outfront next, ukraine s offensive. a widespread operation underway right now across eastern ukraine. forces on the ground claiming to be seizing territory from russia as a disturbing video tonight emerges of the russian private army holding a russian commander prisoner. plus, tonight, a cnn exclusive. a mar-a-lago employee drained the resort s swimming pool. it s flooded a room where surveillance video logs were kept of the rooms where the documents were. is an indictment imminent? a former member of trump s legal team is outfront. a war of words after another dangerous encounter between american and chinese warships. it s not just the chinese government that s angry with the united states. tonight you ll hear some of the hate, the anger coming from chinese citizens. let s go outfront. good evening. i m erin burnett. outfront tonight, show of force. ukraine s deputy defense minister telling cnn an offensive is now taking place in multiple locations across easte
at the time and they didn t move on with it. but there s still this hunter biden criminal probe and there could be slices of this that could be part of that investigation where we don t know if anyone will be charged. finally tonight, robert hanson, one of the most notorious spies in u.s. history, has died in federal prison at the age of 79. hanson received $1.4 million in cash and diamonds for turning over highly classified information to the then soviet union and to russia using his position as an fbi agent to compromise the identities of dozens of u.s. human sources in moscow, some of whom were executed. he was caught in 2001 and sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to avoid the death sentence. and to our viewers, thanks for watching. i m wolf blitzer in the situation room. erin burnett outfront starts erin burnett outfront starts right now. captions by vitac www.vitac.com
it s not only going to be an issue of what conventional forces do, erin. it s going to be a coordination between those recon forces, the operational conventional forces, the territorials, the so-called national guard, the resistance forces, and even the russian volunteer corps that are in different oblasts. the commander is coordinating all of those things to cause the greatest amount of confusion. i think right now we re seeing indicators of that because you don t know what s going on, i don t know what s going on, and neither do the russians. but i bet you the general knows exactly what s going on and he s doing a very good job. thank you very much, general. i appreciate your time. i want to bring in the lead russian investigator for belinkat. i mentioned earlier, russia is
to an investigative journalist, who is a wanted man in russia, his reporting team has been able to identify this russian commander. he s going to share some information with you about that. but first i want to go to kyiv where fred pleitgen is tonight. as we understand this offensive may indeed and in meaningful ways be underway, what is the latest there? reporter: there certainly is a lot going on in the vast battlefields here in ukraine. but the bottom line of things really is that the russians don t seem to be gaining any ground anywhere while the initiative certainly seems to be with the ukrainians. we have that situation in belgorod where the russians still have a lot of problems coming to terms with things there. also in bakhmut, the ukrainians really think that they re making gains there. the russians are saying that they re also under pressure from the ukrainians in the south of the country. russian military drone video allegedly showing a massive ukrainian attack in the sout
ukraine s northeast, teaming with tanks and armor vehicles, this military hub seemed invincible. the streaks you re seeing in the sky, you can see more artillery rockets apparently be firing from russian territory towards the territory i would say around kharkiv. i don t know if you can hear this right now today russia s army appears bizarrely absent. this russian military blogger ducking for cover in the belgorod region. we are lying in shebekino on the ground under ukrainian grab missiles, he says, strikes are coming one after another. the local governor says the shelling from the ukrainian side has been relentless with several killed and wounded and thousands evacuated. the leader of the wagner private military company ripping into the defense ministry.