going to be able to effectively occupy a country of 40 million people with 200,000 troops. is this going to be a long and bloody guerilla war. and you look right now, the first stilts i ve seen, that there are 3500 russian casualties. let s just say that s off by half. you re talking about, what, 5,000 russian casualties in the next three days. that s more than they ve seen in any military action in living memory. that s going to start to impact the russian public and drive those protests in moscow and st. petersburg and elsewhere. that s the defeat mechanism for russia. and, matthew, i want to ask you about this approach from the ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy. there are indicationsncouraged leave the country. despite the fact he s posting selfie videos on social media that he s going to stay and fight and defend his homeland.
that it s almost like unfinished business from the cold war that moscow and washington have to go to war in some sense. and i want to remind your viewers that in his speech on thursday morning, vladimir putin said if the u.s. intervened in any way, in ukraine, he basically threatened the u.s. with a nuclear retaliation. that s what we re talking about. 20 seconds. tell me what you think of the protests in moscow and st. petersburg? i think it s incredibly courageous, the atmosphere politically has changed in the last year. it s become much more dangerous to protest like that, and it shows that the depth of feeling and discontent and disagreement. we just lost the end of your comments but got the gist of it. julia, thank you so much for joining us. that s going to do it for me today. hallie jackson picks up our coverage next. hallie jackson picks up our coverage next.
first estimates i ve seen there were 3,5 russia00 russian casua. let s just say that s off by half. you re talking about, what, 5,000 russian casualties in the next three days. that s more than they ve seen in any military action in living memory. that s going to start to impact the russian public and drive those protests in moscow and st. petersburg and elsewhere. that s the defeat mechanism for russia. the ukrainian ministry, meantime, is asking people to stay indoors and go to the nearest shelter when they hear sirens. many of you watching want to know how you can help. and right now, there are organizations around the world and on the ground in ukraine, trying to help those in need of food, shelter, water and additional aid. for more details on how you can help those efforts you can go to cnn.com/impact. and cities all across the world are displaying blue and yellow lights the colors of