personnel carriers and other multiple rocket launching systems. it has not been without cost. the ukrainians have clearly lost soldiers. they have had a number of injured and we have seen them earlier in the week and we have seen a rocket launching system drive past with clearly the signs of shrapnel damage and explosive damage that was done to it, almost as quickly though reinforcements are rushed in to the important front, because this is very strongly about trying to ensure that the russians are not able to cross the river, there s a number of key bridges and clearly the russians are trying to avoid using the ukrainian bridges which they know are mined and ready to be detonated. this, this is a tank battle, it is an artillery battle and it s a bloody battle.
ready to be detonated if they fall into russian hands by using these pontoon systems. this is a tank battle. it is an artillery battle, and it s a bloody battle. sam kiley, cnn. russian military aims in ukraine are now focusing on the eastern regions that have been controlled by pro kremlin separatists since 2014. that was also the year that moscow annexed the crimean peninsula, raising fears that these separatist areas in the donbas might fall permanently under russian control. two other former soviet republics know what that s like. moldova butts up against ukraine to the west. some 1500 russian troops are based in the transition region which is run by a pro-russian administration, and to russia s south, the republic of georgia is watching ukraine with a strong sense of deja vu. simmering tensions in that former soviet republic came the a head in 2008 when russia and
cross the river and actually deploy their forces on the other bank. the fact that they can t do it means they re going to have to find a work around. they can do that and build their own pontoon bridges and bridge the gap between these two bridges. but the fact that they have to do that is going to delay their efforts to move forward in this counter offensive. you see the marker here. let s come back to the map here. if you come back and look at the map and see, we ve watched the fighting play out for some time. we can go back a month ago. we were having a conversation about the anticipation. they were going to have a giant tank battle. it s not played out that way. why? the reason why is because right now what we see is the fact that the russians have logistic problems. and the ukrainians don t have all the weapons they need from the western forces from nato, from the united states, and the fact that they don t have those means we re getting into a war of attrition. the mobility f
seeing that ukrainians are going to grimly hang this one out. those troops coming in from the far east and a bunch of them up in belarus came down are being thrown into a house of urban fighting, open area. they may have force in mass but ukrainians have been tough. so they re continuing to throw forces in. will they stop? we re hearing they might be cull men nating. health watch this area. here the battle, 82 years ago up here with the noz sees and soviets the germans pushed huge but never made it. in a mini way, there are some aspects of this historic tank battle 82 years ago. the biggest of all time
intelligence, air superiority, so for now the u.s. officials are fairly confident that because the russians have not been successfully interfering with those convoys with those shipments that they are getting into the right hands here. but, of course, a u.s. official did tell cnn last night that that could change, that they re concerned that the russians could actually ramp up their attacks on these convoys as they try to impact the ukrainians ability to fight off this new offensive in the donbas effectively. so what we re seeing now is u.s. officials are just monitoring this, they say that it is not science, tracking these weapons over the border, but they do realize that the risk here of not arming ukrainians properly is much higher than the risk of these weapons perhaps falling into the wrong happeneds. especially now as barbara mentioned we re entering this new phase of the war, tank on tank battle, scenes reminiscent from world war ii. thank you. i want to bring in our jim