seen in a very long time.

GUTFELD: Do you think, Judge, that Putin even care. I mean, he acts irrational, but there is an irrational part that he saw this coming, and he is ready to endure this like the bear he is.

PIRRO: You know, we'll talk about that a little later in the show, but one of the ironies that --

(CROSSTALK)

GUTFELD: Let's talk about it now, Judge.

PIRRO: No, I want to talk about one of the ironies. One of the -- we will next, in the next block, and I'll ask you the question.

GUTFELD: Please don't.

PIRRO: But one of the ironies is that Putin didn't go in and succeed as quickly as he did. He gave the west the opportunity to coalesce and even as you say to get Switzerland, Finland, everyone in the west is involved, and so his hesitation or his effort whatever it is because he is holding back as some of us at the table feel, or, you know, because he thought he'd save the infrastructure. It is to our benefit and to his detriment.

And now with these financial sanctions, the guy is in real trouble. In trouble with his own people. In trouble with the Ukrainians who have family in Russia. I mean, I'm not so sure the guy has got his game on right now. But for him to jump to let's get nuclear alert status, let's jump to that - -

(CROSSTALK)

GUTFELD: That's in the next segment, judge.

PIRRO: That's in the next block.

GUTFELD: Yes.

PIRRO: But I thought I just tweak a little bit.

(CROSSTALK)

GUTFELD: Yes.

PAVLICH: It's called a tease.

PIRRO: It's called a tease.

GUTFELD: You're a clever, clever judge.

PIRRO: That's right. Thank you very much.

GUTFELD: All right. Up next, as Russia threatens nuclear war, a new concern, Vladimir Putin is mentally unhinged.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PIRRO (on camera): Troubling signs that Vladimir Putin has lost his mind after putting Russia's nuclear forces on alert. Former officials who have directly interacted with the Russian president are raising concerns about his mental health. And they worry that the pandemic may have cut him off from reality.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CONDOLEEZZA RICE, FORMER UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF STATE: I met with him many times. And this is different Putin. He was always calculating and cold, but this is different. He seems erratic.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PIRRO (on camera): Lucas Tomlinson is in Lviv, Ukraine. Lucas?

LUCAS TOMLINSON, FOX NEWS PENTAGON AND STATE DEPARTMENT PRODUCER: Well, Judge, just a week ago that President Putin had that long historical rant that the White House twisted history. Putin had always considered Ukraine and Russia one country. And things that people are one. And recalled that when the Soviet Union broke up, President Putin wanted to put it back together those borders in the Soviet Union. And the Russian empire fell the small as they've been 1654.

But back to Putin's erratic speeches they think he is completely insane talking about victimhood that's part of the problem. Look at what he did with raising, talking about raising his nuclear forces. Now it's worth, Judge, discussing America's nuclear forces. People are wondering is America raise its status, its alert status.

U.S. military always keeps an alert force. There are 400 nuclear missiles in the ground in North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado and parts of Nebraska. Those missiles are on alert. Seventy percent of America's nuclear arsenal are board ballistic missiles submarines. Each ballistic missile submarines. Our boomer in the Atlantic or Pacific carries 24 is Trident II D5 intercontinental ballistic missiles. Each one of those missiles has up to eight independent warheads, you know, 475 megatons. Just to give you an idea of the bombs the United States drop in Japan, those are about 15 megatons.

But that is what the United States is doing with this, not half the raise as nuclear posture. But part of President Putin's calculus is this old Russian doctrine about escalate to de-escalate. Would he use a low-yield nuclear warhead which is about 15 to 20 megatons very similar to what U.S. drops in the Japanese World War II? Guys?

PIRRO: All right, Lucas, thanks so much. I'll go to you, Harold. You know, there -- if America were to raise her alert status, does that put him in an even more isolated position than he, than Putin already feels he's in?

FORD: Maybe, but remember Lucas said and I think I just have said, our status is always raised.

PIRRO: Right.

FORD: We are prepared. I listen to Condi Rice over the weekend, I listened to Bob Gates over the weekend, I listened to H.R. McMaster, those who have met with him and they all echo her points. You think about this. You got to think about the mental state. I'm no mental health expert, but I think about this.

You got to think Putin at some level he thought that even if he is raising this nuclear level, who is he raising it towards? He is raising it towards family members in Ukraine. He's not raising it towards the west. Ukraine. If we had sent weapons and this is not to suggest that strategy around sending weapons faster or advancing weapons to the Ukraine earlier would've been the right thing or wrong thing.

