was hit by what we believe to be a russian shelling as well. even as the talks get under way, john, the fighting continues unabated. alex marquardt for us in kyiv. alex, thank you very much. so earlier this morning, i had a chance to speak to the deputy mayor of mariupol. you see it down here on the sea of azov. this is the city under siege right now. the russians closing in from two directions, squeezing the city, 26 hours of shelling. the deputy mayor told me he thinks they can hold out for several more days, but he says they need help fast. their style of war is to make humanitarian crisis. we do not have electricity in whole city. we do not have water supply. we do not have sanitary system. and we do not have heating. only natural gas supply is left.
this new video just in to cnn. this is from chernihiv, dash cam video from a car here. let s watch. you see civilians there, not far from wherever that missile struck. you see people walking on the streets all over this city. just a sign of how civilians in ukraine increasingly come under attack. joining me now is former u.s. senator from tennessee bob corker, served as the chair of the senate foreign relations committee. thank you for being with us. the news this morning, kherson, near the black sea coast, is now under russian control to an extent and there is a siege in the city of mariupol here. do you think the ukrainians can hold out if this becomes a war of attrition? well, john, thank you for having me on. and i think the reporting has been very useful in this
plan, gradual advancement with more and more attacks on civilian targets here. and, john, if you look at russia s history, just going back to syria, but also back to chechnya, they have a history of tl deliberately targeting civilians to great and devastating effect. we re seeing more and more evidence of that every day. these negotiations, i know the ukrainian delegation on the way, for what would be the second meeting. what to make of that? well, listen, remember the diplomatic attempts if you want to call them that, we saw prior to the invasion. you had someone like sergey lavrov saying days before the invasion that they were interested in talking, had no plans to invade, of course they did, they did invade and that diplomacy turned out to be window dressing and maybe even deliberate misdirection as they made plans for an invasion. given that recent experience, you need to look at these talks with similar skepticism. that said, enough interest that
and that continues for one day and a half. so we have continuing shelling for 26 hours, 26 hours they are destroying our city. so from all the weapons, from artillery, from airplane, bombing, from tactical rockets, from multiple launch rocket system, so situation is very bad. joining us now is former cia deputy chief of russian operations john sypher with us. we re looking at the map. i know overnight people may think that not much has changed, but a lot has, especially as we re watching this right here, this encroachment on kyiv, that is foreboding. looking at what is happening near kyiv, what does that tell us about putin s state of mind and his next steps? i think putin he s been a dictate, the people under him have been telling him things, but no one wants to tell him the truth. he thought that he had been
you do have russian officials and ukrainian officials showing up to see if there is a possibility of progress, but russia s stated demands are still nonstarters for ukraine and the west. that includes demilitarization, that is lay down their weapons and also basically a declaration of fealty to russia, which ukraine does not want to do. now, a lot of that is dark, right, as we wake up this morning, and describe it, but on the flip side, you do see tremendous progress of the west, u.s. and nato getting weapons into ukrainian forces. pentagon saying yesterday hundreds, hundreds of stinger missiles just in the last couple of days. that s a tremendous acquisition for ukrainian forces on the ground. germany pledging nearly 3,000 shoulder fired missiles and that s one reason russia does not yet have air supremacy, those are dangerous weapons. so you do still have some leveling of the battlefield, but the advantage remains clearly in russia s camp, john. jim sciutto in lviv, thank