yeah, and i think your sense on that is right, bianna. he, being putin, is looking for some sort of historical marker, some sort of way he can celebrate russian victories as he s portraying them inside of russia. will it be the conquering, quote unquote, of mariupol? we know taking a city or taking even a swath of land is far different from actually controlling it over the long-term. but that s all irrelevant to the propaganda machine inside of russia. it could very well be mariupol, but if that doesn t go well, he ll make something else up because that s one thing the russians are really good at is spinning whatever impression they want to leave out of nothing. it will be interesting to see how they play that. major spencer, yet again and we have a picture of this, another long, in this case, eight mile long russian convoy. we spoke a lot about russia s difficulty supplying their forces and really getting caught out in the middle of the field, right, in that convoy around kyiv. su
russian mainland, directly to crimea but also strategically, it s important because they are potentially, it seems, trying to entirely cut off ukraine from the sea. the deputy mayor of mariupol, weeks ago, warned us of what was happening in the city and said people were being slaughtered in great numbers, and now we see the proof of that, clarissa ward, thank you so much. joining us to speak about this retired general john spencer and then russian operations. thank you to both of you for joining us. john spencer, i want to ask you, still infamous to this day, 20,000 polish officers killed by the soviet army. we talk about that as a war crime of historic proportions. now we look at ukraine in the year 2022 and getting evidence from bucha to mariupol of war crimes or at least alleged on a
bureaucracy and bureaucracy takes a lot of times and our military, some western leaders. ukraine just doesn t have time. time means ukrainian lives and it s very difficult, who zelenskyy is, actually eager to suffer, to risk his life to show the world what is ukraine and to show the bravery of ukrainian people, to explain to him from the west that we need some time to consider. that s why he opposed, the weapons went out and this is exactly what s happening now in mariupol. mariupol, in ukraine, told the message from them, the weapons are running out. and definitely a problem with the logistics and we understand that this is the fight that s
championships and she went on a tear saying if russia doesn t behave in a civilized manner, this will go on forever and said the russian military had begun to bomb western ukraine and attack the city of mariupol, all true, of course, and that they wanted to go to kyiv to overthrow the ukrainian government of president zelenskyy. we have a totalitarian regime, she added, we re a pariah state like north korea. honest, straight to the point. the problem is the remarks which contradict the official narrative and what s happening in ukraine and are critical of the russian authorities were recorded and that police were brought in to investigation. this is the middle of march, remember. days later. the teacher resigned from her post and just today, her lawyer is confirmed to cnn she faces charges under new restrictive laws aimed at silencing dissent in russia.
military prepares for an intensification of russian aggression in the east, mariupol is also preparing itself more than 40 days now that this city has been completely surrounded. there are fears now from ukrainian officials that they could be even using potentially or preparing to use russian forces, phosphorous munitions with potentially devastating effect because describe the indiscriminate and relentless bombardment, russian forces have still not yet been able to take over the city and the mayor of mariupol, just a few days ago, told cnn that he believes the ultimate goal appears to be right now to wipe mariupol off the face of the earth. one more thing that s worth underscoring here in terms of why this has been the site of such a pitched battle, this is strategically a very important city for the russians to capture. it would allow them to have a sort of land corridor from the