russia seems to be winning. at least out in the east here, russia s slow, brutal, artillery and rocket assaults are clawing away land from ukraine. russian troops now threaten to encircle ukraine s eastern agricultural and coal mining heartland known as the donbas. the village of severeoskq. they have been without running power and water for weeks and half of the residents have left. the mayor does what he can to distribute food. reporter: they are trying to squeeze us out, but i am confident our soldiers will keep us safe, he says. twice a week there is enough fuel for people to charge phones, not that there is cell service or wifi. volunteers hand out canvass to
real potential danger going into 2020? yeah, there s no doubt about that, paul. the iranian playbook is to maintain aggression in the area to try to disrupt the oil flow as much as they possibly can, to impact the world economy, cause a recession if they could and put pressure on the united states to pull back from the max mull sanction campaign. the means to do that is certainly some kind of military action, like they did with paul: saudi oil fields. and the fact we did not respond as a coalition i think was a mistake. because i believe the iranians, in their playbook, they believe the united states is not going to respond unless the united states troops are hit. and there s a lot of damage that the iranians can do in that area without attacking directly the united states troops. despite that, they conducted rocket assaults on bases in iraq
2020? yeah, there s no doubt about that, paul. the iranian playbook is to maintain aggression in the area to try to disrupt the oil flow as much as they possibly can, to impact the world economy, cause a recession if they could and put pressure on the united states to pull back from the max mull sanction campaign. the means to do that is certainly some kind of military action, like they did with paul: saudi oil fields. and the fact we did not respond as a coalition i think was a mistake. because i believe the iranians, in their playbook, they believe the united states is not going to respond unless the united states troops are hit. and there s a lot of damage that the iranians can do in that area without attacking directly the united states troops. despite that, they conducted rocket assaults on bases in iraq that the united states does have
despite the onslaught overhead the rocket assaults also continues, palestinian militants continuing to fire rockets into israel. today more than 90 rockets were fired. and lastly now, on the diplomatic front, some new developments here. a short time ago we learned that the exiled hamas leadership has now been called to cairo for talks there with the egyptians to discuss the egyptian peace or cease-fire initiative. one new condition that is being talked about is the possibility of putting on the ground international observers. this is a new wrinkle in the proposed egyptian truce. we expect you ll learn more in the next few hours. possibly tomorrow there could be new developments. also in the region, the secretary-general for the united nations. leland? david lee miller on the border there near gaza. i got to tell you, i would say that was really scary stuff.