in detail the confrontation i with russia and what can be done to keep ukrainians safer. we re grateful to our partners for promising new packages of security and defence. this may look like a conveyor belt of schmoozing with world leaders, but you ll notice ukraine s president always wears combat fatigues. all this gladhanding has a concrete purpose. back home, president zelensky s country is burning 500 days into russia s full scale invasion, ukrainians care a lot about nato. translation: nato is our only protection from russia, - otherwise they will never leave us alone. even if they will not help us, i don t know, i think the situation in our country will be much worse than now. in the corridors of power here, there s been lots of debate about why now isn t the time to make
congresswoman jayapal on where reproductive rights in this country stand now. this is american voices. we begin this hour with a new stage of the war in ukraine. as russia moves forward from an armed mercenary rebellion inside its own borders. the latest, ukraine s president zelenskyy spoke on the phone with president biden just hours ago. zelenskyy calling it a quote positive and inspiring conversation. ukraine is counting on u.s. support for its counteroffensive against russia. with the wagner rebellion against putin could also provide an opportunity. lorenzo tundra writing quote since the beginning of the full scale invasion ukraine has crept internal instability in russia with hope that the turmoil could somehow undermine putin s power and result in the end of the war. the lasting impact on putin s power yet to be seen. but former u.s. ambassador
by now. w ben, thank you for being here. what can you report in terms of president zelenskyy s response to these events thus far? reporter: yeah, president zelenskyy has put out a message on social media in which he basically says russia s weakness is obvious, full scale weakness. the longer russia keeps its troops and mercenaries on our land, the more chaos, pain and problems it will have for itself later. certainly, what we re seeing is that this invasion that began back in february of last year, that the russian leadership thought would last for a few days has turned into an utter catastrophe. in addition to the string of military defeats they ve suffered, now we see these huge divisions within the various branches of the russian military, whether it s mercenaries of prigozhin or the troops of the ministry of defense, basically on the verge of fighting with one another. the ukrainians, obviously, see
i understand how knowledge of the situation is not widely shared, but nevertheless, i wonder how it will impact morale among the russian troops who remain in ukraine. surely word of the wagner situation will reach them and have to have an impact on their thinking. indeed. and if putin is able to overcome this because, obviously, this kind of open mutiny shows the weakness of his military operation, the weakness of his regime if he is able to withstand it, actually, it can help his position. because you saw that the whole slew of politicians around him, they immediately denounced wagner, said that it s mutiny and how dare you in the middle of the war that russia is fighting for its own existence and so on. so, in fact, if he s able to overcome this, then it will be helpful for the troops rather than not helpful.
without seeing putin as the big loser. it really, this did expose a lot of weakness. and lisa, just think of what we saw over the course of the past 12 hours. just this morning, or just yesterday, we saw prigozhin who was emboldened, who was not only attacking the kremlin and the ministry of defense of russia, he was also attacking the pretext that putin mate for this war. that is a crime in russia. that s punishable by serious prison sentences. as the day went on, he did announce that his forces were going to be marching on moscow. he even engaged in some small skirmishes. russian regulars on the way there. now, that looked like this is a dead man. that if production is caught, he will be punished to the fullest extent of the law, along with all of his men. that didn t happen. instead, we saw video where it looked as though putin climbed down after calling him a traitor. in the morning, during that really rare kind of improvised national address that putin delivered. so we went from h