But had we done that, he might have been able to suggest that he was fighting with us and that raising his status was actually he was going to use this weapon against us.

He's threatening to use it against Ukrainians. Why? Because Ukrainians have the gall to say to him, no, please leave our country. We are sovereign nation, we're independent, we're free, and we don't want you here. He is -- he's running the risk and some of our stuffs is bleeding over here. He's running the risk of crippling his country for decades to come. He's trying not to cripple the infrastructure of Ukraine, but he's going to cripple the infrastructure of his own nation in ways that I think he never contemplated weeks ago.

JEANINE PIRRO, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: OK, Jesse, he believes that the Russian Empire should be back and he wants to redraw the lines of Europe. So, as he sits there, and as everyone is indicated, in more isolation than ever, is this the kind of man who doesn't care about his own countrymen, who only cares about bringing everything back into the motherland to USSR map lines.

JESSE WATTERS, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: He cares about the motherland. And you know, the motherland has always been a group of many, many different ethnicities stretching from Asia all the way to Europe. It's an empire. It's the last real empire. And it's dying, because everybody is old in that country.

So, in about 20 to 30 years, that empire is probably going to disintegrate anyway. And his calculation is, am I going to be the Russian leader that oversees the decline of the Russian motherland. He doesn't want to do that. He want -- this is the last gasp of the old empire here, so he has to expand. And he has to go and take Ukraine, he has to take the Baltics, he has to push south towards the Black Sea, north towards the Baltics. That's always been the strategy.

And you can tell -- when people say he's crazy, he's been planning this invasion for 15 years. He goes into Georgia, he goes and takes Crimea, he takes the eastern provinces. He has Belarus as a puppet to come north to south. So, you can see this coming a mile away. I don't think anything switched during the COVID pandemic. I think this was a strategy all along.

GREG GUTFELD, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: Belarus.

PIRRO: And there's no --

WATTERS: Belarus? Did I mispronounce it?

PIRRO: But Greg --

GUTFELD: I just love doing that.

PIRRO: But Greg, what Jesse's saying is accurate. And that is, it has been a long and calculated mission for him to actually do this. It's not just Georgia, it's not just Crimea, it's what he did in Syria, it's poisoning people who oppose him. So, is he holding back or is this, you know, his calculated decision to, you know, take time to get to where he wants to be?

GUTFELD: I don't know about that. But what Jesse says, I completely agree with. I think he wants a legacy and -- in which he can -- part of his legacy is return Russia to greatness. So, that actually undermines this entire narrative. He's not crazy. That is a purely rational desire for somebody who loves his country.

This is like people -- if people hear me say that, the going, Oh, my God, he's appeasing Putin. No, I'm just trying -- I'm not trying to read his mind and say that he's crazy. I'm trying to look at his actions and see what he's doing. It doesn't matter if he's crazy. In fact, it's better if your enemy thinks you're crazy, right, you know?

But I mean, I don't think he's crazy. I'm looking at what he's doing. I think this is what his endgame is. And that's it.

PIRRO: All right. So, Katie, if you're an autocrat for 20 years and you're increasingly isolating yourself, people have been saying yes to you for 20 years, I mean, that doesn't mean that you've lost your mind or that you don't know what you're doing.

KATIE PAVLICH, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CONTRIBUTOR: I do think that he has this view of Ukraine as an immediate post-Soviet era where people would be perfectly happy, everybody with him just rolling in and saying you're part of Russia again, let's all be friends and just moving on --

PIRRO: But then, if that's the case, how does he feel today with this pushback?

PAVLICH: I don't know how he feels. But what I do know is what he has said. And I know that he has said things that about reinstating the Soviet Union. If you listen to what he said on the speech, the night that he talked about the peacekeepers going into Ukraine, he talked about expanding the Soviet Union. We've seen his behavior doing that.

I don't think he's crazy. I think that he has a different perspective on the world that is not a Western perspective. He is perfectly fine with murdering innocent civilians, which is not something that Western leaders believe in. He has a different frame of mind in the way that he approaches things. But if you think about what his objectives are, and him threatening nuclear war, well, he thinks he has his toolkit and that he's going to use it to meet that objective.

