becoming more aggressive, it is targeting it s targeting might become less precise, resulting in more innocent civilians dying. russian forces are becoming particularly aggressive in their effort to capture the ukrainian capital of kyiv. the damage there is already catastrophically bombing and shelling infrastructure in residential areas. reuters reports one u.s. official stopping short of directly accusing russian troops of specifically targeting civilians. putin and his troops are becoming accused of war crimes including killing innocent people. clearly we know that mr. putin wants to topple this government and replace it with his own. and he s already calling for the loss of life come out of innocent and any more blood that is shed is still going to be on mr. putin s hands. putin s rhetoric about russia s nuclear posture is alarming western powers. he directed kremlin nuclear forces be put on high alert. the u.s. pentagon postponed a
coming. suddenly putin s forces seem to be cutting the city off as they tried to cut it off in the south and we ve seen emasculate his attacks on urban centers, residential areas. a lot of reasons of concern tonight here in ukraine. again, but breaking news, the one we are going to be falling off the top is the attack on the nuclear plant. we know that there was shelling. that plant took a direct hit. the firemen couldn t get to it to try to put it out. in that fire there has broken out. watching that closely we are going to get all our reporters looking at that early on. it is without that we bring in our first reporter, lucas tomlinson, elsewhere in the country. he is in the west in lviv and he s going to bring you the latest. lucas, hi. good evening. good morning, ben. we learned that the fire has been extinguished at the nuclear power plant in southern ukraine. there is no damage see either of the six reactors. the fired broken out earlier at an administrative building away from
the russian products for now. bret: is going to be interesting to see how much the iran deal that we are told is just on the finish line in vienna, how much they rely on that for iran to give or fill the hole in oil. it sounds like it may be very close. shannon: feels like it raises a lot of other questions that we see the way putin is operating. he has nukes. that s something the entire world is aware of and judge every move they made by that. a lot of people feel like iran has not been completely forthcoming and transparent about their own nuclear ambitions. do we take a chance that another maligned actor gets nukes? bret: you are empowering iran with whatever this deal looks like. benjamin, you have covered it. the devil is in the details. china feels perhaps emboldened. you have former secretary of state mike pompeo in taiwan saying that the u.s. should recognize taiwan s independence as of tonight, tweeting that out.
we have no evidence of it but he s only got limited reserve cities called up. he may go to a much fuller mobilization, bring out more reserves. he may even go to a full mobilization which would be stunning. i don t have any evidence. i m speculating because the separation of the north, which is his main effort, it s not going well. putin, we know what he ll do. he ll pull out all the stops, shannon, to succeed. there s not a weapons system in his arsenal that he wouldn t use except nuclear weapons, in my judgment. if you needed to use chemical weapons to help him, he would do it. he weapons, he is use them on ukrainian armed forces. the lessons learned from that are staggering. he s all in. he s going to keep coming with whatever it takes. shannon: it certainly sounds like after the
take out putin. what do you make of that tweet? well, i think we are quite a ways from that. we understand that putin is likely more isolated. paranoia may have set in and certainly some of the decisions these making seem to be off. that s sort of a hope and i think we ve got to do is concrete, sobering issues to deal with. helping the ukrainians defend themselves. there is more we can do and i think we can use our imagination a little bit better and i d like to get into that a little bit if you re interested. shannon: you think that the u.s. could be doing more. what would you suggest? i think first of all we are completely blocked now in terms of the ukrainians going to the polish border to pick up the supplies and ammunition as well