any moment now we expect to see president biden welcome one of america s strongest nato allies to the white house. the meeting is russia s invasion of ukraine is just beyond the one-year mark. the pentagon has announced another $400 million aid package for kyiv. phil mattingly is live. we ll start with you and what you know about the president s meeting with chancellor schultz. it s a critical meeting and sounds like something with of meeting when it pertains to this war with the allies and alliance that s been together. it stead very fast. there is probably no more critical leader at this point than chancellor schultz. this is a relationship. the two leaders get along quite well. no staff component between the two leaders who have been critical to an alliance that has produced a significant evolution in terms of the types of weapons, the capabilities that they provided over the course of the year. there have been points where the germans haven t gone as far and throughou
i think china, xi jinping, they re at an inflection point. they ve been called out in many ways as we called out the russians before last year s invasion. the world is watching. i don t know if the chinese, as interwoven as kim talked about with germany, the eu and the rest of the world. if it s worth, now for the world watching, for them to go and join iran as pariah nations, a pariah nation that is an ongoing vicious invasion. i think the chinese are in a hard spot. they probably have been supplying chips and low-level technologies but not weapons f.
it s a tough fight. the ukrainians have exacted their toll. they held it through this critical period, and, yes, it s hard to gave up by they gave up ma mariupal. they have not to exhaust military in its counter offensive which is suggested to happen some time in the spring. kim, another issue that will come up and is probably coming up in the hours ahead in the conversation between the president and scholz and we ve been talking about it at great length here is china. the united states is showing they have intel, that china is seriously thinking about providing lethal aid to russia. it s not just the united states that can hold any leverage over
that is significant. it shows us that the ukrainian air defense systems as much as they need the patriot systems that are to come online shortly and ukrainian forces are being trained on even now have already seen an extraordinary improvement in their air defense systems. it is several hundred russian fighter planes they say they ve taken down now and they point out that every russian fighter plane on their territory is a legitimate target. that was just over when it comes to the air defensive there s a lot more to do, but this is one of the signs that it has improved and it is working. russia s offensive has been under way, we re told, since early this year. melissa bell and phil mattingly, thank you both. joining us to discuss further analyst kim dojer, senior managing editor at requesting the military times and general