sidner in new york. this is cnn this morning. kaitlan collins is anchoring live in warsaw, poland. she has some new reporting. let s cabibegin with you, what you hearing? obviously, we are learning details about the details, what happened behind this visit. how the white house is planning this. it was obviously kept secret until president biden was on the ground. he was actually on the ground for some time before we had the white house confirm that he was there, but we re learning that it was months of planning that actually went into this. only a handful of aides from different agencies that were involved in this. obviously, they wanted to keep it an incredibly close hold, because it is such a sensitive visit. what we re learning from the white house is that it was last friday when president biden made the final decision that yes, he was going to be going into this active war zone, right around the anniversary of russia s invasion of ukraine. that s when he decided to go.
more long-range thrartillery. and something that hasn t been discussed much, they need logisticses. we ve given them a lot of great equipment that they can t maintain i ve heard from great reports from the theater that only half of the equipment we ve given them is fully mission capable. they don t have the maintenance training or the repair parts. so we ve got to be able to surge that forward, particularly if we want them to actually win. one of to do that, you have really been advocating for the biden administration to authorize u.s. contractors into ukraine. explain why that is so critical in your view? well, it s absolutely critical, because you ve got to have u.s. and nato expertise on the ground to be able to train them on how to use this equipment. they don t know. they re smart, resourceful, industrious people, but we ve got to train them. they have to have the repair parts. now, we ve got 800 contractors supporting the state department, running all over ukraine, which is
ukraine. there is nowhere safe in ukraine. but he got in and out. he did. yeah. let s go back to our retired brigadier general, steve anderson. can you hear me now? i hear you fine. we apologize for that. thank you so much for being here. given all of your experience, your reaction to president biden s commitment this morning to the ukrainian president to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes. what does that need to mean now in terms of tactical weaponry, does it need to mean long-range missiles? does it need to mean f-16s for ukraine to win? yes, it does. it means all of the above. this is a great show of leadership by president biden. i mean, good leaders always go to the sound of the guns. this is significant. but the united states needs to make a decision. are we in it to ensure that the ukrainians simply not lose? or are we in it so they can actually win? in order to do that, we ve got to be able to do that to surge a lot of equipment forward. they need more aircr