this. there are civilians there. thousands of people. no infrastructure. more civilian homes destroyed overnight. no heat, no water, no humanitarian aid getting into severodonetsk. there s no way out. severodonetsk really the last major city that s being fought over in the luhansk before russian forces are able to close in and possibly close that pocket in the donbas when you look at that map that s seeing the fiercest fighting right now. back to you. molly, thanks so much for that. that sets the stage to bring in leon pennetta, former cia director, former secretary of defense. thank you. it s good to see you. a few weeks ago, it seemed like ukraine could pull off this incredible upset victory over russia. that narrative not realistic at the time, but because of the stronger than expected military gains, that s shifted now, russia is making gains in the east. ukraine seems to be fighting for its survival. is this a tipping point 100 days since the invasion?
leon i think is muted. we will just fix that. i apologize. you are better when we can hear you. thank you so much. i assume you heard the question. yes, i did. we are at 100 days of war in the ukraine. we have been through three phases. the first was the failed invasion. russia thought it could capture the capital within a few days. that obviously failed. we went into a phase of destruction and killing that i think russia was aiming at trying to break the will of the ukrainian people. that didn t work. now we are in this third phase which is essentially a prolonged war of attrition in which russia is trying to make gains in the donbas area.
moderate arab states together is important to that effort as well. i think the president is making a decision based on the needs of the united states at the moment. i hope that he doesn t forget the human rights aspect. and that if he does meet with the prince that he will make clear that human rights are still important to the united states and to the world. leon pennetta, thank you very much. thanks today for this as always. queen elizabeth taking a step back from celebrations marking 70 years on the british thrown. buckingham palace announcing the queen was not going to attend, now announcing the queen will not attend the sports race tomorrow following her decision not to attend today s ceremonies at st. paul s cathedral. the queen experienced some discomfort at thursday s
get to putin himself. there were probably people around him that think the old man is out of it on this one and maybe he s losing it, and if that s true, that s what a good intelligence service needs to be doing here. hopefully we know who those people are and if they are a soft spot. we knew we had somebody incredibly close in the kremlin until we had to extract them in 2017, and that s what is unclear. the way leon pennetta seemed to think about it was if it exists we have to do our best to exploit it. if he s not rational, sanctions don t work. sanctions only work against rational people that want to balance my starting people over
logistics because we telegraphed everything he s about to do. we are able to see with our own eyes the buildup of troops along the three borders and in the black sea surrounding ukraine, nearing 200,000 troops at the peak. chuck, i wonder you were talking to keir about this, and we have been wondering openly about vladimir putin s stability right now. he has been increasingly isolated especially over the pandemic. his rhetoric has seemed different to those that watch him closely, and one ambassador said he was unhinged. do those around him have the ability to speak honestly about what might be happening? that s a great question. look, i was trying to get at this conversation with leon pennetta, and obviously being head of the ceo, and he indicated putin has a lot of soft spots and it was time to