city, kyiv. ukrainians desperately trying to repel the russians. talk about the battle it does hat this hour. sure, don, good evening. what is happening in kyiv is basically the city is being encircled. as we ve had reports from alex and others, we ve got forces coming in from the south, the north, the west, and the east. all of these forces are coming together in basically a classic encirclement effort. you re seeing a lot of softening of targets in the city itself. there s some reporting of fighting in areas that are pretty close to the center of the city. and basically what you re looking at here is when you look at kyiv, you see the river here, you see the northern part of the obelinsky district, that s the
coordination with allies and partners. they did that with sanctioning putin, they only did so after the european union had done so. so this is something i would watch very closely. if they do this, this is something that could actually significantly hurt president putin. of course it s not something that would only hurt him, it could affect a lot of other things. that s why it s such a complicated decision for this white house and for leaders in europe. got it. kaitlan, oren, jill, and of course alex marquardt in kyiv where just moments ago he witnessed and we saw and heard at least with him as well those explosions or gunfire that was taking place in and around i should say in the area of kyiv. thank you all, i appreciate it. we ll get back to you if need be throughout this broadcast. now i want to bring in cnn s fareed zakaria, the host of fareed zakaria gps. fareed, good evening, thank you for joining us, i appreciate it. overall, what do you think about what s been happening?
what s called the tooth to tail ratio. of that 200,000 probably mow more than 65 to 70,000 forces are available to try to control key objectives in ukraine. it s not going to happen. if you had the entire 60,000 forces in kyiv working this type of outward in, you might have some degree of success, but just think about it in terms we can understand. the new york city police department is in the vicinity of 50,000. how much challenge how many challenges do they have trying to maintain law and order and control in a city of 3 million here? i mean it s an approximation that makes sense. urban fighting like this, don, absolutely sucks up people. this is all about infantrymen on the ground. everything else is a support activity, logistics, air, intelligence, medical support,
all around where he is. now, he has he has disregarded some other advice in previous times. so a weekend ago last wkd he decided to go to munich. to go to that security conference, and many people told him don t go don t go because you might get caught out, the russians may not let you back in. he went, made a good speech, demonstrated strength and went back. that s where he is now in kyiv. so he s demonstrating courage. putin is directly speaking to ukrainian armed forces in a televised address asking them to rise up against their own government. listen and then we ll talk about it. translator: do not let
believes he is putin s number one target in this situation but also what it means for the future and stability of the government in ukraine. they have been monitoring it. they say that they are aware of his whereabouts, which obviously they aren t sharing publicly. but i do think this is a major concern. if you listen to bill taylor, former ambassador to the ukraine from the united states, he was saying earlier that if russia does take kyiv, it is going to be a major blow to this fight in this resistance and pushback that you ve seen the ukrainians waging against the russians ever since they have first invaded. so where it goes from there, though, it s not completely clear. it is still unclear how that would proceed, what role the united states would play in that, if that did happen. so they are monitoring all of this very closely. from the white house to the pentagon, that s where oren liebermann is. oren, zelenskyy has been pleading for help. what assistance is the u.s. providing u