let s go to lucas tomlinson at the white house to sort of digest all of this information and renewed military activity there. lucas. well, neil, after russian forces lost the battle for ukraine s capital they ve shifted efforts over to the east at the donbas and president biden hinted that some russian forces could remain in ukraine, forces in the country that before the invasion on february 24th. this is what he said. our unity with the ukrainian person is sending unmistakable message to putin. he will never succeed in dominated and occupying all of ukraine, that will not happen. he said all of ukraine. the pentagon is sending howitzers to help them in the donbas and kamikaze drones are
above surface, they re not that good at penetrating bunkers and these tunnels unless they have a kinetic type of smart bomb which i ve not seen used yet. so this tunnel network, while a dreary place to live and i m sure not very hospitable, provides them a significant amount of protection from the type of weapons the russians are using right now. neil: but they can t get food. they can t they re literally, potentially being starved to death. i think that is the the bigger challenge for the ukrainians. their big challenge is how long can they hold out with their ammunition and food, and the russians will continue to sort of cut them off. so then it becomes an issue of how quickly can the mater yell that the u.s. and nato are sending get to them to provide relief for the people trapped there. neil: our griff jenkins had a chance to speak to president
time right now. so that is yet to materialize. we ll see. so much breaking news. welcome, everybody, happy to see you this weekend. we re trying to get to the bottom of exactly what s going on there. what we know without doubt is that the russian assault not only in mariupol, but the eastern and southern part of the country is running very strong, and a record number of sorties over the past 24 hours. let s get the latest from matt finn. matt. reporter: neil, it s just a dire standoff at the steel plant in mariupol. vladimir putin said he would stop bombing that plant and instead barricade it, basically forcing the people inside to starve or surrender, but now ukraine says russia has resumed bombing on that plant. an estimated 2,000 yaiben marines ukrainian marines along with civilians have been holed up in tunnels underneath the plant, and now we re getting some of our first glimpses.
in the kremlin are encouraging him not to stop. even if they reach a steel wall in the donbas, he needs to push to take all of ukraine. so there are a lot of advisors on both sides that are giving him conflicting results. i think ultimately putin is going to make a decision and that decision could last a long time, as prime minister johnson and general milley have indicated. neil: just incredible. we ve got a whole new mindset to your point if we re thinking in terms of a year or more. colonel bob macginnis, good to see you and thank you for your service to this country. we re going to focus on elon musk, the world s richest man eager to buy twitter and he s even getting financing, it s available to them. they have the money, but they would prefer other s money to
throw the resources necessary to make sure that they take over the city, they have a, you know, a land access to crimea and of course, the attacks on odesa will continue because they want to get to maldova where they have troops. putin has the support he needs from the oligarchs and the military brass, they re loyalists to him. their future is at stake in this situation. neil: you know, we re getting reports, as well, colonel, and i don t know whether this warrants an alert, that he has shut down, that is vladimir putin, any reports or economic numbers released in russia. in other words, the kind of numbers that we get in this country like, you know, the jobs report, the inflation reports, all of that, russians are not getting that these days and have not for quite a while.