♪ ♪ ♪ zelenskyy's mission, impossible. ukraine's president visiting the capital to make a last-ditch effort to win military aid for his war against russia. but republican lawmakers appear to be willing to say no deal and leave for the holidays without passing a significant aide package. this as we are learning startling new details about russia's losses in ukraine. plus, strong words from president biden and an ally. biden says that israel is losing support in that it's offensive in gaza, and the prime minister netanyahu has no choice but to change his government. and exclusive cnn reporting. former president trump made to a former mar-a-lago employee. that employees know eyewitness amenities trials. those calls were apparently made for charges before the case was filed. we are following these major developing stories and many more, all coming up right here to cnn new central. ♪ ♪ ♪ thank you so much for joining us this afternoon, i'm boris sánchez alongside rahel solomon in the nation's capital, where political gridlock on the capitol hill maybe jeopardizing the fight against russia and ukraine. right now, ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy is in washington pleading for congress to approve more military aid for his country. next hour, he is scheduled to sit down one-on-one with president biden. this morning, he met with senators and house members and argued that the political bickering over ukraine aid is exactly what vladimir putin wants to see. >> and yet so far, republican seem unmoved. some gop senators walked out of their meeting. also today, we have newly declassified u.s. intelligence about russia's strategy and why the kremlin is aiming for a winter stalemate. we have cnn chief congressional correspondent manu raju. he is on the hill alongside cnn reporter katie bo luis. let's start with, you manu. as we wait this white house meeting, what are you waiting for? >> nothing is changed. in fact, the stalemate persists and there are real fears that the aid to ukraine and even the people who back aid to ukraine believe that this will drag into next year despite the urgent pleas by the president of ukraine who is poised to leave capitol hill empty-handed. he met behind closed doors with the senate republicans and senate democrats trying to make his case about why aid is needed. i'm told that he expected they would originally come through, and he indicated that the money would be significant accountability in ukraine for federal dollars. he met with the speaker of the house and the house democratic leader. but the fact of the matter is that republicans are still insisting, there needs to be a deal to deal with the southern border with mexico to tighten immigration restrictions. they said that that must come first before they agree to approving aid to ukraine. even as there is no path for a deal on immigration as the two sides remain badly divided. something that even staunch reporters of ukraine like senator mitt romney indicated must be dealt with first. immigration before those deals on ukraine. the reality is that the house is not going to take up a ukraine bill in lessening clued securing the border to a level that existed in the three prior presidents. when people elect a republican majority of the house, you have to listen to what they have to say. >> are you concerned that, if there's no money, ukraine could lose the war to russia? >> that's always been a big possibility the whole time. i've never thought that they could win to begin with, especially the way to ease into it. >> what are the implications if russia wins? are you worry about the implications if russia wins? >> everybody keeps saying they will continue to go across europe. they can't be ukraine on the eastern side. how are they going to continue to go the west of the way through? i've never believe that scenario. i think it is a good selling point to send more money. >> so you're hearing the divide within the gop side. some like tommy tuberville saying no more money at all for ukraine, and other saying at least needs to be a deal on quarters security first before agreeing on aid to ukraine, but there is no deal inside between the two parties on border security. which is why president zelenskyy, despite these urgent appeals, leaving washington without any aid. i'm clear when and if that may happen. >> manu, thank you so much for the update. we want to bring in katie bo lillis now, because katie, you have some new reporting on this declassified intelligence report provided members of congress. it's providing startling details about russia's losses on the battlefield. some >> reporter: pretty staggering numbers here. this intelligence assessment by the congress yesterday. reports, and i will give you some of these figures, reports that have some of the 360,000 troops that russia sent into ukraine initially and that made up their entire standing ground force prior to the invasion, of, those 315,000 have been lost on the battlefield. that is an 87% loss of russia's standing ground forces before the invasion. now, look, important to understand that russia has been able to defray these losses. they have been able to lean on, for example, the walk near group, and some of their other fighters. they have also launched a mother of conscription's and mobilization is to try to throw more bodies at this fight. so they have been able to defray some of these losses. still, this assessment warning, and, again i will quote from this directly, this assessment warning that the war has sharply setback 15 years of russian effort to modernize its ground forces. so huge and important figures, but, again i think very important to be reading this and the context of what moderna just been telling us, of course, which is that the real peril for ukraine here is that u.s. funding may run out, and so i think you are going to hear these staggering numbers, these russian losses, as evidence that ukrainians are capable of exacting costs against the russian military if they provide with the military support to get it done. >> putin sort of hoping that maybe they can wait this out and get through the winter and -- >> that's exactly right. i think one of the other things that you are seeing the intelligence community here in the united states watch very carefully as the way vladimir putin is thinking about the next 12 months or the next two years, and right, now the belief is that putin believes that he can essentially out weight the west, that he's going to be able to sort of take advantage of some of these moments in which there are some real divisions in the domestic politics