to recruit more than 100,000 new troops into the russian military. wants to bring his overall number up over 1 million troops, reflecting, perhaps, the long war that he didn t expect to have here. i think, willie, it also reflects the combat losses he s experiencing. every intelligence agency now says that russia has killed in action or wounded and knocked out of action somewhere north of 70,000 troops. it s probably closer to 100,000. so if you re trying to run the war from moscow, you know you ve got to replenish those troop levels. here s the bad news for vladimir putin, doesn t look like people are exactly signing up in droves in russia. they are, by the way, opening recruitment to people, men from 18 to 60 years old, willie. think about that for a minute. wow. i m in my 60s. i don t think the navy is
Ukraine is claiming they hit the Russian flagship of the Black Sea Fleet with two cruise missiles, US furnished Mi-17 helicopters going and then not going to Ukraine, A report from an American serving in Ukraine and Russian losses in perspective.
you may recall, that this missile system is the one that downed in age 17 down in 2015 over eastern ukraine, just a reminder that this is kind of the combination of a war which has been happening now for eight years. but one of the other things i want to fly is one of the reasons it is interesting that we are seeing all of these fuel trucks, for example, logistics vehicles coming in and out, is we are now in day four, soon to go into day five of this conflict. there is a lot of evidence that this is going on longer than the russians have planned. you look at their strategy for the initial assault. i think they expected kyiv would be taken on day one, or the ukrainian government and military would immediately throw down their arms. but that is not happening. they are now running, there is evidence coming out of ukraine that they are primarily running into fuel issues in kharkiv, we ve also seen as an evidence they might need supplies such as food. also, there is of course the question o
estimated 15 to 20 fixed wing aircrafts, something like 25 helicopters, but they say that russian forces are still capable of surrounding kyiv in another week or two and that the battle for kyiv could take longer, potentially four to six weeks. what do you make of that assessment, and how much do you think that potentially differs from what pentagon war planners, what russian war planners were thinking this was all going to look like when it got started two weeks ago? let s start with the russian combat losses, you went through the equipment. that s important. the one to watch are how many killed in action. i think very reliably, there are a minimum of 4,000 killed in action and as you re showing on that graphic, it may be much much higher. let s say, for example, it s 5,000, let s give you a point of comparison. that s in two weeks of war. 5,000 killed in action. in 20 years in afghanistan, 20 years, the u.s. lost 2,000 killed in action, so these are