colonel cedrick layton. president zelenskyy said yesterday that secretary of state blinken, the defense secretary, lloyd austin, would be visiting kyiv today. the white house has yet to confirm this. but what kind of message does this send to russia? i suppose in the coming hours, we re going to find out more about this, but it does send a message. it certainly does. it just shows how much not just european, but american skin is in this struggle. that ukraine is having to fight for. and we re following a number of european nations. peaceful nations that have sent their prime ministers so it s totally appropriate. the ukrainians for sure will be working the security aspects of this if it happens. no, it is on message.
futures? what makes it so difficult for this complex to be captured by the russians? what s really difficult about this is the cavernous nature of this. you look at the buildings and you see how difficult it is. imagine yourself fighting through this and trying find a room that you can clear and you have to do that hundreds and thousands of times throughout this complex. it s going to be incredibly difficult to capture. if the russian forces don t understand where some of these places are, how to navigate them, it s going to be difficult for the city to capture. the defense minister says three to four days to capture this. both the colonel and i think that s a fantasy. good reporting. thanks, guys, very, very much. appreciate it. coming up, new reporting right now on some top republicans who privately blasted then president trump after the january 6th insurrection. senate gop leader mitch
there to kyiv since the russians retreated. some people are even going farther east to areas that are more dangerous. you hear a lot of the same reasoning over and over. people couldn t find work. they didn t know the language. they were feeling isolated. one family told us they didn t want to take advantage of the generosity of their hosts in germany. the reality is that getting people out of the country is often the easy part. the hard part is integrating people and setting them up for success in their new countries. wolf? heartbreaking, indeed. the whole situation. scott mcclain in neighboring poland for us. thank you very much. let s get more on the breaking news right now. russian president putin claiming victory in the key ukrainian city of mariupol. brian todd and retired u.s. air force colonel, cedrick layton, they re working the story for us. show us what s going on. putin claims victory. ukrainians say the city has not fallen yet. the city mostly in control of
ben, thank you very much. stay safe over there as well. let s take a closer look at the battle in eastern ukraine right now. brian todd is over at the magic wall with colonel cnn military analyst cedrick layton. tell our viewers what is going on. today mark milley said the ukraine war will be a long slog and they are gathering more forces for more assaults in the south and east. and what we could tell you from today that battles are being fought near the town and where is the importance of the two cities right now. so brian, those two cities are really important because they are on what is called the mo 3 which is a highway that goes through two towns, also through kharkiv and beyond that to kyiv. and it is the main artery for this part of ukraine. it is also a juncture where the roads come down here and down to donetsk. so it is a important transportation area. and we re going to talk about barn kovy.
there was a railway pass blocking a egress. but mariupol we need to talk about. they want to wipe it off the face of the earth, why do that when moeftd of the city looks like that. what are you fighting for. according to officials, 90% of all buildings in mariupol are destroyed. 40% completely gone. and with that means is that the russians are looking at this not because of that, because of that bad real estate, but they want to build that land bridge between their occupied areas ant the area that they have down to ukraine. so they re occupied areas, tlir there are separatist areas and they want to connect those. and we don t have any time left. but if you re talking about drones we do know that the delivery of these switchblade zroens is taking place now. they ve been sent to the ukrainians. they should have them really any moment now. that will make a difference in the battles in the east. it certainly will. thank you very much. brian todd and colonel cedrick