from the north from belarus, a nation we have not seen get involved with their troops, but might well do that. they are having to bring in supplies over greater distances, giving ukrainian forces a chance not to attack the russians at the front, but to get in behind them and attack supply roots. they feel if they can starve the russians are supplies, that will help them gain an upper hand. as we talk about the ukrainians fighting back on the offensive more, we have to still be aware they are doing so against huge and powerful army. if this turns into a war of attrition issue the huge and powerful army is still going to have the advantage in that, so while there is optimism the ukrainians have halted russians for now, you can t put too much
the lead negotiator as he cautioned because their stark message to the insurgents to john nickelson has made clear, reconcile or die. ruben said this is not the way to start a dialogue with people who s entire culture is organized around personal and collective honor, which by the way is a much bigger factor in this war than so-called extremist islam. he added it s obvious that this conflict has no purely military solution, even maintaining the current military involvement requires better political ties with afghanistan s neighbors. look at a map, ruben said, afghanistan is land locked and america needs supply roots. the three countries that could help with access are pakistan, russia and iran. and we have bad relations with all three. ruben s chief advice is to work hard at diplomacy and recognize other countries have an interest in afghanistan and engage them, a successful outcome is entirely
carrying out the majority of air strikes and the trading support there s been to iraq and curd forces. we need to intensify that. we need to step up the focus, particularly on attacking the infrastructure that supports isil, its finances and dependency on trading and selling oil and the infrastructure, the supply roots, the control and logistics. we need to step up and defeat this organization. is president obama up to the task? the united states has been leading in this task and i m going to be reviewing with defense secretary carter this afternoon where the campaign now is. the united states has called on other countries to step up as well and deploy more to the fights. we have doubled the number of strike aircraft that we are bringing to the campaign and
iraqi. you heard it in the press conference today and hear it all the time there is contention of folks arguing that obviously that doesn t exist. we are calling fegy but we need a strategy that destroys isis. the red line needs to be the existence of isis not the existence of ground troops. if we say no ground troops we are saying isis is bad and in cases they think it s worse. do you think whites heafn has a has haven to operated. the president set they don t have one but at this point do you think they do. sure they do. they have a caliphate the side of union knighted kingdom. vast members of isis do not feel threatened by air strikes. they are surprised of when one actually hits had. they have freedom of movement. this is where he they a small contention of supply roots. i do they think she a safe mason right now. a deep issue to talk about
spillover of violence inside syria falling into lebanon and the possibility of that dragging this country into the wider conflict. suzanne? and nick, what about the impact of hezbollah on the battlefield? how much help have they been to bashar al assad, not just on the battlefield i suppose but in terms of cutting off supply roots for the rebels from lebanonen into syria? reporter: differing reports as to how widespread their involvement has been in the campaign. let s quite clear they took a leading role in taking a vital borderity to the north of lebanon, the border there. they were pretty helpful earlier in the year in the move to the retaking that. it had been heavily fought over between the regime and rebels over a substantial period of time. there are reports of activity across syria all around the country in different parts of the frontline. sorry, you can see there s still motion behind me. still very much an active clean-up site. the key issue has been its impact inside le