in fact working on ways of refitting and resupplying these units, including discussions about how to replace lost troops. now some of these units are almost completely devastated and it s unclear whether they will ever be reformed or whether they ll be combined with other units trying it. now former naval intelligence officer and overseer of stanford s hoover institution john jordan . john, always a pleasure to have you with us. i don t want to disrespect, but mr. kirby had to say there but i m just curious how do we know that that s true when he says things like it appears that they are depleted? what kind of intelligence might we have that could prove that what we re looking at satellite intelligence signal intelligence as we re able to overhear a lot of their conversations? this is very much like the 40 mile convoy that was supposed to overtake very quickly.
is going into this stall, if you will. but in general, we believe that there is a couple reasons for that. one, we believe the russians are deliberately actually regrouping themselves and reassessing the progress that they have not made and how to make up the lost time. two, we do believe that they have experienced logistics and sustainment challenges, challenges that we don t believe that they have fully that they fully anticipated. and, three, they are getting resistance from the ouagadougouians. ukrainians. we gave some indications that the ukrainians have in fact tried to slow down that convoy. and we have no reason to doubt those reports. but again, we can t speak to it in great specificity.
we re rough contemporaries. and he commanded u.s. central command and so has seen more than his fair share of combat. so when he says that there is significant combat power in that long, long convoy, i agree. the other aspect is i see a target. and the u.s. isn t going to go after it, but if we can put in the hands of ukrainians the kind of javelin anti-armor, anti-tank that have been quite effective thus far, that is a big tempting target for the ukrainians to go after. i ll close here by just pointing something out about casualties. i m seeing increasingly reliable reports that the russian death toll is edging north of 2,000, maybe as high as 3,000. ukrainians claim 5,000. let s stipulate that it is the bottom end of that. 2,000 killed in action. worth remembering, in 20 years in afghanistan, the u.s. lost
can you explain, has it moved at all in the last day or so, have ukrainian forces begun attacking any part of it? and then as a send question, can you give a picture of what is going on in the south, are the russian forces amid the amphibious landing, are they expand something. on the convoy, what i will tell you is that we still assess that that convoy, but more broadly speaking the northern push by the russians down towards the south towards kyiv, remains stalled. from our best estimates they have not made any appreciable progress geographically speaking in the last 24 to 36 hours. again, nothing very significant. it is difficult for us to know with great specificity all that
here. reporter: one of the first things that president biden said last night in his state of the union was that as the russians came in here, they met the ukrainian people. the problem of course is civilians are becoming soldiers and soldiers are dying. and so what you have here is the civilian defense forces which are defending the country, but they are now moving toward those front lines and they are becoming more and more exposed as the russians again start what seems to be an indiscriminate shelling campaign. cal, thank you. admiral, let me go to you because defense secretary lloyd austin was talking to lester holt, and it gets to this question that was raised by i think cal right at the top of this discussion of the ukrainian resistance and how long they may be able to continue to keep russian forces stalled. we re already seeing a bit of a change it seems. here is what the defense secretary said. we ve been watching this convoy that has got the world s