it is neutral in this. american ambassador saying essentially that is not true. reporter: i think that is a very good point and i don t think that this is an individual incident that the americans are now coming out publicly on. but a series of standpoints, public utterances and incidents that have boiled up in frustration from the u.s. government point of view making this kind of the straw that broke the camel s back. the ambassador accuse south africa of covertly placing arms and ammunitions on that sanctioned vessel, the cargo ship, december last year in a naval port. eyewitnesses and members of parliament of the opposition at the time said that there was nighttime operations to get goods off and back on to that cargo ship and even switched off the t trance transponder.
immediate saying this ship, the lady r which docked at a naval port in south africa near capetown, was there to receive arms and ammunition from south africa that would end up in russia during this bloody war on ukraine. now, that ship was sanctioned by the u.s. treasury in may of last year. that already begins problems regardless of the specificity of that allegation. and it was a deeply suspicious moment when that cargo ship arrived in south africa. it turned off its transresponders for several days acording to ship trackers. it then off-loaded and onloaded goods in the dead of the night according to eyewitnesses and opposition members of it added speculation that though south africa claims it is neutral in this war in ukraine that perhaps they are less than neutral. and i think it is the bubbling
towards the eastern coast, all the while protected by what is called top cover, likely implying that they were protected by u.s. military drones. from there, they will then sail another 12 hours across the resea to where we are here in jetta. this morning, we watched a ship pull into the naval port with nearly 2,000 evacuees from s sudan. that carried a mix of u.n. and humanitarian workers, a mix of nationalities, as well as sudanese citizens. all fleeing because sudan s military and the rapid support forces are now in full-blown conflict, fighting each other, trying to protect their own base of power. sudan civil society is breaking down with access to food, water, hospitals, and the internet all crumbling. that s why americans, brits, japanese, chinese, and sudanese are trying to flee, errol. that ship carrying those americans is expected to land here tomorrow.
white house today. major, with the addition of the patriot missile systems, does ukraine now have the full arsenal you think they need? or are there additional types of weaponry you think they need to fight off russia? patriots are good. they re not game changers. they re going to help them protect their critical infrastructure. until the united states provides offensive weapons. i think that s where the line gets drawn about whether or not we re well into this. the bottom line is zelenskyy still doesn t have leverage over russia to get them to stop fighting. i think ukraine military would have to threaten crimea. i think that is their alamo. they have to have that naval port. they have to have that for the black sea fleet, and if they could somehow figure out a way to go on the offensivings threaten that, then they have some leverage on their side. patriot s good, but not a game changer. thank you all. we will see, of course, president biden and president zelenskyy in just a cou