of russian tanks bearing down on that road, heading into the capital. now, they are facing a fierce fight. ukrainian forces are hunkered down in positions all along that road. you can see them there. presumably using javelins or some time of anti-tank missile to pick off the tanks one by one and creating some formidable resistance in the process. but the concern here is that obviously, this feeds into the hypothesis that russian forces are attempting to completely encircle the city. we heard this again from the mayor of kyiv himself. he said make no mistake about it. kyiv is the prize. and the goal hear is to surround the city, bombard it and try to overthrow government from outside. now the primary concern becomes on isolating which routes there are still from the city for civilians to flee. the mayor also said, anderson,
northwest out of kherson to try to encircle odesa. they have ships in the black sea. we haven t seen any maritime moves on odesa, but it certainly seems to be what they are considering doing. it would make sense that if they did that they would also try to come up on a ground perspective coming down from the north, and that appears to be what they re trying to do or why they went through kherson. they ve had more progress in the south, but in the north they continue to be frustrated. they re not making as much progress on major population centers, certainly not kyiv, not kharkiv, not a town called chernihiv which they re trying to encircle and bombard. that con vie we have been talking about has been stalled and slowed and a reason for that has been the ukrainian resistance. they were able to hit some of the lead vehicles and get it to stop. pentagon press secretary, retired rear admiral john kirby. thank you. you do a great job explaining this difficult situation. we appreciate it.
would use chemical weapons. i m wondering, do you still believe that? does that fit in with what you just said? that would be in the sick calculus of vladimir putin. yes, it would be what is the maj r issue. bombard the city, then what the troops try to march in. and if they ran into resistance, it s myer belief they would have done it. that would fit the template. appreciate your time as
and it s true that despite the horrors playing out in ukraine, this is not yet on the scale of aleppo or grozny. but it is as quentin sommerville said from the same russian playbook. it s this approach. if you don t have the manpower to take a city street by street, then they simply besiege it and starve and bombard people while conducting strikes on particularly hospitals, to make life unlivable in those cities and force a capitulation. this is particularly relevant because if putin was hoping for a quick victory in ukraine, that s not happened. they continue to be frustrated by a very stiff ukrainian resistance, and they re not making the kind of progress on the ground that we believe they thought they would be making by this point. one of president putin s closest allies effectively agreed with this. and when things don t go as fast as putin would like in war, in the past, he has increased the bombardment. and so he faces a choice.
him? absolutely, he will use everything and we ve seen this in the in the last days. he will use more aggressive military power. we ve seen the bombard more of cities. he will use the strength that he has. he will use repression and terror. that makes him definitely more dangerous and that also will define the outcome of the war in general. um, what this gives as an opportunity for ukraine is that they are better positioned at the moment on the ground with the support of western weapons. and they have a cause they fight for, and this is what the russian president and especially his army are lacking. we argued in our piece autocratic rulers have a lot of difficulties losing a war and remaining autocratic rulers. so, for the russian president, this can be a very existential war.