so far and holding people in place, that they may try a large flanking maneuver to get behind them and then cut them off. it s a lot more difficult for ukraine to defend if they can t get supplies in. that s the binger danger to the ukraine troops. neil: they ve been locking down a lot of the port cities we talked about. made it very difficult for aid to come in. a good deal of the military equipment that president zelensky was looking for he s gotten including the howitzers he s been pushing for. is that enough? no. we need to understand, i think bill just talked about it. this is a 300-mile front line here that stretches across areas. there s about 40,000 ukrainians that are defending there. these 18 u.s. howitzers, if they get through because it s a challenge to get them across ukrainian in there, they have a range of about 24 kilometers, which is maybe 17 miles or so.
forces to indoctrinate them about the importance of this event. and i want to ask you about that in a moment. first, though, you know, as you point out, this would be, if putin were to move forward, the biggest military action for russia since world war ii. so, it s it s not a small thing. it s not it s not crimea in 2014. this is big. and we did learn today that russia will be holding those joint-military exercises in belarus to which you just referred. and you actually put belarus as one of russia s possible invasion routes. so, on this screen, this is how you look at it if russia were to invade, the belarusian part of that would be the dotted-green line in this map. so, what does this news mean to you that they are now doing these exercises? well, erin, i think it means that they are really seriously ratcheting up the threat of an invasion of ukraine. and i i i know having talked to military analysts in the u.s. government, they are watching a possible flanking maneuver
and if russia were to choose to invade, how quickly could that action happen? well, erin, i think the the satellite imagery and we are also watching, um, areas like crimea where russian ships are and then air bases where the russians could launch air strikes against ukraine s, um, missile defense system. but the threat is significant and the threat s significant because the proximity of russian ground forces is so close to ukrainian territory. and then, having russian forces in belarus that can conduct a flanking maneuver into kyiv that that just means that if the russians decide to move, they could move very quickly against a much weaker conventional military and that that means this is a serious threat. i mean, we have seen vladimir putin ask his own military to give his july letter on how ukraine is really a part of russia to his own military
russia-chinese border. ships from as far as the artic. this became the main effort for vladimir putin. it appeared what looked to be appeared to be the new effort here shifted in military presence. let s fast forward to where we are right now. this is a map we used yesterday. and, again, i want to emphasize what general kellogg said in the program. in the fog of war you get initial reports about where troops may or may not be. we work very hard with the fox news channel with our correspondents on the ground. sources on the ground to confirm locations of troops. locations of explosion, routes by which vladimir putin is attempting to invade. yesterday we anticipated that these are the potential invasion routes he would use. turns out as we wake up this morning he has done just that. and this dotted line out of belarus was a question mark. potentially a flanking maneuver. what we believe we know today based on reports on the ground is that indeed the client state of belarus where milita