outfront next, the war coming to russia. putin and his forces on defense as the kremlin vows to exterminate ukraine. plus, republican kari lake still obviously won t accept she lost the race for arizona governor, giving a keynote speaking slot at the upcoming georgia republican convention. why? well, a top georgia election official who publicly rejected trump s claims of election fraud and bravely so is outfront and china s brutal campaign against its own people now at a boiling point as chinese officials take on mosques around the country. let s go outfront. good evening, i m erin burnett. outfront, the war inside russia. there s a bold, new front in the war and it is on putin s territory. a russian official just this hour announcing that russia s air defense system shot down several ukrainian drones over western russia. that s just this hour. right? earlier today smoke rises over belgorod. new video in from there. you can see on your screen, belgorod is the russian
might be actually exposing the weakness of the russian state at this point. right, and certainly, alma, we saw that in provincetown. prigozhin calling it out that the drones came and air defenses didn t stop most of it, right? so but if these attacks tinge as there s no reason to think they won t, there was one in the past hour that we understand about in kursk near the border, what does putin do? as i said a few months ago this was unthinkable. this would have been a red line. is there such a thing at this point? that s the million dollar question, i think. i mean, i know a lot of us would like to see him back down or, you know, have some sort of situation where he does that, but i don t think we d see him do that, per se. we have to remember that the russian character is very macho, he can never appear to be weak. and so, you know, he said that he s committed to playing the long game now. and that would actually work in our favor. it might lead to a situation where we could find
universal masking or else this thing is going to spread like wild fire. so we now know the reasons for why the cdc is saying, put masks back on. within the past hour, the cdc released new findings on a big covid outbreak among vaccinated and unvaccinated people in provincetown, massachusetts, sparked by july 4th gatherings. so cnn s polo sandoval is in provincetown for us. tell us what you re seeing in the town and how they re reacting. reporter: alisyn, that s key now because now what we know based on this new data release is that the outbreak that was certainly seen here and still to a certain degree, to a lesser degree, being felt here, was part of that evidence that was considered by the cdc when it told the rest of the country that it would be wise to put those masks back on, regardless of vaccination status and that s what we re seeing largely here, folks inside adhering to this new mask mandate that requires people wear those masks while in indoor public spaces here in provi
down. this is the center of celebration of everyone, and we ve been through much worse over the years, and provincetown is unique in that way. i know that to be true. it is a magical place. so, i really hope just good health for all of you there. and it sounds like you re leading the way in terms of showing how to keep businesses open and stay healthy. ken horgan, thank you so much. thank you. safe travels. we ll see you soon. thank you. okay, we have some breaking news surrounding former president donald trump and a phone call that he reportedly had with doj officials that shows just how far he was trying to go to upend the election results. plus the doj is now telling the treasury department to hand overthe former president s tax returns to the house committee. returns to the house committee.
in rhode island. we ve put universal mask mandates back in place across our hospital. we ve seen our governor put strong mask recommendations in place for all schools across the state. and many businesses are starting to put mask mandates back in place as well. i am concerned about the next month or so. it feels, once again, like the surge, the wave is coming. gosh, that is so hard to hear, but dr. megan ranney, we appreciate you giving it to us straight. thank you so much for all of your wisdom. thank you. okay, joining us now is ken, the owner of the pilgrim house in provincetown, who is now requiring anyone who stays at his hotel to show proof of vaccination. ken, thank you so much for your time. we ve been watching what s going on in provincetown so closely, so how did you get to your decision, that you re going to require all people coming into your hotel to show proof of vaccination? well, it s interesting,