i hear from a lot of people over there they have been restricted and gun rounds and we ve known that for months but we can t supply the 125 millimeter rounds. so the assistance coming from the west is really important for them. in the meantime, putin has maybe 300,000 troops there. he doesn t care about the lives of his soldiers the way we do in the west. he s pushing them forward. he likes to inflict attrition war on ukrainians and like to have them consume their own brigades in the defense up there in bakhmut and take the mobile reserve preferring to do the counter offense and plug the gap with that. that would freeze everything up. there is real concern here that if ukraine miscalculates to go into the offensive in the south, got to hold in the north around bakhmut and it s stretching forces really thin.
With Russian forces performing so poorly in Ukraine, it is not surprising that Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently spoke about how Moscow is “ready” to negotiate an end to the war.
a deeper thought of hope. the joy of liberation, what is the mood in ukraine. so, indeed, it s not about kharkiv, it s national. it s about everybody. there was, you know, confidence that ukraine is able to defend its towns but it felt like the ukrainians were liberating the towns from the horrors. we knew that the toll would be high in terms of the soldiers who might die here in these attacks, now the fact it s not still easy and the price has been made but still more than the ukrainians expected. most important in the interviews like these, i was asked so much in the last months about the attrition war and the ukraine s fatigue and that it would be very long and it s impossible. i think for the west it was critical to see that, just here now i m in berlin, i had a
let s give them credit. the s-300 system that they have from slovakia will help, but i m not an expert but i talk to ukrainian government officials every single day, and their attitude is thank you and now give us more. thank you, now do more. those are great sanctions, now do more. and they don t feel like they have the capabilities to do a no-fly zone now yet, but they want to get to that. with respect to the attrition war, that s a great question. i don t have a great answer. tragically, they could just keep fighting along some border. by the way, as they did, starting in 2014 until this moment. remember, the war started in 2014 and just kind of it s been grinding along until this escalation. tragically, that might be an outcome as well. mr. ambassador, we ve heard growing speculation in recent