alex marquardt in kyiv, thanks so much, my friend. all right. well, c cnn military analyst retired general wesley clark joins me now from little rock, in arkansas. he served as supreme allied commander of nato. it is good to see you, sir. from what you are seeing on the battlefield, what do you think is unfolding here? well, obviously, the russian objective is to take kyiv, to displace the government, and to put some kind of a russian-puppet government in place. and then, neutralize the country at least or reoccupy the whole country, do whatever it takes to make sure that it is never part of nato or the european union or western oriented. but as i understand his orders, he wants to clear kyiv. he is raging about neo-nazis and
other things, and so, he um, this is going to be a very personal campaign for him. and i think, the citizens of kyiv are going to put up a very, very tough fight. the ukraine army is performing brilliantly. they, of course, have no air cover at this point. they have no air defense. they have fought magnificently. they have really sloan wed downe russians, imposed casualties on the russians, and they have got to get into kyiv, they won t find it easy. yeah. and and to that point, i mean, city fighting as we have seen, it is very difficult. it is very bloody. there are inevitably civilian casualties. i mean, give us a sense of what it could be like. i think what you will see is if they can get in, they won t care much about civilian casualties unlike the way we fought in, let s say, mosul, i
to the south and to the east. and then, in addition to toez those explosions i mentioned came from the west, we have also known for the past few days that the russians have been pushing in from the north. that northern front has been relatively quiet. but all manner of fighting in the overnight hours, michael, we heard explosion frs different directions. we heard small-arms fire. larger-arms fire at some of though explosions lighting up the night sky. air-raid veps going off here in the capital kyiv but there has b been a lull for about the past hour. and all told and it s still early but it does appear that, for now, a difficult night that that president zelenskyy had predicted may not have been as bad as so many had feared. uh, it will be interesting to see how the ukrainian forces fare against what is going to be an overwhelming russian force. for now, it does appear that they are putting up a pretty
our team in kyiv, reporting that in the last hour. and fierce fighting, said to be underway in the streets south of kyiv. the town s mayor says there have been losses and many wounded. ukrainian officials say clashes are also underway in an eastern suburb of kyiv. ukraine s president says it is a make-or-break moment for the country. translator: this night will be very difficult, and the enemy will use all available forces to break the resistance of ukrainians. this night, we have to stand ground. the fate of ukraine is being decided right now. the russian invasion, now in its third day. it began on thursday with russian forces attacking from three sides, by land, sea, and air. ukraine s defense ministry says 18,000 guns with ammunition have been distributed to reservists in the kyiv region. i want to show you a scene now from the kyiv train station on
past. this it it won t be easy to hold and move forward for the russians, will it, in a political or social sense? well, this is a country that fiercely values its heritage and its independence. and it is going to fight desperately to hold onto that against russia and from everything we have seen, the russian soldiers many of them don t even know why they are there. some of them don t even know where they are. so, um, there is a sort of fierce determination at the top spurred on by mr. putin, and at the bottom there are a lot of russian soldiers who are semi-motivated. ac of course wungs you get shot at, you either fall back or get aggressive. but thus far, the army has underperformed what our expectations were. that may change in coming days. they have certainly got the overwhelming mass and as they come and circle in and around kyiv, and cut off the ukrainian forces that are outside kyiv, it s going to be a tough fight.