yesterday, if he s going at ukraine, why wouldn t he involve the ballotbaltics? yeah, a big deterrent the nato alliance that would argue this is the argument essentially against using nato forces inside of ukraine at this point. because some would argue that s actually what putin wants. he wants to trigger that bigger war. if his goal is to change the geopolitical situation in europe, that would be the way to do it. so, one of the things you ve been saying to me as we watch the russians get closer in some cases occupying cities here. very close here, surrounding kyiv. you said this could begin to look like chechnya, like grazny, what does that look like completely? this looks like, it s possibleful putin were briefed, yes, we would take these locations in a matter of days
people and the ukrainian army. so what they re doing now is they re creating these fire bases that they re using to just bombard cities and as you rightly use the analogy of aleppo, or grosny. we have to contest, help ukrainians contest. the aerospace and maritime domains. these are steps in the right direction but the estimates are, jim, that the russians are going to inflict a million deaths on ukrainian people, create maybe 6 million refugees. are we just going to watch that happen? and so we have to balance the risk of inaction with the risk of action. that s my question to you, right. do we at large end up watching? right, because when he fails, putin kills. he just levels the cities.
civilian area is horrific to think about and should shock the conscience of the entire world. so as you say you don t bring kit you don t intend to use. the that means it s clear putin is intending from the very beginning to inflict horrific pain or civilians. that s what these are for. these are for mass civilian casualties. well, look, we ve seen putin already use cluster munitions in kharkiv and there is evidence that has shown up afterwards. we know the playbook used in chechnya when grosny was leveled with artillery leveling block by block by block until the city was a wasteland. that s how he ended that insurgency. the prospect of that being used in ukraine, because of the frustration of not being able to win a quick victory, really is disturbing and really should
every possible angle of the humanitarian disaster, you can think of, again, i ve worked so many you re seeing right now, hence, that s why you re hearing the densperation like president zelenskyy that something needs to be done. we know at this moment, michael, there are humanitarian corridors being opened up in cities like mariupol to try to get some of the civilians out. but there s a fear that ultimately what that might lead to is a situation like grosny, where the russians just start shelling and bombing with impunity. what do you see happening? well, i m sorry i ve got two pieces of bad news for you one is the deputy mayor of mariupol have said that the russians are now shelling the routes that are supposed to be protected. when i heard of this agreement and there was a positive step, i
regimes go, it was later that there was an insurgency of extremism arose. invading a country in which everyone hates you, and most of the adults are willing to kill you is chilling. no route can be secure. you can never stop, rest, pull maintenance, rearm, refuel, without enormous security around you, and it also as seen today, you can get into a city even, but you re not going to be able to hold it because urban combat above all is impossible under these circumstances, unless you do, and i fear that we will see more of this, and you mentioned the use of grad rockets and so forth. i fear that we will see out of russian frustration, and so forth, and an inability to make progress, they will really start to rubble areas. let s keep in mind what they did to grosny, what they did to aleppo in syria.