move for russia may be headed east, towards the eastern front where russia is pushing to. it is slow progress for the russians. they re throwing everything at the donbas offensive and we re not seeing the speedy advance, that frankly would suggest this is not some lengthy war of attrition over the summer, jim. interesting analysis, nick paton walsh, as always. thank you. retired lieutenant colonel mark hurling joins me now. great to see you. i want to get your thoughts on the news coming into cnn and ukrainian military officials are confirming this, that some dyv civilians are being evacuated from the steel plant. vladimir putin originally saying he wasn t going to let a fly get
ground planting a flag there and russia has not been able to generate the forces needed to get to odesa, either from an amphibious assault or going west from mariupol. i don t think we ll see the russian forces get anywhere close to occupying or laying siege on odesa, but they will continue to bomb it for sure. all right. mark mark hertling, thank you so much. the white house correspondence dinner is back today. what president biden has to say about it. and later orlando bloom joins me to talk about his w wo as a unicef goodwill ambassador. e for thosose you love. vanguardrd. become an owner.r. you re probably thinking that these two are in some sort of lover s quarrel.
terrible situation. afghanistan s president blamed the taliban for the attack in a tweet. the taliban denying any involvelement in the suicide attack. the explosion is coming a day after president trump discussed a u.s./taliban peace plan with his national security advisers. it would include a cease-fire that could end america s longest running war but without the taliban. mark hurling with us now. lieutenant general, thank you so much more taking the time to be with us. i want to go through a couple other things in this peace plan so we re on the same track here. it includes a reduction of troops from 15,000 to 8,000 or 9s,000. commitments by the taliban to counter terrorism efforts in afghanistan. a u.s. taliban cease-fire. as we said, what is not included is the fire hold on afghan people or afghan military.
attacks. booker also goes by the name muhammad abdallah hasan. the fbi says he wanted to carry out friday s attack for isis. two undercover fbi informants helped orchestrate a sting operation, helping him buy components what he thought were explosives. booker was interviewed last year by the fbi about the facebook posts. one read i will soon be leaving you forever. so goodbye. i m going to wage jihad in hopes i die. the fbi says he told agents he wanted to carry out an inside terrorist attack like the one on ft. hood in 2009 that killed 13 people. thanks so much evan perez. and according to reports, a muslim muslim cleric says john booker was mentally ill and was acting strangely days before his arrest. this is the 21st terror related arrest on u.s. soil this year. joining me now, lieutenant general mark hurling, cnn military analyst. okay 21 arrests. that s pretty significant. that s up to john booker. now i wonder whether this