and guns firing in every direction. kyiv has the capacity to survive for very long time. or much longer than people think. now, the russians are bringing that heavy armor down. but they are very slow, because they don t have full, the fuel supplies are being attacked. their ambush is going on everywhere. there was a territorial guard ambush. and kyiv, north of kyiv near chernobyl, the other day. a place that i ve been. and the local coast guard just ambushing them everywhere. how long can they sustain? that that is the question. well i want to ask the control room to keep that map up. most people don t have the memory of where everything is in ukraine. you see kyiv in the central, northern part of the country there. and i want to dive a little bit deeper, malcolm, on what you just said. this resistance has surprised a lot of people. we just heard, i m sure you are watching.
sovereign country without the consent of that nation. whether it is a squad of 12, a squadron of tanks or army of 190,000 is irrelevant. this is an invasion, we need to deal with it as such. that means significant package of a response from the west. significant package of a response from the west. i expect that means two p things. it means something to do with nato. i ll ask my control roam to put a map up, there s a lot of nato countries around ukraine, what are they planning to do? i think there are three things the alliance needs to do right now. you alluded to stand diplomatically, go as an
air defense systems. so, essentially, if this is the way that russia carries this out, in the first hour or so, they will virtually cripple that half of the ukrainian military there. they will only airspace because they have air defense systems up in the north and belarus and the western part of russia that will virtually take over the airspace there. then, after that initial air campaign, we will see artillery fire coming across the border and then, after an hour, maybe two, a couple of hours in the early parts of this campaign, that is when we will most likely see russian military forces rolling across the border into ukraine. so, again, this is a u.s. military assessment but it is based on what they have been seeing russia do, build up across that border. in the last several months. i want to put that map up. the oblasts and eastern ukraine
sign that his terrible economy and dictatorship is not the only way to do things in that part of the world. and so yeah, he fears his own people, absolutely, all dictators do. tim, let me bring you into this and ask you just for your assessment of where things are heading. it s obviously late night in kyiv. we don t have our map up. i ll see if we can pull a picture up. but as incompetent and i think rick is describing the invasion as incompetent, for days now, as it s been and as it s looked with that barely moving convoy, there are casualties now, civilian casualties. there are cities burning. in eight days, it has gone from, you know, exquisite european cities in a beautiful country to a war zone. what is your sense of where we re heading? well, it s becoming much more brutal than we ever thought we would see and it s only going to get worse, i m afraid. we see the frustration.
the ukrainians took it back the russians are now in control of it it s about 20 miles as the crow flies from downtown. our guys in that hotel as they look north it s the obolon district. a lot of fighting in this area. as you look at how the russians are getting the support. they have a lot of bases. one is in belarus and the other is belogrod. it s massive. attack helicopters. military trucks a field hospital. tents. just yesterday 18 attack helicopters in this one base just over the border. so the question is how long does that take all these red dots are airstrikes or fires. there is a lot of pushback by the ukrainians, but the russians are going to make their way to kyiv at some point and it might be tonight. and it could get ugly, jesse. jesse: so keep that map up for one second, bret.