million. becky? remarkable. ana stewart is there. and with the houses of parliament behind her, salma abdelaziz with me here outside buckingham palace. we ll have a lot more from london in the hours to come. first, though, let s bring you back to some of our other news. rosemary church is with you at cnn center in atlanta. thanks so much, becky. we ll get back to you very soon. russia is on the retreat in eastern ukraine, and its defense ministry is facing some rare public criticism from a kremlin ally. what the chechen leader says about russian strategy. that s just ahead. works on that too, and lasts 12 h hours. 12 hours?! who studies that long? mucinenex dm relieves wet and dry coughs.
form ate against the west and ukraine nazis, and some of the pundits are saying maybe we need to rethink this. maybe we re achieving the opposite of what we wanted which is that the ukrainians hate us. so i think we re seeing the small sands of it. but i think we re grasping at straws because there is so much we don t know about what is happening. but certainly when you have the chechen leader, a huge supporter of putin intimating that this campaign isn t going too well and people ought to listen to him and to others who want something different, we should be very attuned to these signs of potential discontent among the military, and among some of the people around putin. and fiona, i want to ask you about the piece that you and angela wrote about putin and his world view and what he s really wanting. in this piece you talk about the reaction from the west. the unified reaction from the west so far. i also and i read it because
joining me now from new york, a staff writer for the new yorker, also the author of the book surviving autocracy. great to see you. thanks for making the time. it was interesting, the chechen leader and computin supporter s he would be forced to speak with the russian leadership to explain what he called the real situation on the ground. he called these developments astounding. what are you seeing among loyalists on twitter, telegram, and elsewhere? there seems to be a fair amount of disarray. i mean it is perversely pleasurable to watch because what is being attacked in a way, or what is being hit, rather, is this sort of culture of reporting upstairs, of always building up the successes, which is part of what led putin, i think, and his advisers to believe that they were going to
meantime, the pro kremlin leader of the chechen republic has offered some rare public criticism of russia. raman kadyrov is calling for changes in russia s military tactics in the coming days, saying mistakes have been made on the battlefield. his comments were posted in an audio message on his telegram account. the chechen leader has supplied thousands of fighters to the russian campaign. and cnn s clare sebastian is tracking events in ukraine. she joins us now live from london. a good morning to you, clare. so what s been russia s military action to these ukrainian advances? reporter: they re not denying that there has been a loss of territory. but as you noted, they are sort of repainting this as an intentional and orderly regrouping of troops to try to redouble their efforts to take the donetsk region. the loss of areas around kharkiv
for them almost half a year and we are so happy. whenever russia is frustrated in this war, it responds. this time accused of striking civilian targets like this power station. leaving people in kharkiv stuck on the metro from the resulting loss of power. ukraine is pushing on more than one front. that has risk but it is enough to worry one of putin s biggest allies, the chechen leader ramzan kadyrov. if changes are not made, he said in an online post, i will be forced to go to the country s leadership. this is the most significant russian withdrawal since they pulled out from kyiv in late march. the human costs for both countries remains huge and on whether it is a price worth paying, the majority of ukrainians feel there is no choice. this is about survival.