trajectory of the war and what is important to keep in mind is fundamentally this disadvantaged russia. the wagner group, many of their territory gains were built on the effectiveness of the wagner group, and this shows an internal weakness with regard to putin s hold over power inside of russia. this is fundamentally net positive for ukraine. the question now becomes how does ukraine rev leverage this on the battlefield. specifically in the downer offensive taking place, our understanding is the russians fixed some of the military problems they had early on and their defensive positions are pretty good now. what impact in ukraine s current
he is still painting it very differently. so all the talk, despite the quite open now discussion about the military problems in ukraine, all the talk is about the great, historic achievement of seizing, ultimately, this massive swathe of ukrainian land. so that is being presented very positively across all the state media, by all the state officials, the mps and everybody up to the top, as a historic reuniting of russian land which of course, it isn t at all. you know, this is quite clearly a land grab. even though, of course, russia doesn t actually control all the territories of the four areas that it is claiming to have annexed. no, of course, and that is why this is such a crazy situation and such a dangerous situation as well, i think. because you know, the difference and the gap between reality and vladimir putin s pretence, his lies and his aspirations, is so huge now. and i think the interesting thing in russia internally is that that is now becoming clear and people are now ta
accelerating his cluk clear threats than if he was actually succeeding on the ground. he doesn t have much left on the ground. if this is a political move, is this a way to shore up support from the russian people? with crimea, it led to sky high approval ratings for putin. but the thing about crimea is it was an extremely brief conflict. he was successful almost right away. then then moved to the same kind of annexation vote that you just saw a few days ago, had the same predictable outcome, but he didn t have any military problems that were exposed there. think about what s happened now. the leader of the chechen republic, very pro putin hardliner who was placed in by
north koreans. he s looking at the private group. he s got a problem and what that means is he is in a strain to mobilize that if he mobilizes, then he s got a political problem at home, kate. so he s got economic problems. he s got military problems and he s probably got political problems. general, talk to me more about nato in this equation. it has stayed united and getting bigger. that is one thing we have seen in the six months of war. does that sustain for another half a year? well, certainly we hope so. i tend to think so. there is great leadership at nato. the secretary general stayed on longer. you see two very strategically important countries with very fine forces albeit small ones, finland and sweden wanting to join nato after years of being neutral and you see the alliance pulling together and helping ukraine in just about every way they possibly can.
the united states. is that sort of ceding the point that we have not done the best job from the people on the ground there at getting all of this equipment where it needs to go? that s why i made the point, all the weaponry should have been delivered prior to the russian attack. you know the roads will get jammed, going to have military problems getting weaponry in to ukraine once it s a country in the state of war. much of this should have been done well in advance if we wanted to be tougher. i don t think there s anything wrong with the pointing of general now to deal with this. every time i hear there s an arms package, my thoughts go how and when and where will it be delivered given the fact there s a war on the ground. martha: sounds like you can t just drive across the border and drop your stuff off. martha: sounds like there s perhaps a new plan coming that we re about to hear about. john kirby is at the podium. david, thanks to see you.