You from the nbc news center here in los angeles. Welcome everyone to alex witt reports. We begin with the Breaking News, Tropical Storm hilary has begun lashing the pacific coast. Live pictures from san diego in the direct path of the storm we are heavy rain is beginning to fall in parts of california, and now under a State Of Emergency. Moving to las vegas, preparations for the orders are underway there. Storm drains are being tested, and potential for historic flooding there. Heavy rain could reach up to ten inches in some areas hit by the storms. So the impact could be catastrophic. The next two days will be crucial. Will hilary move north through california today and then into Northern Nevada by monday morning. A short time ago, the category one hurricane was downgraded to a Tropical Storm. But it is the first to hit california since 1939. Officials are warning, take this seriously. There would be Power Outages, make no mistake. There will be Power Outages across Southern Californ
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you have been following the progress of this war extremely closely. tell us what we ve learned about ukraine s capabilities in this counter offense so far and is the slower than expected progress worrisome in your view? it s not, jim. in fact, this morning i looked back through some writings that i made earlier in the year back in february saying when you re talking about a counteroffensive against the kind of obstacle belt that russia had been able to lay over a six-month period of time, having seen this kind of operation in both training and in combat, it takes a long time. everyone who is suggesting it s a slow movement is not taking into consideration how difficult breaching complex obstacles are. that s exactly what ukraine is doing. the enemy also gets a vote.
western intelligence perspective, they haven t made the progress they expected early on. are you saying that they re just probing now, looking for weak points and there will be a larger element to the counteroffensive coming forward? yeah, that s not what i m saying now, jim. that s what i ve been saying all along. i know how you approach these obstacles. it s difficult situations. we re seeing some film from the front line of ukrainian forces going into trench lines. it s one thing to attack across the obstacle belts, but afterwards, you have to literally get in the trenches and clear them of enemy activity. at the same time, you re under fire of both russian artillery and missiles. it is very difficult to go over territory that s been mined, it has trenches, it has ditches,
ben just mentioned bakhmut and how the eastern commander of ukrainian forces said russia has close to 180,000 soldiers there, i would suggest they re doing that purposely to try and trap as many ukrainian forces in that area of so they can t contribute more to the situation in the southeast. but what you re also talking about, jim, is we are seeing continued probe of action. that takes a long time. when you have released the main forces, ukraine has not done that yet. they have an estimated nine brigades worst of western offensive pieces of equipment to conduct attacks. they re going to be going in three, four or five different directions in their counteroffensive and that s when we ll see things start picking up. so, listen, we ve done a lot of reporting about the depth of russian defenses there, the mine fields, et cetera, multiple layers, that kind of thing. but the fact is, from the