in the night states. public opinion seems to be kind of influx about supporting ukraine, right? and so i think for putin, there is a real kind of benefit to just sit, back let's, wait let see if the night states will get tired of this. katie bo lillis, thank you. this just, and new comments on president biden on the state of the israel-hamas war, and the speech to democratic donors, the president said that israel's prime minister benjamin daniel who needs to change his hard-line government and that support for the country's military campaign is waning. >> let's go to the white house now with cnn's mj lee. mj, walk us through what the president said. >> reporter: yeah, this was a significant moment and significant comments coming from president biden where he pointedly told donors that israel is beginning to lose support as a it continues its have environment of gaza and its war against hamas. in recent weeks, we have seen of course this slow crescendo of the growing concerns coming from the biden administration about israel's conduct and how it is conducting its military operations, going as far as to say that its operations in southern gaza have needed to look different than what we saw earlier in the war in northern gaza. it has of course rays significant concerns about the widespread civilian casualties and destruction in gaza and even last night we saw president biden saying at a hanukkah reception that israel needs to be careful because public opinion and support for this war can quickly change, but now today, it seems that the president has gone one step forward and basically confirming that israel is in fact beginning to lose support. now one of a comment that the president me to donors just now there was also very significant is that he said that about prime minister benjamin netanyahu's government needed to change. he said quote, this is the most conservative government in israel's history, and he wanted to say that this government does not support a two-state solution. this is really important because it is exquisitely critical of this government, which this administration has been before in other contexts, namely its push for judicial reforms, but now the president is criticizing it in terms of and in the context of this war. it signals that the white house is increasingly thinking about what the future of gaza looks like. we know that the administration of course supports a two-state solution but again, very revealing comments right now about the future of this war and israel. >> they come as netanyahu tried to block the palestinian authority from taking control in gaza, a position that the white house has been standing for. mj lee live from 1600 pennsylvania avenue. thank you very much. let's go back to capitol hill where the house rules comedy is expected to vote any moment now on a resolution to formally began an impeachment inquiry into president biden. the house could vote on the measure as soon as tomorrow. biden is facing increasing scrutiny from house republicans over his son's foreign business dealings. joining us now is the vice chair of the house rules committee, republican congressman michael burgess of texas. congressman, welcome to the program. good to have you. >> thank, you get to be here. >> welcome. let us start with zelenskyy's trip to washington today. he spoke directly to lawmakers. can you show us a bit more about what he said and ultimately it sounds like it was not persuasive. walk us through what was said there? >> i have to tell, you at the rules committee all day, i was not in the meeting where president zelenskyy was. >> okay, fair enough. let's turn there in turn to the vote to formalize the haugen piece meant inquiry. i know that you have said previously that the american people deserve answers. what answers do you expect will come out of the inquiry that we don't already have? >> what's going on in the rules committee today is largely procedural to formalize the investigations that have already been occurring in the committee on ways and means, which is the attacks committee, and of course the committee on the judiciary, which is ultimately where impeachment proceedings reside. it's -- this is a president that was set twice when the democrats were in the majority and the past couple of years. the formal impeachment inquiry. in fact, in 2017 they came to us basically in december rather suddenly and the rules committee. so this is something that is not new. this road has been traveled now a couple of times before. but at this time, the purpose of the rules committee versus the speaker, asking the rules committee to do this is to set formerly the rules that are going to govern the investigation. >> i understand, but i want to circle back, cause i did not quite here and answer. what answers are you expecting ultimately come out of this that we don't already have? >> well i should say that i'm not prejudged what answer comes out of the entire process, but as has been reported, going back to the very first part of this year when republicans to take the majority, the significant number of suspicious activity reports that the previous congress had basically ignored. and those specific activity reports generated by financials fusions reported two department justice, department treasury as the committee began to look into those suspicious activity reports, rather complex web of different companies and different relationships involving members of the biden family, and it became almost impossible to follow. that is when chairman comer of the oversight government and reform committee asked for additional authority to begin to delve into some of these corporations that were apparently receiving money from foreign governments, and that is a lot of money. and so that is the basic -- that is the spark, if you, will that initiated the whole proceedings. >> i take your point about the spark, as you call, it but i do wonder. some legal scholars, certainly a number of your republican colleagues, have seriously questioned whether there is any evidence to pursue this inquiry and ultimately whether this should be the priority right now. does that give you any pause moving forward? >> well, look, at the last congress did not follow on these reports that were being generated, finals at institutions were encountering situations that required them to issue a report, department justice, department of treasury, they seem to be curious about it. so the only scrutiny has come now in the past 11 months since republicans took the majority, and are there a lot of other important things going on in the world? absolutely. all