do to the country if russian forces were able to take control of odessa. there s a couple of things at play here. first and foremost is that we are seeing the russians target those areas where they expect the resistance and the opposition to be greatest. as courtney talked about, kyiv is the primary focus but it s also symbolic cities like odessa. so that s number one. number two, i think this is also an evolution in russia s strategy, which they are looking to subjugate the ukrainians and i think the kremlin understands they have to break the symbolic will. the goal for them is to try to lessen the resistance the ukrainians have been putting up to this conflict in order to advance their political objectives. it s getting increasingly hard
longer this conflict goes on, the more opposition we re likely to see to putin inside russia. thank you for your analysis on this. as always, we thank you for your incredible reporting. and jay gray showed us thousands of ukrainians lining up at a train station in poland. the big question is where are they going once they alive? we re going to go live to a refugee camp there as europe deals with its fastest growing refugee crisis, by the way, since world war ii. plus, this war is creating unimaginable new heart break for families who have been trying to adopt orphans from ukraine. the obstacles, they are facing. and this war is driving the cost of gas higher and higher by the minute. if it s going to be 7 now, it s going to be 9 pretty soon.
assumptions and mistakes that russia is making stems in large part from the political system russia has put in place and that is a political system where power is totally concentrated in the hands of one man, vladimir putin. it is that personalization of power that has led to these faulty assumptions and mistakes on the kremlin side. it s highly likely that the kremlin was fed from their intelligence community over the optimistic assessment of russia s military capabilities, they underestimated the ukrainians will. and i think the kremlin understood this war would be highly unpopular with russians so they wanted to win it quickly, keep it out of the eyes of the russian public. so what happened is russia is fighting a war that it didn t train for and they are now really struggling to adapt to the reality on the ground. so i would say this is very much an intelligence failure for the russian side in large part because putin surrounds himself
the crowds have grown so much over the last several days, and they say it s going to be even more people coming in the next few days. so obviously it s so crowded inside they re pushing us back at this point, but i can tell you we ve been here for eight days, i haven t seen the crowds like this at all. unfortunately, as we ve all been talking about, these numbers are going to grow. jay gray, we appreciate you joining us on this. i m going to let you get back to it. thank you for now and please stay safe, my friend. courtney, you had incredible reporting coming out last night talking about what we re hearing from a senior defense official when it comes to military action on the ground. the russian military advance, and the ukrainian military, how they re staving off the russians. the overall outlook of what the ukrainians are dealing with
to see when russia can win this war. it is only hardening ukrainians opposition. it s difficult to see how putin can win this conflict. i can t help but think about the major intelligence failure that has happened here. we talk over and over about the fact in a putin is the original spy, former kgb agent. he has ron this as a former spy, not as a military man. you can even see it kind of play out with this invasion on ukraine. but this has been a major intelligence failure for president putin. we saw reports that he could take over kyiv in 48 hours. that has obviously not happened. what does that say to you about the future of this thing at this moment, at this hour? i want to start with the miscalculation on the russian side. putin is a k.g.b. man. to me, the faulty planning and