sweden also expected to announce its intention to join the alliance. the kremlin reacting this morning, by calling finland s joining nato a threat to russia. on the battlefield in ukraine, ukrainian armed forces have acknowledged russian advances in some areas of the east. their scale, however, difficult to measure. plus, ukraine is now offering exchange of russian prisoners of war for the safe evacuation of injured ukrainian soldiers from the surrounded azovstal steel plant in mariupol that has become their last holdout. for the first time, russian civilian has reportedly been killed on russian soil by cross border shelling from ukraine. of course, many ukrainian civilians, many thousands killed by russian shelling so far in this war. nic robertson is in helsinki, finland, and sara sidner in kyiv. nic, let s begin with the impending expansion of nato, particularly finland s joining and expected that sweden will follow. finland, a neighbor of russia, resisted this step for
cnn already, we also have some sort of bucha towns over there, with devastated, absolutely devastated housing, the destroyed buildings, the de destroyed infrastructure, the destroyed churches and many, many things which are unbelievable for a normal human being. but the this was failed. and now we see a line of cars to enter kharkiv back, which i would like to remind had 2 million population before the 24th of february and now it is regaining back its population. what the russians are planning to defer, and this assessment coincides with something we hear from the soldiers, whom we speak directly and also from our high commandship in the country. so linking possibly donbas with the south, mariupol, and melitopol going to odesa and
maritime strategy to get back into the black sea. during the attack on georgia in 2008 it wasn t long before the united states navy had the commandship into the port of atumi to provide relief for the georgians after that port and many of their cities had been destroyed. the most important thing about this is other people are watching us and i mean china. so if we re not able to open up those routes and restore the security and sanctity of the black sea, i m wondering if the chinese would be wondering would we do the same in the south china sea or the straits of taiwan. this is a high stakes issue here. we need to get back in and establish a position in the black sea. so many ramifications of that as you were laying out there. thank you so much for being with us. thank you, brianna.