world. i m kim brunhuber. this is the final weekend before the critical midterm elections in the u.s. we ll tell you what big names are focused and who seems to be resonating with voters. tornadoes are wreaking havoc in southeastern u.s. at least nine touched down in texas. we ll have more in a few minutes. and a crowd sourcing campaign like you ve never seen before, how people in the world are helping ukraine in its war with russia. the january 6 investigation, the u.s. president s domestic agenda, abortion rights, voting rights are all on the line as americans prepare to vote tuesday in the midterm elections. candidates across the board are pulling all the stops in the final week of campaigning. president joe biden will be in illinois with a message on lowering prescription prices and shoring up medicare. and then he ll head to pennsylvania. the president sounded optimistic. here he is. i know you always ask me how are we doing. we re going to win this time around
This brings me to the topic of todays proceedings. I would like to recap my recollection of the timeline in which these events played out. I testified about all of this at length in my deposition. In july, i became aware of a hold being placed on obligation of the State Departments military financing or fmf and dods usai fund. In meetings i heard the president directed the Office Of Management And Budget to hold the funds because of his concern for corruption in ukraine. Let me say at the outset i have never discussed this or any other matter with the president and never heard directly from him about this matter. At a senior level meeting i attended july 26th chaired by National Council Security Leadership as in all other interagency meetings on this topic of which i was wear, the
national Security Community expressed unanimous support for resuming funding in the u. S. National security interests. At the July 26th Meeting there was also a discussion how ukrainian anticorruption efforts
miscalculated in thinking ukrainians would not fight back. maybe bigger, four, five times more than the day before. the attacks made people give money. yes. with your help, we can put drones in the sky at the same time. it would look like this. reporter: crowd funding that began with the war is really taken off, drone donations particularly popular recently. some military units promoting the impact of donations. in this case, a drone that drops a bomb on russian troops. here is the main place where we collect all the technique equipments, walkie-talkies, drones, and all the other stuff. reporter: their warehouse, an alladin s cave. huge. it s like screens from the commons post. reporter: donations buying much more than just drones, the
i m going to pull up that map to show you the battleground as i talk through the updates. you see the geneva river cutting right through it, all of that area russian-occupied. ukrainian officials say russian officials on the ground are forcing them back. they re destroying any water crossing equipment, they re burning any boats that they find, that they re basically shooting at anything along that river to gain full control of it. we also saw social media video that shows an airfield on fire north of the city of kherson. as well, ukraine for its part says that these are forced evictions and russian forces are taking the homes of people along that area and using them as bases as they prepare for that fight. president zelenskyy for his part has promised to win back the lands for ukrainians no matter the cost. very interestingly, kim,
back down and he believes that part of ukraine belongs to russia. kim. all right. salma abdelaziz, i think you so much. during world war ii, war bonds and victory gardens helped defeat tyranny. ukrainians are trying to crowd fund their way to triumph. reporter: amidst tumbling leaves, she takes her kids out to play. hard to imagine three weeks ago a russian cruise missile slammed into this park. cnn s fred pleitgen was there reporting on a massive new barrage of attacks. a colleague was injured. it motivated her to do what she s doing more and more, donate to crowd funding.