making sure that the government was able to remain in place and repel those russian forces. this is a different phase. and we have to continue to not only provide military equipment to the ukrainian government. we have to now cripple the russian economy. so you have the european union now really talking aggressively about a ban on russian oil. we are going to have to try to cripple russia to prevent them from providing additional equipment to their forces in donbas. but this is going to be a very long and difficult phase. everyone should get ready for images that will look like they re coming right out of the pages of the second world war. as we prepare for images like that, and prepare for an armored tank battle, armored vehicle battle on what is essentially the farmland in eastern ukraine, you just mentioned the economy. we have seen some evidence from russian officials that the sanctions are having some effect. but as you note, if you want to really hit putin s economy, if you rea
and we sent tank missiles and javelins and those will run out in five days, and i think it s important to send far more weaponry. mariupol, as you say, will fall, but a massive battle on eastern ukraine on terrain that resembles kansas, very flat and massive amounts of russian tanks will be pushing forward in eastern ukraine around donbas if ukraine can prevent russia from gaining ground in eastern ukraine, that would be a major blow to putin. he is losing and he failed to take kyiv and he s putting everything he has in the tank battle coming in the weeks ahead, so president biden should be sending weapons, artillery, and any tank missiles and anything that will stop the tanks from rolling across eastern ukraine.
to move and be repaired. the significance of that? i think that means for some period of time down in that region there is going to be the absence of another command ship. there is a brief window of vulnerability for the russian control of those naval operations about odesa. all right, we talked a lot about donbas and admiral kirby talked about donbas as well. i want it show you the terrain there. flat. wide open areas. these helicopters they were discussing, the u.s. is sending to help ukraine, why? well, couple of reasons. those are mi-17 transport helicopters. they can put a large number of troops in, so if they have to reposition troops quickly from point a to point b, they can use those. second, many of them are equipped with rocket launchers, so they can put hellfire missiles on, which is what every tanker fears. every tank fears that. exactly. you see this as a major tank battle. if they have if they can get into that area, with armored
which is ironic. right. you tell me that you think the next couple of weeks are critical here for what happens next. why? sadly. i do think that. we are going to be seeing a tremendous assault. an offensive on the donbas, which is going to be a tank battle of a kind that we have not seen in europe since world war ii. we have not seen full on tank universe, the mps, mps, tanks counter a tory fire of the kind that we are about to see for several generations in europe. it is going to be really bad. i hope the ukrainians stayed holds up. do you think they have what they need? i don t. i think actually they are desperate. and they re desperately pleading for more. they have enough. and they had enough in order to win a defensive a salt. but, i just saw the defense minister and foreign minister of ukraine two weeks ago, i, mean quietly not so quietly
tanks and small unit actions. ukrainians know they can do them highly effectively especially with the drone. that s what you will see in many of these areas. and i think what will happen is especially as you get to places like donetsk and some of these other towns we just talked about, you may see urban combat, efforts to stop the convoys as they move forward. especially the convoy being here east of kharkiv. can the ukrainians stand up to the russian in a tank battle? . well, they have an opportunity. they are supposed to be getting more t-72 tanks. the question is how lickly will they arrive? if they arrive in time, yes. if they don t, at first there may be a major tank battle. if they have problems, if