age are not allowed to leave the country. the president has invited people back. you and i have both run into people in kyiv or lviv who had come from other countries to fight. they maybe have ukrainian heritage, some more canadians or americans why would anyone join the azov battalion as opposed to the open invitation to join the ukrainian military or national guard? that is a very good question. a clear answer is that this is one of the most at the fighting units in ukraine right now. they are considered to many ukrainians heroes especially because of what their special forces units are doing a mariupol. they have single-handedly been able to hold down and stop the russians have taken entire control the city. there is a lot of goodwill from that. i think the second thing is, look, it is impossible to avoid and prevent any extremists coming from europe with united
or national guard? that is a very good question. a clear answer is that this is one of the most at the fighting units in ukraine right now. they are considered to many ukrainians heroes especially because of what their special forces units are doing a mariupol. they have single-handedly been able to hold down and stop the russians have taken entire control the city. there is a lot of goodwill from that. i think the second thing is, look, it is impossible to avoid and prevent any extremists coming from europe with united states to join the azov. analysts who spoke to said that they are still coming, but is a small number. that is perhaps one reason. the danger of course, which we won t know now, perhaps we will learn a few months or years, is whether or not some extremists did join the as off and will return to their home countries and possibly create violence or anti government activity.
they hit a command post. the whole idea here is regardless of what is taking place on the ground, russia has this ability to degrade the support networks that are keeping ukrainian soldier s morality up. are there any indications it s hurting their morality? the ukrainians don t say that. what the ukrainians are not admitting this is having an impact, but it s very difficult to see how it wouldn t at some point in some way be impacting the way the ukrainians are at the very least responding to this. they have to be anything about how they resupply their fighting units, how they get fuel to the front line, how they do, in fact, keep their forces moving in such a way that they are not vulnerable to these attacks. can we talk a little bit about mariupol? obviously there s been so much there have been so many
that is remarkable. so you re surprised, general, at the fact that they ve been able to establish these reply lines. why surprised? is it because everybody is coming together bringing these supplies? the safety of getting these supplies across the border into ukraine? why does it surprise you? look, largely this is always a year process with bureaucracy, permitting, and diplomatic permission to bring them into poland and move them across borders. it happened in a matter of weeks. a remarkable outcome with a scratch team, with other nations, that didn t take months of political wrangling but hours to commit to support the u.s. effort. and then inside ukraine, also to my surprise, apparently the distribution system to get them to forward fighting units is also working. so general, does that tell you that russia is not as in command as it wants to be? i mean, literally, if you can
units trying to get into kyiv, they don t look very good. part of it may well be a lack of morale. i don t believe some of the stories coming out. they said one of the parent troop commanders trying to seize the airport thought he was on a training exercise, didn t know he was in ukraine. i don t believe that. by the way, i d be skeptical of that 5500 dead russians, too. that would imply 35,000 casualties. there hadn t been that level of ground combat yet. there will be if they plunge into kyiv. so i think the russians got a problem. their command and control looks like it must have been come apart along with their common sense at the commander level. ukrainians, not to discount their courage. they re going to have trouble by the way getting supplies in out of nato. german, swedish stinger missiles. getting them into ukraine and out to the fighting units in this chaos and violence is going