reporter: yeah, that s absolutely right. we were quite surprised that was happening. i want to show our viewers where exactly we are. i ll step out of your way for a second here. a little more quiet, this is the last checkpoint before we go into the area where essentially that invasion is taking place. so if we go further down into that direction, that s where we see a lot of the tanks go into or towards ukrainian territory, but really the only place they can go is into ukraine around the area where kharkiv is. you re right, john, it has been a remarkable day that we have seen here in the past hour, hour and a half or so, where we witnessed those rocket artillery fire that, of course, general mark hirtling was the smerch system, one that can wreak a lot of havoc as well and also seeing russian t-72 main battle tanks also make their way toward ukrainian territory, and, of course, the interesting thing there was they were apparently
western portion of ukraine? so we ll see. but, you know, i think he has learned quite a bit. there were a lot of mistakes, military mistakes when they invaded georgia, and i think they learned a lot from that and we re seeing a much more professional or coordinated attack on ukraine. every step you take toward kyiv, it makes you wonder if he s looking for some kind of political decapitation, speaking metaphorically of course there. mark hirtling joins us now. general, i have up here the scope of the aerial destruction now, 16 locations, this is kyiv, where matthew chance was not long ago. you heard jim sciutto reporting he s hearing from u.s. officials that the russians now have achieved aerial superiority over the entire region. significance of that and what do you see happening now? well, john, the significance of aerial superiority is not something that we did not expect. the russians have the quality of the aircraft, the russians, as jim said, does not have the high
fight for the country. do they turn it elsewhere? and how does that affect the future of afghanistan? all of that is key as the u.s. continues to watch what happens there. of course, overall of this is just the fact at this point that the u.s. ability to monitor what s happening in the ground in the country to gather intelligence, all of that severely diminished when that last c-17 took off. i want you to standby as well. once again, we re awaiting the secretary of state blinken. you see the live pictures coming in from the state department right now. we will have live coverage. anxious to hear what he has to say. in the meantime, i want to bring in our chief international correspondent klaclarissa ward. sam kiley is with us. also retired lieutenant general mark hirtling. the reality is many were left behind on this mission.