MERKLEY @01:34:17: A last question—my colleague was mentioning that Europeans are not putting as much support into Ukraine as we are. And I wonder what that analysis looks like, if one considers the much higher prices they are paying for energy or to host refugees and if you have any sense of how all that balances out in terms of our thinking about the sacrifices the European partners are making?
NULAND: Well, thank you for raising that, Senator Merkely. I did mention that refugee burden, some ten million refugees hosted all over Europe, which, you know, impacts towns and communities all over the continent. And you see that everywhere, but your point about that fact that in—you know, most of my European friends report a three hundred percent increase in their energy bills over the winter, and if you just, say, think about the sticker shock that that would create. If it were happening here, you're are absolutely right, but um that speaks to the fact that they have now woken up to the fact that the dependence they had on Russian oil [?!] was bad for their national interest[s]. And so there will be uh, as hard as this has been, there will be good structural changes that come out the other end.