seized earlier in the day. there s fighting around those airports. we don t know whether they have been taken back or not. during the hours of darkness, this would be the time that you d expect russians to bring in air mobile or airborne reinforcements to those airports. so that s the danger period right now. and then we know there s been some russian armor movement coming down from the north, both from the northeast and the northwest of kyiv. how far it is, what s opposing it, it s not clear. those reports aren t clear to us, but that would be a reinforcement. their intent would be to encircle kyiv, penetrate it exactly like we did with baghdad in 2003 and get regime change. so russian forces have seized chernobyl, the site of the worst nuclear power plant disaster in history. why would the russians seize that? and are you concerned about what they might do, what might happen intentionally or unintentionally with all that radioactive
let s talk about all of this with democratic senator jack reed, chairman of the senate armed services committee and se senator, do you think putin intends to conquer all of ukraine including the capital of kyiv? i think he s set upon capturing kyiv and other major cities in the eastern part of ukraine and then i think he will stop and his forces will reset and reform and then there will be a decision at that point whether they ll continue forward. i think there s a very high likelihood that he would continue forward. one reason is i think he would his military advisers would be uncomfortable with an ungoverned space in ukraine and having ukraine resistance, use that to attack russian forces. so there s a very good chance that he would take the whole country. do you think he ll just have an occupying force of hundreds of thousands of russian troops for an indefinite period of
the fight, you don t know where the key fight is going to be and so you have to redistribute so some of that is going on right now. the main effort it seems to me, first of all, why are they coming in from so many directions? well, as the colonel said, of course he wants to take as much as he can, but also because it really complicates the command and control issues for the ukrainian staff. you get good information, you get bad information, you get no information. you don t know what s happening. and it s overwhelming when that information flow starts, so they know this. so i think the main objective is going to be kyiv. i think what they want to do is what we call in the military is to go right into kyiv, change the leadership, put a russian stooge in charge and tell the ukrainians stop fighting. some would stop fighting, some would be confused, some would continue to fight. but this would be the basic strategy, i think, that putin is following. so we have to look at what s happening
material? well, yes, i m concerned. there are other power plants, nuclear power plants in kyiv also, more than a dozen. so they re all significant risks. chernobyl was on the approach into kyiv so i think they went through that area. they thought they could go through it, it would be relatively unprotected. this is the way the nazis invaded france and belgium in 1940. find the forest, go through the forest, nobody sees you. get on the road, go as fast as you can. so i think that s some of what the russians have tried to do here. i don t think they re going to try to make a mess because some of that would affect belarus. it could happen, but i don t think that s a good weapon for them. they have other weapons to deploy against the ukrainians. former nato supreme allied commander, general wesley clark, thank you, sir. we re following all the breaking news, including how the russian attack sent global
the capital of kyiv. that of course is the site of the world s worst nuclear plant disaster in 1986 where tons of radioactive material remain. the ukrainian foreign ministry warning if russia continues the war, chernobyl can happen again in 2022. joining us live from kyiv, matthew chance. matthew, you and your team exclusively witnessed a confrontation today at an airfield outside kyiv. tell us what happened and what it tells you about ukraine s chances of keeping control of its own capital. reporter: yeah. i mean it was astonishing but it was unexpected as well. we were making our way to an airfield near the capital of kyiv that had been attacked. we knew there had been fighting there over the course of the previous hours. it s an essential air base that the russian special forces we understood had been dropped there to seize in order to establish a bridge so they could bring in more forces. we went there. there was a checkpoint at the gates. i was told my ukrainian