where they are, but push them out of ukrainian territory and reestablish the borders they have had here since 1991. they also want to stop these large scale missile attacks that we ve seen and to do that, the argument has been that they need to have the capability to target the source of the attacks. the bases where they re coming from. not just intercept them once they ve already made it into ukrainian air space. what those two drone strikes, particularly yesterday at those airfields, previous attacks they have launched missiles from those bases. it appears ukraine is making an effort to stop those attacks at the source and not only appearing to make an effort, but seeming to have been somewhat successful doing it without western weapons, right? russia s ministry of defense is saying the drones used here were soviet drones. ukraine still wants more from the west. they want systems that have been developed in the united states that can fire things that far, but so far, that s not somet
and more comp hensley. andrea mitchell was talking about how paul whelan told administration officials from his prison camp in russia that the group has been recruiting soldiers from within russian jails. what do you make of that? well, it s true. it s crazy. i ve seen the videos of it. it s absolutely, think about how strange that is, right? this vogner group is a private military organizations and they re going into prisons. i think that is a real sign of desperation. you don t do that if you re winning the war. you do that if you re losing the war. so how do you think this continues? do you see an end in sight? i m not sure. i don t know. i know historically wars tend to end in two ways. either one side wins or there s a stalemate on the battlefield
the other two airfields from yesterday morning, those are 300 plus miles beyond the ukrainian border and what it suggests, if ukraine did carry out these strikes, which seems likely, it suggests a couple of things. one, that ukraine is seemingly willing to now take this fight more directly to russia and to their military bases and it also appears to suggest that they are becoming more effective at using weapons to attack russia at a greater distance. you think about the conversations we ve heard around military aid provided to ukraine. western allies, nato in particular, they ve been really hesitant to provide ukraine with more long range missiles, weapon systems, in part because they worry if they were to do that, it could drag nato into this conflict, but ukraine, they have repeatedly asked for more long range missiles because they want to achieve quite a few things here. one, they want to win the war and not just hold russian forces
quite interesting to the doj about what he kept and why and also, kash patel has said publicly the former president has declassified some of these former documents and that s something they re skeptical about. they ve talked to a number of employees who haven t heard him do any declassification like that. they re trying to understand what the former president s defense would be for why he did what he did and to understand that, they believe you need to talk to kash patel among others. thanks as always for your reporting. still ahead, what do president biden, arizona, and china have in common? we re going to explain. first though, explosions in russia. what happened and what it means for both putin and for ukraine. for both putin and for ukraine vicks vapostick.
the u.s. or other allies have been willing to give them. but this is significant from a military standpoint, potential shift point, if you will, where we re seeing ukrainian forces appear to be attacking russia much further into russian territory versus just intercepted them once the missiles, artillery is already in ukrainian air space. thank you very much. and joining me now is former u.s. ambassador to russia, michael mcfall. it s been a long time. thank you for joining us today. i was curious after learning about these air strikes, two things and i thought there s no one better to ask this right now. one, what is the reaction to these explosions within russia and then two what does it mean for putin s grip on power there? well, with respect to your first question, we need to break it down. the russian government and russian society, right? the russian government is claiming that these are terrorist attacks.