there are historical reasons for that, and they will use this kind of in waves. it ll go from a certain set time to another set time, and they start these in the early morning hours. and what about government officials there, president zelenskyy? there s obviously the possibility of paratroopers going there on the ground. what about the risk they face? well, president zelenskyy and his entourage and his ministers, his prime minister, they face a considerable risk. one of the big things that you always have to look at is what the enemy s goals are. and in this particular case russia s goals are to decapitate in a figurative sense the government of ukraine. that means capturing zelenskyy, potentially killing him. that is something that should be avoided at all costs. and his protective detail will need to be on their guard to make sure that this doesn t happen. the former u.s. ambassador to ukraine just told me last hour even if russians have a
ukraine as well. jill, i m going to start with you. there have been these protests in russia, thousands taking to the streets, many facing arrests. how are most russians reacting to this aggression in ukraine? you know, i think if you look at the polling you d have to say that probably the majority, somewhere around half of the public does support this operation. now, why they support it is because they feel that russians are under attack. and they re getting that picture from, you know, the russian state media. but there are these people who are showing up protesting on the streets of moskow, st. petersburg and many other cities. it varies every day. it s been 50 cities then 25, 26. but they re out there. and they are usually very quickly detained, arrested and shutdown. and we ve even had some people who went over to the ukrainian embassy here in moskow and laid flowers, but these are very small numbers.
strategic he s essentially meaning all the other aspects that we can put pressure on russia and putin that are outside the battlefield. and one of those ways is, of course, the financial way, which is you saw a lot of activity about that today. and i think, you know, there s different specifics to each of the pieces they did. s.w.i.f.t. in terms of impacting transactions, which just for those watching, the impact of that will probably be felt on monday, that it s going to be monday when people get nervous about whether they can have people in russia whether they can have bank transactions. but the bigger piece of this that can t get lost is what we call ally management. the extent to which neither president biden there s no distance between the allies at this stage. and part of that is bautecause the devastation in ukraine. i think that s really important. it it doesn t seem like the u.s. is leading this. in fact, most of our press conferences are after nato or eu
you use that air campaign to pave the way for other infantry, assault troops, tanks coming through the city. those are the things they could be preparing for, and that is a normal course when it comes to planning and preparing an air campaign. what noir probably also doing is getting intelligence support, the russians are for what they re doing. the ukrainians, of course, are watching this. as matthew mentioned the air defense has, you know, performed better. the ukrainian air defense has performed better than expected, which is a surprise because i know it was assessed to have some weaknesses in it as late as december, and here we are. here we are. if russia does indeed launch a full siege tonight, which the government is warning is imminent, what could that look like in terms of shelling, bombing, aerial siege? help us get a better picture of that. so it depends how many sorties, which is number of
we are following breaking news out of ukraine this weekend. and just into cnn, some new video that i have to warn you is graphic. take a look. this part is far away so look closely. it s some sort of heavy military vehicle on the streets of kyiv suddenly steering into a car and crushing it. here s a look closer up right after it happened. bystanders trying to help an elderly man out of that crushed car. other videos of the incident showed that before the collision a fire fight broke out between individuals in another military truck. a video taken by bystanders shows at least two people down. one is a wearing a military uniform with the ukrainian flag near that military truck. and cnn can confirm these videos were taken on friday in kyiv. ukrainian officials claim to have thwarted an attempt by russian soldiers to penetrate