that essentially cuts off the russians trying to encircle the city. so the ukrainians saying they are making headway and they want to launch counter offensives, erin. thank you very much, fred. i want to go to retired army brigadier general mark kimmet, and he is assistant secretary for internal affairs and the founder and editor of agentura.ru which has been blocked in russia and also a fellow at the european policy analysis. you hear fred reporting that during the day today at six to eight hours of ongoing fighting, massive plumes of smoke and for the first time sort of ongoing small arms fire in very clear battles, what do you hear when you hear those details? well it sounds like to me that we re starting to see an initial offensive into kyiv. it may well be that those small units that we re seeing fighting