you like, the russians are incrementally gaining ground. not very quickly. it s causing enormous damage. they re doing it with excessive use of artillery and missiles, with excessive damage to the civilian infrastructure. what do you think is russia s aim? 0bviously, they want as much territory as they can get, but will they go on to attack other cities and towns? they haven t yet decided. their current strategy is pretty clear. it s to take as much territory as possible in the donbas. that puts them into a strong negotiating position, at which point putin has to decide one of two things. he can say, right, we ve liberated this area, we re not giving it back, but we re prepared to negotiate and stop fighting, etc. that s a problem for ukraine and the west, because ukraine is not going to give
the conversations happen. let s get more tanks and ammunition. let s get more drones. okay. but then at the same time, what happened if putin crosses the line? this is the fascinating question is white house has been gaming out, the pentagon has been gaming out. i agree with congressman that it would certainly cross a line, a red line. we have not seen nuclear use since of a nuclear weapon being used in anger since august of 1945, and that was the second attack, the one on nagasaki. that said, i think the place where the biden administration might separate itself from what you just heard was that respond in kind. so let s just gain this out for a moment. supposing that putin launches a tactical nuclear weapon either on ukrainian territory or over the black sea, or supposing he conducts an atmospheric nuclear tests which were banned in the 60s and says this is a reminder
from the americans, they do believe or at least aiming for the reopening of the american embassy here in kyiv which, of course, was shuttered toward the beginning of the war. they believe they can reopen it by the end of may. matt rivers live for us in the capital, kyiv. grateful for the reporting. let s get more from general marks. you hear matt rivers make the case that the russian progress in this part of the country is slow and incremental. but you still see it as significant, and you see putin as a plan. i want to blank this so you can come in yourself. to partition this? yes. absolutely, the plan is clearly they are making progress there, and at some point putin is going to declare victory that that has already taken place. and that ultimately what you re going to end up is something like what you drew but more importantly, i think over the course of time, the pace of these operations will decrease. this tempo can t be sustained. the russians don t have the
war, but you would understand that. an attack on a very important piece of economic infrastructure. the russians know there are people there. yes, some ukrainian fighters but also civilians. when you look at the pictures, what comes to mind? clearly the devastation that s taking place, the lack of the rules of land war fair are not being adhered to at all by the russians. they simply do not care. their objective is to wear down to morale of the ukrainian people, and to create a wasteland. putin has no desire to leave ukraine and he has no desire to try to rebuild it. this produces for him in addition to a desired buffer zone. there are a lot of people watching who probably want to push back on the point you made. that you think inevitably, at least for a short period of time, some period of time, we get a divided ukraine. i want to illustrate the point to show this. this is where we were on march 5th th. the russians were coming. they wanted to take kyiv and take the country. that
had done to say that he was successful. what does that look like? we saw when he is pushback from areas in the north that he decided he is going to do what a lot of us thought he would do in the beginning, and that s focus on the donbas region. so that looks like doing what he s doing now, in terms of taking mariupol. mariupol is key. once he gets mariupol, he s going to move on to the greater donbas region, and there is a scenario in which he could look at taking mariupol and donbas and annexing those areas, and at least calling this phase of the war a success. you know at this point putin is very frustrated, he has not been able to say he s had a clear and decisive victory. so, once he gets the donbas region, even if he continues to focus on other areas, we anticipate that we will see some rhetoric, some communication out of russia with vladimir putin claiming success. but shawn, what you are just referring to, russia taking some of those regions in the