moving the front line or trying to move the front line forward into ukrainian territory, but already and we re about a week into this offensive. we re not seeing tremendous advances from the russian side. it seems like it s going to be a very, very slow campaign. and, richard, what does that mean for the ukrainian strategy here in this war? because if the russian goal now is to essentially buy time, run out the clock, maybe run out the clock here with support in the united states or western europe, how does ukraine counter that? it s a problem because russia is depleting ammunition in this country. ukraine is running out of air defenses and running out of tank rounds. with this slow, destructive strategy that putin is trying right now, he hopes that not only will western support dry up over time, but that the ukrainians eventually will lose the ability to maintain this fight and to sustain this fight. so in a sense, if he s willing to lose a lot of troops and by many accounts, ru
apology. but what i can also tell you is this was an opportunity to speak very clearly and very directly about the fact that china sent a surveillance balloon over our territory, violating our sovereignty and violating international law and i told him that that was unacceptable and can never happen again. we are not the only one on the receiving end of the surveillance balloons. more than 40 countries have had these balloons fly over them in cent years, and that s been exposed to the world. i also had an opportunity because we re here in munich, as you know, focused primarily on russia s ongoing aggression against ukraine, to share our very real concerns about china s support for russia in that war, and what we ve seen over the past years is, of course, some political and rhetorical support and even some non-lethal support, but we are very concerned that china is considering providing lethal support against russia and
second war, if you will, a brand-new war plan because the first one didn t work on this one-year anniversary. so one year on, russia is starting over again effectively. putin tried to invade this country a year ago. many said he was suffering from hubris. he wasn t listening to advisers or was misadvised and he thought he could take ukraine easily, topple the capital. soldiers brought policing gear in order to manage the population. they didn t really think the ukrainian people would rise up and defend this country. it didn t work, and now a year on, he s starting a totally new war, a new strategy, back to the basics, and instead of having his troops spread out all over the country where they have supply chain issues, logistics issues, it s primarily focused near the russian border out here in the east and a very slow, destructive campaign,
sanctions we ve imposed on individuals and companies who are aiding the war effort in ukraine by russia. so this is something that we ve been concerned about from day one because you remember, chuck, before the russian aggression, president xi and president putin got together and talked about a partnership with no limits. in that context, one of the concerns we had no limits might include providing lethal support to russia in the war. so this is something we ve been watching from day one, and the reason that we re sharing further information now is we are concerned that this is something that china was not doing for many, many months, but may be considering doing now. have we shared all of this evidence with our allies? we are in the process of doing that. let me move a little bit more to the balloon incident itself. the director of national intelligence admiral haines had this to say about the balloon earlier this week when asked how should we think about this?
what kind of consequences are you talking about? what did you share with him? i m not going to get into that, but i can again tell you that this is something that president biden has raised directly with president xi. and have you if he s raised it directly with president xi, so this is not new, this warning here, it looks like so far they ve not heeded the warnings? no. again, this is something that president biden has shared with president xi almost going back to day one of the russian aggression against ukraine. they spoke two weeks into the russian aggression, back last march, and at that time in that very first conversation after the russian aggression, president biden said to him it s going to be very important going forward that you not provide any direct military support to russia for this war in ukraine as well as engaging in any systematic efforts to evade the