And just one more thing about what Harold said in terms of him threatening the West, I think he has threatened the West. He threatened the West in that speech that he gave the night of the invasion. He has said if you continue to give them weapons, there will be a cost to that. We're being told that there may be a cyberattack against us which by the way, NATO decided last year that cyberattacks can constitute Article Five being invoked, so that's a whole another issue as well.

I don't think he's crazy per se, I just think that he approaches the world in a very different way than the West does.

FORD JR: I want to be on record. I think he's crazy and I think he's a war criminal. I want to be record of me saying that.

PIRRO: OK. All right, ahead, the Biden White House being pushed to ramp up oil production to counter Russia. What they plan to do instead next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAVLICH: Welcome back. The White House has been pressed to ramp up oil production here at home to counter Russia. Despite rising prices at the pump for Americans, the Biden administration says it has other plans.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, on oil in general, and need to -- and we need to look at other ways of process -- of having energy in our country and others. One of the interesting things, George, we've seen over the last week or so is that a number of European countries are recognizing they need to reduce their own reliance on Russian oil.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAVLICH: Greg, isn't this the reason we are in this situation in the first place where they can't get themselves off of Russian oil because European countries and the United States are fine with -- they say we're not going to drill here. We'll get -- still get oil from somewhere else.

GUTFELD: I have been waiting for this segment for days. This is the irony of letting children like Greta Thunberg take up shelf space in your brain. Think about all the -- all the adults that took her opinion over -- the over the progress made in fracking, or drilling or the necessity of coal and nearly every country. But you know -- but no, no, no, no. How dare you? Remember that? How dare you? We all sat there.

Oh, maybe she'll drop solar panels down to the -- into Kyiv to save people. It's not going to happen. China and Russia must have been laughing at us when we were allowed to be lectured on world affairs by a 14-year-old. Oil is a world affair. Energy is a world affair. Fuel is a world of fair. We got to wake up to that. We also got to get back into the nuclear world, the anti-nuke ideology. It put us in a hole for many decades. It's probably the greatest fuel that we will ever see.

And the sooner we get back to nuclear, the sooner -- we were almost energy- dependent -- independent. Remember the good old days?

PIRRO: Yes. There's no question.

PAVLICH: So, Jesse, today, the White House was asked again why sanctions have not been placed on the energy sector in Russia. Let's listen and I'll get your take.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PSAKI: We have not taken some steps on energy sanctions in part because we weighed that. That doesn't mean that they're off the table. That remain -- they remain on the table. Sanctioning energy would affect Russia's income stream. Certainly, that would be a reason to do it. But it would also have extreme consequences on the world's energy markets.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAVLICH: So, Jesse, in October 2021, right before the Climate Change Conference of the Parties, Joe Biden stood up and said Russia needed to pump more oil, less than a year ago, six months ago,

WATTERS: So, Jen is saying that she doesn't want to slap sanctions on the Russian energy sector because it might increase the price here at the pump for Americans. It's already $3.60 a gallon, Jen. How much more can we take?

GUTFELD: Yes, drop the gas taxes.

WATTERS: Drop the gas taxes, do Keystone, blip the permit freezes. There's 1000 things you can do. You could stop importing Russian oil right now and lift the embargo on Venezuelan oil, so you keep the price stable. Just do that. Even trade, keep it in the Western Hemisphere. They should do that.

Let me give you a little example about how supply and demand works.

GUTFELD: Oh, gosh.

PIRRO: Here we go.

WATTERS: Jen, and this is from someone who's not an economist, all right.

GUTFELD: Yes.

PIRRO: Teach us.

WATTERS: If there's demand for energy, what is she going to do? Where's the green energy supply, Jen?

PAVLICH: China.

WATTERS: Where is the green energy supply? Are you able to make the wind blow harder? Are you able to make the sunshine brighter? No.

PIRRO: No.

WATTERS: The supply is oil and gas. That's where the supply is. You can't just wait. OK, we can build more windmills, we can build more solar panels, let's say, a decade or two. That takes a long time to do. But we can -- right now we can drill and explore and flood that market with U.S. gas and oil. And that's what's going to make us a little safer here in America.

PAVLICH: Well, you need oil to get the solar panels and windmills across from China to the United States. But Judge, isn't the pain the point? They're trying to squeeze Americans at the pump so that they say, oh, maybe alternative energy is actually not too bad.