of them require our attention, but this requires our tension also, because people who have questions about foreign money being funneled into this various web of companies that have been set up. what is the purpose of that, and why have they gone to such extensively to hide it and obscure? it to the ascent that faith emails have been made for several of the people who were involved, it becomes very difficult to ask for an email if you didn't even know that the fake account existed. >> let me turn to another important issue that's on the minds of a lot of people right now. abortion. a fellow texan, kate cox, who had to leave that state terminator penske after really what became a back and forth with the course there. congressman, you are also a physician. how concerned are you if at all about the confusion that seems to exist around these medical exemptions? >> well, just going back to the dobbs decision itself, i thought it was correct those decisions were returned to the state. it never seemed logical to me that the supreme court would be the place where that would be generated. i know that i have had constituents who were concerned about that policy in this country, and so now it's correctly been returned to the states. the states make the decision, and you know what? if people in the state don't like the decision, they can then correct that problem at the state level. >> but let me just ask, before i let you go, you're a doctor, how would you feel about courts intervening with a decision or recommendation that you have made for your patient? >> well, look i do know this. every case is different, and every case requires a significant amount of sensitivity to the facts in the case. i don't know all of the facts in this case, and so i'm a little reluctant to make those productions. but the fact remains that you do have two individuals who each have some rights, and the case is complicated. the condition, my understanding is not uniformly lethal to the baby. there are considerations here for, how do you get to the best decision for all concerned? >> congressman michael burgess, we appreciate your time today, thank. you >> good deal, thank. you >> still to come on news central, there is new exclusive cnn reporting about donald trump's classified documents case. learning new information about who the formal president contacted just a few months after the fbi seized classified records of his estate. plus, new developments surrounding the disappearance of alexei navalny. what the kremlin is now saying about his whereabouts. and, harvard university's embattled president is expected to keep her job, but that's not sitting well with the alumni and lawmakers who sparked this whole controversy. we are back in just moments. now to some exclusive new reporting on a key witness in special counsel jack smith mar-a-lago probe. sources tell cnn that donald trump and his associates repeatedly contacted a former employee turned witness before charges were filed in the classified documents case. >> and this is the same longtime mar-a-lago employee moved several boxes for trump and was also privy to conversations between the former president and his two codefendants. we're joined now by cnn senior crime justice reporter katelyn polantz. also with us is we're not mariota, a former federal prosecutor. good to have you both. kaitlan, let me start with you on this exclusive new reporting. just break down what you learned here. >> reporter: but we have a pattern of communication. i was able to learn through sources and also some material. i was able to get my hands on. and it's about a person who was at mar-a-lago for a long time, really ingrained in that community working for donald trump, and then the fbi search happens. this person had witness quite a lot of things in my office. have moved in boxes, had over heard phone calls. many leaves his job. when you leave his job just a couple months after that fbi search, this clear there's an investigation ongoing. he gets a call from trump, something that just did not happen in his life. to his personal phone. trump is actually seen him why he left their job, device conversation asked gore. it's the words get back and trump thinks that he is a good guy, and then there is more communications with other people. people who eventually become codefendants of donald trump who are telling him things like, if you want to come back to mar-a-lago, you will get your job back. that donald trump would really like to be able to see you, why don't you come hang out with us? and also several repeated interactions about the lawyer that he might choose in this case. now but this altogether, is this just conversations among friends? quite possibly. this is a small community. they all know each other really well, but also, it's just a piece of insight that the special counsel picked up on on this investigation that shows you how this world works. people are in touch, and there is a lot of information going on being exchanged, even in the course of this investigation. >> it does strike me that this witness told the special counsel that trump allies randomly showed up at his gym and we, like hey, how you doing? trump loves you. >> very unusual for that person show up at the gym. >> quite unusual. >> let's go to ornato army ady, and renato, none of these interactions between this former employee in trump and his associates are actually reference in this indictment. are there any thing to read into that? >> not necessarily. it made me potentially that they weren't 100 percent solid on the truth that they had in that indictment. it may mean that, for example, they may have additional evidence that they are providing that they did not have at the time of indictment. but, look it's very strong evidence, and it's interesting. we spent a lot of time focusing on the january 6th case, the case down in georgia. the mar-a-lago case is the strongest case by far against trump of all of these cases that he's facing, and this is more of a pattern of activity where they looks like something like a cover-up. while you desperately need to reach this guy unless you're trying to keep your story straight or try to alter the assessment of somebody? something that the jury will find very suspicious. >> reporter: and caitlin, one thing that you did some digging and found out were questions about his legal counsel, who he was being represented by. what did you learn about that, and why that could be noteworthy here? >> reporter: this person chose not to have trump pay for his lawyer. he throws to have a different lawyer outside of that bubble, but who is