where both sides have neither want nor lost but are in a state of some exhaustion. so we should anticipate what will probably be the worst case, which is a bloody, attritional battle in the donbs which is not really decisive, that locks down into a stalemate where the war could go on for years, even at a lower level, until something else happens. the world is facing a human catastrophe from the food crisis arising from russia s invasion of ukraine. these are the words of the president of the world bank. david malpass warned that record rises in the cost of food are pushing hundreds of millions into poverty and lower nutrition. on a year over year basis, we re looking at maybe 37% increase in food prices. that s huge. and it s particularly focused, magnified, for the poor, because they spend more of their money or what little money they may have, it goes to food. and so when the food prices go up, it means they eat less and have
is this president putin s opportunity if it is true of a face and retreat? that would be difficult, because militarily it would make sense for the russians to concentrate their troops at the donbas and three lines at the moment and all stuck and the ukrainians are successfully countering them and pushing them back which is remarkable and if i were a him, we have to concentrate our forces somewhere and we can can concentrate in the donbas. and the separatists are occupying about a third of the donbas, so it is possible that the russians will say look we ll take all of the donbs, the cities there, where the ukrainians are fighting most fiercely, we haven t heard much about it because there s no media there but it s where ukraine has the best forces and the russians might say, let s bring it down to this, and make this a proper victory, but
troops? they want to kcapture both donbs and the south of ukraine. what is our goal? protect us, our freedom, our land, and our people. cnn s david mckenzie is live in london, so david, new intelligence assessments from u.s. suggest that russia would like to show significant progress before early may, as we said. why is that? why that date? may 9th is a very significant day in russia. it s victory day. the celebration of the defeat of the nazis in the end of world war ii. and obviously, it lines up with some of the false propaganda being put out by the kremlin that this was a so-called de-naziification campaign. that assessment coming from several u.s. officials with warns of splenlgs is that the russians are trying to now focus, as we have seen, from the actions on the ground there, fighting in the eastern part of the country and possibly the south, and to show some kind of