PIRRO: Well, it definitely is the point. I mean, I -- you know, I'm one of those skeptics out there. But here's what happened. In 2021, when Biden came in, he's the one who made Russia, the top source of gasoline and refined petroleum for the United States. Biden did that. Biden is the one who shut down the Keystone Pipeline. Biden's the one who now is pushing us toward this green energy nonsense because -- and it's not nonsense, good thing. I hope it comes. It'll be great. But on the -- on the other hand --

WATTERS: It's not ready though.

PIRRO: He's beholding to AOC and the left-wing Marxist progressives. And in the end, he wants us all in electric cars so that we can then be reliant on China and the lithium batteries. Don't just see? They push us toward these people.

PAVLICH: Harold, your thoughts about the Biden administration being beholden to this climate change agenda, even at time of crisis when it's not really working out.

FORD JR: So look, I'm fascinated by the conversation. The richest man in the world is making electric cars and sending people to space, so he's on to something. We consume 20 and a half million barrels a day of oil in the United States. They're 42 gallons in a barrel, which means we consume over 850 million gallons of gasoline in this country a day.

Now, that number needs to come down. In the middle of a war posture here, we should think long and hard about reducing that but it's going to endanger us or for that matter, risk our chances or jeopardize our chances of helping the Ukrainians win this effort here.

I'm wanting to believe we can have a clean energy future and at the same time recognize that when we get on an airplane, you're not looking for wind or solar or battery there, you got to have -- you got to have a fossil fuel. So, until we're able to do that, Democrats, Republicans alike have to understand that.

But we have to figure out -- I hope 10 years from today, we're not using 20.5 billion barrels of oil a day as the United States. But while we are, I know that this war didn't start because we were importing oil from Russia. We've been doing that for a while. I hope we're able to wean ourselves off of it, but more importantly, have a cleaner future for all of us.

PAVLICH: All right, ahead, the refugee crisis escalates in Ukraine as citizens decide whether to fight or to flee.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FORD JR: A staggering humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. The U.N. says over half a million refugees have left the country. And that number is expected to grow into the millions. While many leave, fighting-age men who initially fled are returning to Ukraine. Benjamin Hall is in Lviv, Ukraine right now. Benjamin?

BENJAMIN HALL, FOX NEWS CHANNEL FOREIGN AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning, guys. You know, I've been listening to you speak over the last 40 minutes or so. And I just want to say what an important thing it is to look at the two sides of this conflict. You have what we're seeing here on the ground, the human costs and the military operations. Then you have the larger geopolitical elements, dependence on gas, what China is doing. And it's so important to look at both.

What I've been seeing here today and you can mention the numbers, half a million who have fled so far, potentially five million who will continue to flee this country, but those are numbers. What we saw today was putting faces to those people and the women and the children who have left absolutely everything that they've got, who have left their homes, their livelihoods, their friends to flee to another country, that it is heartbreaking.

Many of these people didn't see this conflict coming just until a few days beforehand. They were being told it won't happen or might happen but they weren't properly prepared. And so, the transport systems are totally overrun, queues to get to the border around 40 miles long sometimes they take days and days to cross. The trains, as we saw today, totally impossible.

You see those videos there, women, children desperately trying to get out. And again, as you said, the men 18 to 60 being pushed back, told that they have to stay in fight. And they do. They all want to stay. It is a remarkable country. 40 million people in resistance here say want to stay in fight the Russians. And that's one of the other big points is that when this turns into an occupation, it's not going to be as easy as Putin just taking the capital city and then controlling the country, there will be an uprising and a resistance.

We've been speaking to people who will be a key part of that resistance over the coming years, if that's what it comes to. If Vladimir Putin wins in the coming days or weeks or months, this doesn't end there. It keeps going on. That spread, that instability spreads around Europe, it spreads around the world.

And so, we have to continue bearing these two things in mind, the very serious implications of what's happening here. One country rolling its tanks across the borders into Europe in the way we haven't seen since World War II, and the bigger picture. I think you guys have been doing a good job of doing that today.

And I want to add also that, Greg, I'm very grateful that you've given us your 11:00 hour tonight to focus on this. We intend to bring up both sides today really, get into the nitty-gritty of this -- of this war, and try and bring our viewers all sides as you have been talking about today.

FORD JR: Benjamin, thanks. We've got some questions for you if you got a minute. Let's take it around. Since you've taken Greg's hour, we're going to let him go with the first question here.

