so, i don t want to draw any conclusions from the week of invasion, in terms of what this tells us about russia or its capabilities. i think we ll have time to fully assess that. what we do know, what it does tell us, is how extraordinary the ukrainian people are, their will, their determination, their absolute commitment to defend their country, to defend their freedom, to defend their future. that is the story of the past week. and it is an incredibly powerful one. thank you. thank you very much. and listening to secretary of state antony blinken who is
this is cnn breaking news. hello, i m alisyn camerota, wlk to cnn newsroom, . i m victor blackwell. more dangerous in ukraine after a terrifying situation overnight. russian troops are just 20 miles away from ukraine s second larger nuclear facility now. that is after taking over the zaporizhzhia nuke power plant today. that is the largest in all of europe. a russian selling sent parts of the complex on fire. although ukrainian thors say radiation appears normal, the they say the management is working at gunpoint. and the u.s. ambassador to the u.n. said that she s concerned because the workers are now doing their jobs under extreme duress. by the grace of god, the world narrowly averted a nuclear
ukraine needs to defend itself, get in the hands of ukrainians who are doing that. having said that, one of the things that we talked about at length today in our various meetings at nato and the e.u., was what more we can do and how to do it effectively. i would add that i think as you any, foreign minister caleba came into our meetings by voide. we heard from him. we re working on all of that every single day. we re also a week and change into this horrific war wrought by russia. we ve had already a dramatic impact far beyond what i think anybody would have expected on russia and its economy. the ruble is trading at weakest levels ever. it is worth less than a penny.
and would it be general walters who would be sort of in charge on the other end of the phone? can you give us a sense of who what this link is. and then just second do you want the phone number too. if you could put the phone here, it would be good. and then just anything new on odesa. on the deconfliction, i don t have any information about whether it has been used. it is only been in place for a couple of days. i think since early this week. it is basically say phone line, a phone connection to the russian ministry of defense. it is being administered out of european command headquarters and as i understand it, it s basically staffed by, you know, staff level officers there at european command that have no expectation that unless he really desires, that general
it feels like but that is not what it feels like on the ground from russian troops. we heard the secretary of state say $350 million of weapons was authorized in february, $250 million of that i think was saying had been delivered. so that is anti-tank, anti-aircraft, small arms, various munitions, body armor and other related equipment. but they need airplanes. this is what the people on the ground are saying. they re having a hard time staving off russian troops from taking over some cities like kherson. yeah and the only advantage is the russians don t seem to be learning. they still have vehicles in convoys that again, as that equipment pours into ukraine, you re going to see the vehicles start to get picked off with those javelins and with those other anti-tank weapons. but this is their fight. that is the harsh reality of it. and we got to keep nato out of it from a strategic perspective because we don t want to