forces. more details on how many men putin has sent to the front lines. plus, the investigation into trump s efforts to overturn the 2020 election heating up as the special counsel focuses in on trump s legal team. and a terrifying video of a visible crack in the support beam of a popular roller coaster. the man who shot this video, the video that eventually forced the park to shut the ride down is my guess. let s go outfront. good evening, i m erica hill in for erin burnett. putin is now said to have moved more than 180,000 men to the front line, including 50,000 near bakhmut and the buildup comes as ukraine claims it is slowly making progress in the east, taking back more than 14,000 miles in the past week. we re getting video of a massive fire ball seen rising over the city of sumi. russia hit a number of residential buildings and a security service building. these attacks underscore why zelenskyy is pressing for ukraine to be able to join nato. erin asked zelenskyy
that s happened on the ground that i think is irrefutable. the first is how did the wagner guys get as far as they did? i think everybody could have sat back and said wow, this prigozhin thing doesn t look like it s going to go well for the kremlin. if we can see that, and all we have access to is general reporting, you can t tell mae navy the russian intelligence searches, specifically the fsb either didn t see this or somehow didn t send it up the line? how do you explain that? so that s either a lack of focus or a lack of or an increased focus on something else to the detriment of putin s regime, that s job number one for all autocrats is to stay in power. so i think we re looking at a weakened putin. the question remains is how weakened? what will his response be? because he is going to try to show that he is, of course, not weakened. we ll see how that turns out. and there are a lot of concerns about what that could look like, understandably. general zwack, you heard that inte
about whether ukraine would be allowed to join nato. talking specifically about president biden, he said he knows it depends on him. it will be his decision. what do you make of that take? clearly there is a message in there. he talked about what a good relationship he and president biden have. but that particular wording was interesting. president zelenskyy is a master of the narrative. and i think going directly to president biden can understand that, because there is a strong american influence obviously in nato toward that decision. but we have to remember, it s an alliance of 31 nations. and it just takes one or two that doesn t. so i think president biden is acutely aware of the issues. how? i think that the intent we re reading it all around is more and more not just in our own nation, but also in our allies that there will be a day where