He went on to explain, in the first months of the war, the victory for us looked like withdrawal of russian forces to the positions they occupied before february 24th and payment for inflicted damage. now, if we are strong enough on the military front and we win the battle for donbas, which will be crucial for the following dynamics of the war, of course a victory for us in this war will be the liberation of the rest of our territories. meanwhile, in washington, the house tonight will vote on an emergency $39.8 billion package of military and humanitarian aid for ukraine. it follows president joe biden s signing of a modern day lend-lease act yesterday. what that does is expedite this process for sending aid. it s where we start this hour with nbc news correspondent cal perry live for us on the ground in kyiv. cal perry, our friend, igor nobikov, was here yesterday. there is a sense that they re in this in a way no one predicted at least publicly that they would be two months in, but
the white house, certainly, as we reported, didn t believe putin could escalate the war on victory day. there was no way to do so. officials i spoke to yesterday took note of his rather subdued appearance there in red square. i think there are a couple things at play here. as the white house tries to keep their foot on the gas to help ukraine, to make sure russia can t revive any part of their assault here. as ed mentioned, the president signed that lend-lease act yesterday. also, importantly, yesterday the president announced his support for decoupling this massive ukraine aid package from the covid relief funds. we can set aside the wisdom of delaying covid relief funds at a time when cases are surging again and the white house says there could be 100 million new cases by fall. but to the least, this is to expedite this process. house democrats even adding to the amount of money they want to send to ukraine to continue to help them with military equipment, humanitarian aid, and beg