in kyiv right now because there is this great heightened sense of anticipation, that something really bad is going to happen. we ve had those reports of that big, long column of russian armor heading in this direction. there are those threads that have been made to carpet bomb or to pound the ukrainian capitol with massive, massive artillery. of course, many of the residents are taking shelter and, you know, were leaving the city in anticipation of what could be a major escalation here. matthew chance, thank you very much. as i say, we ll be back with matthew later in this hour with the exclusive conversation he had with president zelenskyy in his hidden bunker under the streets of kyiv as he has described it. phil mattingly outside the white house. you are getting information how president biden will address ukraine and putin. reporter: white house
telling. do you believe that and are you surprised that it is so quiet on the streets and in and around it kyiv right now? i m not that surprised. i think again, the anticipation that you can roll into an urban environment with tanks and armor and just kind of walk in is a fallacy. cities are very hard to occupy from an occupying stance. they are very easy to defend. the ratio of killing his one. you need three offensive troops for everyone defend are typically in the standard military play. the troops on the ground, what they did not anticipate getting into and i don t think vladimir putin wants to have a blood lighting on his hands because his intent long term is to control ukraine. to carpet bomb or to have mass civilian casualties does not work to his benefit. trace: when when i was a
farther along in ukraine in the next two or three weeks. he may capture a city or two, but he s not going to capture, i don t think, kyiv. he s not going to destroy the resistance of the ukrainian military. he s going to be fighting against a still-potent ukrainian military two, three, if not six months from now and even if he destroys that ukrainian military in half a year, he ll be fighting against the ukrainian population, and that is not something the russian people want to see happen. they don t want to see russian soldiers die in ukraine, and according to u.s. intelligence reports, it s a minimum of 2,000 who have died already. according to u.n., as many as four. and according to ukrainian reports, as many as 12,000 so that s a big political negative for putin, as is the death of ukrainian civilians, and putin s only going to make progress of the type you describe if he decides to carpet bomb ukraine, to totally destroy those cities, which would be a major problem for him at home
they need help getting aircraft. i wonder if this is something you believe the united states needs to put more effort behind and basically granting other countries to provide them with the planes that ukrainians are trained to fly in. i definitely think we should do that. i would even consider supporting the no-fly zone if the american government decided to do it. i understand the risk/reward there. with putin, we don t know what his frame of mind is and where he is with his health and everything else. he could unleash a nuclear weapon. i don t think he would, but it s hard to do anything, gambling on the reactions of a man who s not acting in a reasonable manner. right now ukrainians are sitting ducks for the air war and the attacks on their cities, and that s what russia does is they totally carpet bomb a city. kyiv is, i m sure, coming up next. at least if we can give them airplanes, they will have a fighting chance. it doesn t help with missiles or
turning to and aleppo terror campaign, that before it s done, will destroy much of the country. i think down the line, we re gonna find nato, and is gonna find this unbearable to sit and watch this happen. unbearable, and you re saying that they ve not had much success, at least at the speed that you would think vladimir putin might want. and colonel jack, president zelenskyy today said that we have now hardened the empty buildings in our capital of kyiv. if they want to take over kyiv, they re gonna have to carpet bomb the city to get it. what do you make of his comments? and is he right? well, that s not gonna help the russians very much. the russians know better than anybody when it s like to attack, to defend a city that s been completely turned into rubble, as they did successfully against the nazis during the second world war. excuse me.