ask him further about whether he meant he should reveal dirt. not going to focus on what the former president is doing and instead focusing on what the current president is doing and moments ago, i asked senator chuck grassley who is the ranking republican on the senate judiciary committee investigating hunter biden himself. i asked him about whether trump s comments were appropriate that putin should release dirt on the bidens. he did not want to comment. he said he s going to focus on his own investigation. guys? manu raju on the hill. thanks so much. let s speak now to cnn politics reporter and editor at large, chris cillizza. trump in 2017, said his personal lawyer to speak with a russian connected politician in 2020. he s asked for it again. a gop senator saying, hey, this war criminal, it s fine. i want to play what mike quigley said about this a short time ago on your broadcast and get your reaction. have a listen.
kharkiv in the northeast this morning. officials say that russian troops struck the area at least 47 times yesterday and oftentimes, the targets are civilians. russian forces slamming parts of the east, the donbas region as well. also breaking thisning. vladimir putin said to be looking to draft more than 134,000 additional russian citizens into its military. part of its twice a year draft. this as the pentagon believes that putin is being misinformed on the progress of the war. let s begin with cnn s john berman. of course, reporting from lviv, ukraine. john, officials believe putin is not only misinformed but massively misjudged the situation in ukraine. russian forces continue to strike several areas, specifically in the east. what more is happening today with the situation? reporter: both really can be true at the same time that there has been a failure to achieve
one piece of that has been the u.s. releasing so much intelligence about russian planning prior attacks to undermine russian information operations. now we have the defense department declassifying, in effect, intelligence about what senior advisers are telling or not telling vladimir putin and you say this is a fascinating strategy. tell us why. it has been absolutely remarkable to watch this. the fact we re declassifying some of the most sensitive intelligence we have, learning what the advisers are telling putin, imagine the type of access we have to have to know that and frankly, the source of the methods we re putting at risk to do that but it s messing with his head. no bigger insult to a former kgb officer to tell him he s misinformed about his own war and military and even calling him a butcher probably considers that a twisted phrase but misinformed, he s really upset about that. does not want to be called
barricades outside the city and they re going to be using the smaller branches to provide fuel and firewood for soldiers on the front lines, but as i m talking to you, just pan the camera over here, there s traffic. people are out. stores are open. people, despite everything, despite frequent bombardment in this city, are keeping calm and carrying on. jim? it s one of the most remarkable features of this war, right, people standing up to this as best they can in the midst of danger. ben wedeman in mykolaiv, thank you so much. so as the world watches for vladimir putin s next moves in ukraine, my next guest says that when it comes to u.s. claims that putin has been misinformed by advisers about how badly the russian military is doing, there s, quote, no bigger insult to putin. once a kgb agent himself. russian and cyber security expert demetri pervich. good to have you on this morning. thank you.
suggesting putin should expose any dirt he has on president biden following up on comments from the former president. how s that going down on the hill? reporter: the number of republicans doing a lot of what they did during the trump era when the former president, then the president at the time would say something controversial, many would either defend what the president said, president trump was saying or simply not respond or say they hadn t seen his comments and in this case, senator kevin cramer suggested that vladimir putin should reveal dirt on biden even though he didn t believe he would. listen. well, i don t know if he has dirt on biden. if he does, he should reveal it but he s a war criminal, so i don t expect he s right now thinking about ways he can, you know, reveal other information, if in fact, he has it. i don t know of any he has. i don t know what the president might be talking about. reporter: so we went on to