who destroyed it back in the spring. they did it to stop russian forces from moving into this area, but now, it is a huge challenge for people living on the other side. and you really see the great and the resilience of the ukrainian people living here. they are walking across the ice, carrying cans to fill with diesel to power their generators going back and forth to try and get food and supplies, so they can continue to live in their homes. this is what victory looks like in much of ukraine. it is grim, and it is fragile. the front lines around this region are still active. that is why we find yvonne, a
assured by a total expulsion of russian forces from every bit of ukraine. any territorial compromises would make us a weaker state, he told the bbc. is that realistic? what about the wider debate about how this war might be brought to a close? we re going to talk to some more ukrainian people who are with us this evening. maria romanenko, hello. thank you very much for being with us. i wonder what victory looks like to you, maria. i very much agree that the only way to peace is forfull withdrawal of forces from ukraine and return to the borders that we had pre 2014. so that s including crimea and the donbas. putin showed quite clearly that he is not interested in peace. so the only way to make that happen is to give ukraine more weapons and impose more sanctions both on russia and on countries that support russia.
achieve that goal. here is what he repeated repeatedly what victory looks like to him. it s evicting the russians from the entire territory of ukraine. lisa: is that feasible? it s absolutely not. because the russians entrenched, especially in crimea. it s an existential it s not feasible. somebody needs to realize that the strategy of just throwing weaponry is not going to work. weaponry and technology do not win wars. strategy does. and, unfortunately, despite 10 years worth of every single piece of intelligence that we had back in the intelligence community, we had scores of war gaming. predicting and going through this conflict and how it s going to unralph, right? how it s going to unravel is going to ratchet up if tensions
victory looks like it s going to be defined by president zelenskyy and the ukrainian people, appropriately so. but you can see from the meeting today, it s not just the west, john. it s not just nato. there are countries from all around the world including the indo pacific region who are dedicated to helping ukraine win this war. is ukraine winning? they have certainly defeated mr. putin s strategic objectives thus far. he did not take kyiv or chernihiv or any other city in the north. they ve had some limited progress in the south. and there is an active fight going on in the east in the donbas region. but it s hard to look at this fight which is clearly not over, john. and we need to be mindful of that. it s hard to look at this place and conclude that russia has won and putin has achieved his efforts he has not. ukrainians have beaten him back at almost every turn what we re trying to do in germany, making
former deputy defense secretary for nato where he helped europe deter russia after the cold war. with us onset, clint watts, former consultant to the fbi counterterrorism division, now a distinguished research fellow at the foreign policy research institute and an msnbc national security analyst. sometimes seen around our big board but i m glad to have you at the table. jim townsend, let me start with you and your assessment of that analysis from the washington post s reporting, that we may have the wrong sort of metrics around what victory looks like in this horrific and tragic war, that the ukrainians in the assessment of many may be winning by not losing. that s exactly right. what mike coffman said in your reporting there is exactly right. ukraine has got to hold on, and there s essentially, really, a rate between both sides in terms of logistics in a lot of ways. we ve seen, with russia, the impact of their logistical