know, who gets to join the e.u. or nato. that seems so fundamental. he is sort of fighting for the free world. not even sort of. ukraiians are bleeding and dying for the free world and for a lot of people, clint, it s hard to understand why the world wouldn t give them what they re asking for. there is a convey trained on them but they can t do much if they don t have air power. at this point, is there a rational explanation, this fear of world war iii is real but is there rational explanation for not just finding a way to give them what they want and need? yeah, joy, we re at an interesting inflection point. in press conferences today, you have the u.s. military saying well basically, send them all sorts of weapons up to a certain extent and that line keeps marching forward and it s open what weapons we re providing, talking about switchblade drones, javelins and this is hardware for a dismounted unit that s essentially a defensive
bogging down that convoy because russian armor is not supporting with ground troops around their armored convoys. you re seeing an advance coming in from sumy. this will have to force the ukrainian military to deal with another access of advance. in places like sumy and kharkiv and mariupol, they re using indirect missiles. and with the refugees, this is the refugees as they stream across out towards the east and south. but inside ukraine, part of the problem is these areas closer to the east, which are closer to russia, have since been overrun. now, russia doesn t control these and they have human population centers in their rear areas, which leads to essentially having dismounted sources or insurgents over time.
been concentrated to the east, and there was a fear that if fighting intensifies to the south and if they move closer to the south, they could take one more step toward encircling the city before a potential invasion into it. in kharkiv, we saw, which is the second largest city in the country of a population of about 1 1/2 million, we saw yesterday a small incursion into the city, a limited number of russian forces in armored vehicles entered into neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city, got out of their vehicles, and there s very clear video of the russian dismounted troops, but after staying in the city for only several hours, they were forced to retreat. what happened today was a much more significant standoff assault with what appeared to be grad missiles and potentially cluster munitions fired at the center of kharkiv, and there is video of bodies on the streets and videos of significant damage
the russian army. i m enormously surprised. they can t defend themselves. they re not camouflaged. they can t get off the roads they re stuck on because of marshy ground. it s an amazing sight. let me turn to the bad news though. they apparently are going in now for a combined arms attack to seize a city of 3 million people. in doing so, i might add, tank mechanized forces are extremely useful in that fight, but only when accompanied by large numbers of dismounted infantry who incur terrific casualties. so all of the advantages will go to the ukrainian defense forces, the armed civilians and the military. it could go on for months and be the bloodiest fight we ve seen since 1945. if that happens, the optics o on
little bit puzzling to me that it s taken well over a week for that to happen. u.s. military personnel are taught in basic training, when you stop, whether mounted or dismounted, you disperse to get greater concealment and to protect your force. why the russians didn t do that initially is a little bit puzzling to me. but it may indicate that they do recognize that there s a threat to their forces, and they may be marshaling their forces, planning and preparing for the further encirclement of kyiv. i think that s the first thing we should be watching for is are russian forces able to extend to the south and west, to the south and east, to encircle kyiv, cutting off in an attempt to cut it off from resupply. i think that s the first thing we should watch for. we re looking at some video of the train that is coming in to ukraine, and we re told these