after their exercises have ended, also the signals from the kremlin earlier today as well that the focus for vladimir putin and i m paraphrasing him here was going to be on negotiations, even though troop withdrawals have not been verified, and the tension in ukraine tonight, the concern that there may be a sort of imminent attack. the threat is still there, but i think some of those tensions have been eased, erin. math thew chance, and i wanto go out front to retired general james spidermarks, head of geopolitical strategy. and evelyn farkas, former deputy assistant for russia, ukraine, and yeurasia in the obama administration. evelyn, let me start with you tonight. what do you make of the timing of the cyber attacks that we saw here tonight? you know, as they say, some exercises over, we re pulling troops out, even though that
at least 10 russian su-34 strike bombers. general, what do you make of this, satellite images coming out on a day where we re going to pull troops out where they have done their military exercises. it s like the magician, wash both hands, it s the hand you don t see that s got stuff going on. what s happening in cry imea, a an intel guy i would go to the boss and said, i don t want to try and confirm this and only look at this course of action we need to worry about but i want to worry about this for a second. we need to do something about it. he s got strike bombers, the sus in crimea. they weren t there before. he s got hero helo, transport and attack, and the naval task force in the vicinity of crimea in the black sea. what that tells me is this reinforces the notion of increasing the presence in the dombas, and expanding it into the direction of the river.
troops encircling ukraine and belarus, and along ukraine s border. an invasion remains distinctly possible. that s why i ve asked several times that all americans in ukraine leave now before it s too late to leave safely. meantime, putin publicly today talking about the hope for a diplomatic solution after he was specifically asked whether he would rule out a major war in europe. translator: do we want it or not? of course not. translator: our intention is and we strive to negotiate with our partners. of course there s a problem talking about negotiating as you keep adding troops, as president biden also noted, russia has more than 150,000 encircling ukraine. and new satellite images in tonight show just 45 miles from the ukrainian coast, 60 more helicopters, transport, an
attack aircraft landed at an air base, and they have done so over the past few days, they see that satellite activity. that base had been vacant until now until at least 2003. i ll show you the same base in november of last year. you can see the shift, and 70 miles from the ukraine coast, another satellite image here shows at least ten russian su-34 strike bombers now in place. new video released today by the russian ministry of defense showing multiple rocket launchers conducting artillery drills in crimea. putin is saying one thing, saying he wants diplomacy, pulling back troops now that they have done their military exercises, but he was purposely showing us images of something extremely different, and people here are telling me they are preparing for the worst, making sure they and their families are protected. i spoke today with an experienced shooter, practicing at a gun range. he and the group of men you see here, they are prepared, they say, to serve as a militia, as
though they saw nothing particularly new in what president biden had to say, the tone went down very well, very positively. one official telling me that it was regarded as firm and resolute. another one telling cnn, official telling cnn that there was no reason as far as they were concerned for a war and they hope that message of a peaceful settlement to this crisis was heard correctly inside moscow tonight, and so, you know, again, a lot of positivity when it comes to this strong message from president biden to moscow about what it should do and what it shouldn t do. of course it came shortly after, these very encouraging signs, apparently that we ve had from the russians, the deescalation is possible in terms of the military side, word that there could be troops that are leaving the border region from ukraine and returning to their barracks