ukraine cannot be used inside russia. cannot be used to threaten moscow. can t be used in a way that putin can then say, you know, his existence is at stake. because then at that point, you don t know what he s going to do and how he s going to respond. but it s such a tricky balance to walk when you see the kind of slaughter that we re seeing in bucha and in other, you know, mykolaiv, mariupol. in these areas that have fought so valiantly, but at the same time, you ve seen citizens, ukrainian people, who it just really looks as if russia has made a decision now that not being able to defeat the ukrainian military on the battlefield is then going to do everything it can to break the will of the ukrainian people themselves to fight. that s sort of where we seem to be shifting now and that s a very, very scary place to be. the genocide is the point.
heinous, brutal, genocidal, i can t think of more adjectives to add to it. by the way, nicole, i was just corresponding with one of my colleagues who works for president zelenskyy and he said, mike, he was just in bucha with president zelenskyy, and he says, it s way worse in physical when you walk there in-person than it is on the videos that we re seeing. but it s also done on purpose. i think that s important for everybody to understand. think about it. if president putin didn t want us to see this, they could have put some effort into cleaning up the bodies. they didn t. of course they re denying it. they re saying it s british intelligence and all this b.s., but they want everybody to see it because it s part of the strategy to put pressure on zelenskyy to negotiate. and when zelenskyy can t protect his people, and i have it is a giant pressure for a head of state to not be able to protect their people and right now they re feeling that especially in mariupol, that does put pr
knowledge of ukraine and ukrainians and of the russian military? what is happening in those places where we don t have eyes on the ground? nicole, you re exactly right. as one of my ukrainian colleagues, another one, said, mike, mariupol is our stalingrad, and i think it will be orders of magnitude worse than bucha because they ve been bombing for longer. they ve been starving people. and mariupol s a much bigger city, right? and we re not seeing it yet, you re exactly right. we ll see if we do see it, if it s ever liberated again, but that s exactly right. and so i hope, you know, to talk about prescriptions, i think it s great we re kicking the russians out of the u.n. humanitarian the human rights council. they should have been kicked out years ago, by the way. i think it s great that we re going to announce new sanctions tomorrow. i don t know exactly what there are, but i m pretty sure they re not going to be what the ukrainians want. ukrainians want us to stop subsidizing put
they re seekers. they have to seek it out. it s confirmation bias. if putin told him, hey, i won the gold medal in the decathlon, 60% of russians would believe him. to ben s point, we re in a little of an echo chamber ourselves. india and china are getting a different picture. if you go on twitter and any social media and look at stuff about ukraine in mandarin, it all supports putin s line. the two biggest populations in the world are not getting the same information we re getting. it s a grim news day, but thank you for bringing extraordinary coverage. speaking with the january 6 committee, ivanka trump, who was with her dad at the time at the white house as that mob of her
the kremlin can claim all it wants those mutilated corpse of civilians appeared on the street of bucha after russian forces left the area, but as we ve mentioned, satellite imagery combined with some incredible, really, really quick new york times analysis that was out 24 hours ago, prohibitively refutes any such claim. of course, such overwhelming evidence does not matter to the kremlin or its propaganda machine and sadly to much of putin s base. outside and inside russia s borders, but it does matter to those investigating war crimes and making decisions about how best support ukraine. ben, i m going to start with you on this really leader of a country at war, civilian population is being targeted and putin s trying to eliminate them in a genocide playing out on social media. zelenskyy s aggressively