and its allies are saying tonight that putin is escalating his military build up in clear sight despite any claims of troop draw down. they are moving, concerningingly, into fighting positions. we re seeing no meaningful pull back. it continues russia continues the military build up. we face the largest build up of troops on european soil since the darkest days of the cold war. one attack is already in progress. we know the ongoing cyber attack on key military and financial institutions here in ukraine was the largest attack in the country s history. u.s. officials say that attack has russia written all over it. who is best at this, who uses this weapon all around the world. obviously, the kremlin. the ongoing cyber attack, the new bridge on the border, coming on the same die we learn the united states and russia came dangerously close to a military
predicted, predicted the potential fall of the government in the aftermath of a troop draw down. that happened more quickly than the cable which was concerned. the second thing they asked for was evacuation flights of special immigrant visa applicants. they asked for these to begin by august 1st. we began those flights in july. look, what we have said all along is when we are assessing the situation in afghanistan, we take a number of inputs. we get diplomatic reporting. we watch the reports of our news organizations like cnn and make the best assessment we can. i think the cable reflects what we said all along, which is that nobody had this right in predicting the government and army of afghanistan would fall in days. there was no consensus as far as intelligence.
troops still stationed there? the plan was to withdraw a significant number of troops. within about 125 days after signing of an agreement. the agreement fate seem to be in a bit of jeopardy. it s unclear what will happen to that troop draw down. the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff spoke on thursday. he said that this deal was going to be conditions based. he himself said, look, it s not clear that the taliban will live up to this deal and have to watch this carefully. he said if the taliban don t play ball here that he wouldn t be surprised if these negotiations unravelled. for shadowing the complexity of dealing with this group that is waging a very violent, very active assault on the afghan government as these talks are ongoing. nick, this week marks 18 years since the nel9/11 attacks. do you see the timing of that as significant? only in a sense that i think
we re concerned about an arms race here. general clark, i want to ask you about the other major development overnight. cnn has learned the united states is going to withdraw a significant amount of personnel from afghanistan. the washington post reporting the united states will engage in a draw down beginning stages soon of coming to an agreement with the taliban on a troop draw down in afghanistan which can bring u.s. forces there down to 8,000 or 9,000. the significance there. is this is the dbeginning of th end of the u.s. presence in afghanistan? well, i think it s the beginning of a new phase of the u.s. presence. the intent is to stay and have a counterterrorism capacity in afghanistan. this is the original plan that vice president biden was pushing back in 2009 when he didn t carry the day in the counsel of state at that time. and the idea has been that you can maintain a presence there. you can still do counterterrorism activity, collect intelligence, provide a
altitude. something that could have started on the ground when they took off and they weren t aware of it. and whatever it was, it made a drastic change in what we are talking about today. a tragedy gripping the world s attention with the 150 people on board that flight all feared to have perished as the germanwings flight 9525 went down in the french alps. gentlemen, thank you for joining me. i want to remind everybody that we are keeping a close watch at the white house where the president is going to be out any moment side by side with afghanistan s new president ghani and giving remarks. many expect to talk about troop draw down and will the president make remarks regarding the tragedy we ve been covering out at the french alps. we ll be back with much more after this. more amazing than ever. (sniff) uh honey isn t that the dog s towel? (dog noise) hey, mi towel, su towel.