it is also not necessarily, sarah, a reflection of what the rest of the country looks like, right? if you travel towards the east, of course, where there is very heavy fighting but also to the south. it is recently liberated a few months ago but still continues to be shelled day in and day out. in many of these recently liberated areas, life is far rosie, right? you have minimal electricity, minimal running water. you have regular bombardment often. you have challenges of trying to rebuild in a situation that is very insecure. and interesting listening to the mayor of kyiv, he said one thing that stuck with me, listen, ukrainian soldiers showed how tough they are. we have the will and spirit. but that s not enough. and we heard president zelenskyy earlier after meeting with president biden saying this conversation brought us one step closer to victory.
people are back to their normal lives. they re out in the streets. they re out in the bars and restaurants. they re going back to work. a wildly different scene from this time last year when people were hunkered down in their homes underground. many had fled the country. there are, of course, countless reminders of the fact that this is still very much a war zone that president biden visited to day. you have the bombed out, burned out vehicles here behind me. over here a statue that has been sandbagged for protection. and we keep talking about the fact that president biden visited a war zone where there are no u.s. troops. one more thing we should note is no one is flying into ukraine. when foreign dignitaries come here, they essentially take the train. they don t fly in. it s not like air force one just landed in kyiv and tack back off again. this is a long, arduous trip to get here to kyiv. it means a lot of time on the ground. it means a lot of time when the american president is ex
battlefield. they thought that all of this was going to end very quickly. we ve been talking so much about how people, you know, we re not sure at this time last year whether kyiv would still be standing a couple days later. the russians certainly thought that they would be doing a lot better than they actually have. so putin really gearing up the population here for what could be a very long and protracted war. it certainly something where we do believe that the visit by president biden today, we re already seeing it on russian media as well. that definitely is going to play into that as he tries to rally the russian nation, kaitlan. yeah. notable that they re already talking about this on russian state media. fred, thank you so much. just a remarkable moment here as we re seeing not just how world leaders are weighing in and supporting president biden and also the calculus this changes for the kremlin as well. yeah. this is a big deal for lack of a better smarter sentence. thank
visit. thank you very much. we have the mayor of kyiv joining us now. mayor, thank you very much for your time. the president has come and unannounced surprise. history making visit by an active president to an active war zone. president zelenskyy, i remember, told our jake tapper in april in their interview how important he thought it was for president biden to come to ukraine. what does it mean for your city and country? it s very important for ukraine. it is symbolic. it is a very important signal for our partners and coalition and also very important signal for russians. but it is not a safety guarantee. i want to remind there are more than 750 buildings destroyed in our hometown.