phase where it s going to be more of large-scale operations, counterartillery fights, the kinds of things needed in large conventional conflicts. i believe, as i always have, that ukraine has the capability of doing this. and what we ve seen on the battlefield with russia is they do not, for a variety of reasons. poorly trained soldiers, poor leadership, bad logistics support, the inability to practice things they would have used in combat. all of those things lend to the tilting of the advantage of ukraine, which many of us who worked with ukrainians knew that was their potential from the very beginning. lloyd austin used interesting language following his visit here, saying the u.s. goal now is to weaken russia so as to prevent further invasion of ukraine, another invasion down the line. that s new language, hasn t used before. does that, in your view, change
these remarks because we have seen a russia that has continued to do these kinds of things. target civilian populations, target governments through cyber activity, threaten other countries within nato. so, the approach of saying, we ve got to limit their capacity, to do that in the future is something that, truthfully, has been something that has been going on for many years, which even jim sciutto talked about in his book. now we re saying, hey, we ve got to stop this interference in sovereign nations, whether it s overt like it has been in ukraine, or whether it s covert, like it has been in places like estonia, latvia, poland. yeah, i think all of that is fascinating. and you wonder if a message as well to china when it comes to taiwan. steve hall, we did notice five missile strikes in the western part of the country along rail lines in the last 24 hours at the same time in the wake of a