$965 million to the victims of the sandy hook school shooting massacre. we re getting reaction about the verdict and impact of jones lies about the shooting. also tonight, russia launches mass casualty missile strikes in ukraine. as the u.s. and nato scramble to beef up ukrainian air defenses. i ll ask white house national security official john kirby about administration s response to vladimir putin s provocation and learning more about tomorrow s january 6th hearing and new evidence that will be presented. the select committee poised to argue that former president trump remains a clear and present danger to democracy in america. welcome to our viewers here in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer. you re the situation room. announcer: this is cnn breaking news. let s get right to the top story. a connecticut s jury massive judgment against alex jones for spreading lies and conspiracies about the sandy hook elementary school shooting. for more on
sandra: so much for moscow saying they re withdrawing troops. now nato is accusing russia of doing the opposite. increasing their troop count there. so what is really going on here? lucas tomlinson is live in ukraine for us with the very latest. hi, lucas. hi, sandra. that s right. earlier today i spoke to the top u.s. diplomat on the ground that says the risk of invasion by russia in this country remains very high. it s one of the reasons that she ordered documents shredded and the u.s. embassy evacuated to six hours east of here. we removed servers and things that would have evidence of the documents. you think that send the wrong signal to the world? i think what we had to do is
russia s largest joint exercises since the cold war. putin is sending hisbelarus. after contact forces have taken up positions on the ukraine border in the last 24 hours, they said the troop count will be heading close to 170,000. that s where it s heading in 2000 and one day. we are getting out front tonight in eastern ukraine. reporter: lying low over the ukrainian countryside this soviet-era military plane heads to the border with russia. we traveled here with senior ukrainian officials and military leaders to get a sense of the pood and preparations where russian troops are the closest, near the eastern dombas region. many of the ukrainian troops have been fighting russian-backed forces on this cold and desolate front.
name mohammed. able to get him out is he working to get others out. is he an interpreter. here is what he was saying about the situation on the ground. me and my family [inaudible] people behind. that s [inaudible] it i m hiding in my house. i haven t seen outside what s going on outside. i think there is countless interpreters that are still in afghanistan with the hasty withdrawal if we had had clear objectives, to our troop count, when we were withdrawn from afghanistan, i think it would have been a lot more efficient and we would have been able to ensure people like mohammed getting out country.
wasn t made public. he s meeting with glenl clark of socom. as we mentioned, 1,000 additional troops being sent to the middle east. it shows there might be unity of what s happening now because of the fact that the call came from the white house. that meeting happened yesterday in which they came out with acting secretary shanahan to increase the troop count. we remember back in late may, they asked for more troops than they got. they got 1,500 troops. they asked for more. i think this is a follow up to that considering the oil tanker attacks. so this is, what, a relatively small deployment? in the grand scheme of things, 2,500 troops is sort of the optics of all of it. got it. egypt s former president