GUTFELD: Yeah, I have a question. What -- how are Russians being treated? Like, this is a selfish question because my mother-in-law is Russian. And she's -- you know, I guess now a refugee. Do the Russians treat -- is every refugee treated the same?

HALL: You know, what we -- one of the first people we spoke to when we crossed the border into Ukraine from Poland was a Russian who was trying to flee. He said he just no longer felt safe here. Yes, they are being persecuted. And it's obviously hard in a war to blame just the leader. There is a feeling that the Russians here are to blame.

And we've spoken to other people in the resistance who say, look, Russians have had 22 years to rise up against Putin if they wanted to. They say the Ukrainians did that right after the fall of the Berlin war, in the end of the Soviet Union. And so, they are saying there has to be some complicity when the Russians have not done that.

So, yes, look, there is going to be some persecution of Russians here. And it is such a pity when you look at the makeup of the country. So many parts in the east of this country are Russian-speaking, and that was always what Putin said. He said, those are historically Russian areas and that's going to be one of the big debates, you know, of the future. But it's one of the sad things to see. Yes, Russians here certainly will be feeling that.

FORD JR: It's disheartening. Katie?

PAVLICH: Benjamin, Katie Pavlich here. I know that when you're back stateside, you cover the State Department. Have we heard anything about what they are doing to try and help these refugees? I know Poland is taking them in, Canada is now debating whether to allow Ukrainians into the country without a visa. Other countries are waiving visa requirements. Have you heard anything about what our State Department is doing?

HALL: Well, the State Department who obviously for some months leading up to this invasion did everything to try and find the diplomatic route. Do you remember Secretary Blinken traveling back and forth to Europe meeting with allies, meeting with Foreign Minister Lavrov, saying the diplomatic off-ramp was always there, that they would find a diplomatic solution, right up until the end that was open.

And as soon as Russia invaded, they actually said well, we finally realized that that was all a ploy. I think Ned Price, the spokesman said it was a head fake. So, they kind of closed that door. They said, for now, we don't really have faith in the diplomatic process or that Russia will negotiate in good faith.

That being said, we are seeing these talks went on today in Belarus. We're going to see a continuation of those in Poland at some point soon. But I can tell you, speaking to the people here on the ground, they have absolutely no faith and a diplomatic off-ramp now. They are certain that Vladimir Putin has made that move, made up his mind, and he is not going to turn around now because there's some treaty that one side or the other agrees upon.

FORD JR: Benjamin will have live coverage from Ukraine tonight at 11:00 p.m. Eastern. Thank you. More breaking news on Ukraine next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WATTERS: Welcome back, everybody. As of this hour, U.S. officials warning that frustrated Russian forces are going to get more aggressive in their tactics as they attempt to take over Ukraine's biggest cities. And the country embraces for more intense fighting.

So, Judge Jeanine, a lot of people think, you know what, he hasn't taken Kyiv yet. Maybe it's been five days, how could he have not taken the capital? Maybe he sees that things didn't go as quickly as he thought it was going to go, and here comes the Air Force, here comes some cluster bombs, here come the mercenaries. You know, the next 48 hours could be pretty ugly.

PIRRO: Well, look, Putin is not a stupid man. And I don't even take a position with whether he's crazy or not crazy. Because the truth is that he's got -- he's got a vision, and he's got money and power, and he's going to follow through. But as John Kirby said, he still has significant combat power.

So whether or not his slow spread into Ukraine is due to the fact that he wants to preserve the infrastructure because he is indeed, you know, looking to occupy as opposed to just put in a new president, then it will all make sense. And you know, it depends on how angry he is. I don't know him, so I don't know.

WATTERS: Your sense of what happens in Kyiv tonight.

FORD JR: I hope -- I hope for the best. The Ukrainian people have shown great resolve and resistance. I hope they continue to show it and that they're able to. I know one thing. The people being penalized the most in all of this seconds of Ukrainians are the Russian people.

PAVLICH: I would --

WATTERS: Who don't even know what's going on right now, according to their media.

PAVLICH: I would just add quickly to that. A lot of people are being killed and we're not seeing it. And so, there are people dying.

PIRRO: We don't know for sure.

PAVLICH: Yes.

WATTERS: Well, we're praying for everybody in Ukraine and all of our reporters there and hope for a quick cessation of the hostilities although it doesn't look like that's going to happen. That's it for us tonight. "SPECIAL REPORT" is up next with Bret Baier.

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