gin up in order to come up with an excuse to invade ukraine. so they re in lockstep to shoot down any of these things. the conventional wisdom is that a russian invasion would be preceded by one of these excuses like aggression, they would say, against russian speakers in eastern ukraine. i think it is also interesting to see where the daylight is between the united states and ukraine. they have seen similar intelligence take. for example, the 150,000 russian troops that are around ukraine that biden mentioned the last time he spoke. the ukrainians believe that to be a similar number. but while the u.s. says that an invasion could go straight to kyiv, that they could do significant damage and conduct a large scale invasion, the ukrainians reject that. they say that is not a big enough number to carry out a large scale invasion. to take and to hold kyiv.
that s nbc nightly news for this saturday thank you for the privilege of your time i m jose diaz-balart as we leave you tonight, images of the people of ukraine. our thoughts are with them good night right now at 6:00, ukrainians fighting to hold kyiv, the battle for the capital citien intensifying right now. get out from ukraine, mr. putin. plus the new thank you u.s.
that those forces going into kyiv are just going to get completely consumed. and the analogy is, you look at the nypd, they have about 45 to 50,000 police officers in a very large city. kyiv is a very large city. and the russians are not only trying to put forces in there, they re also trying to go to kharkiv, they re being spread thin. i m confident they just don t have enough forces to hold kyiv. they may be put a puppet in, and the russians are not known for targeting. these folks are going to break a bunch of things. the russians i think will overpower the ukrainians but in the long term, in the long term, this is putin loses, ukraine is going to win. it s going to be a very bloody, bloody fight. now a war of endurance.
ukrainians to hold kyiv and the government where the president is. let s bring in dr. le rebecca grant to discuss the situation on the ground. dr. grant, it s obvious to many that something is off with putin. he s always been a killer but his problem is bigger and significant bit it be safe to assume that this putin would react the same way he would have five years ago. we know putin is an authoritarian dictator drunk on power but it seems like senator rubio is alluding to something different. i agree. putin turned out to be far, far crazier then we had any idea.
really at this point you can. all the cards are on the table. and what we re seeing right now, in fact, it was interesting, what clarissa was talking about. here in moscow, there is a palpable sense that something is changing. we ve had a lot of images on russian tv all day of the people who are being evacuated. we don t know how many. loaded on to buses. very touching pictures of women, older women, children being taken from those russian speaking areas in eastern ukraine, breakaway regions, over to russia. president putin today appearing with president look shenka of belarus where all the military exercises have been taking place. and president putin essentially lake it out there saying, look, kyiv right now can solve this. what they have to do is sit down at the table with the leaders of