odesa, but this control of dniepro. you have the ability to control what s happening along the dnieper river. that s important to the next step. let me move to kyiv up close. what s really important as described is the activity that s there that s being contested but when they owned that, they now can begin to bring forces, additional forces in, and they can bring forces down into kyiv. what needs to happen, let me highlight this. you take the dnieper river through the middle of kyiv. now what needs to happen is the ukrainians need to start cutting the bridges across so that if you get russian forces on one side and russian forces on the other, they can t support each other and the advantage goes to the defender at that point. wow. i mean, it s amazing when you look at that. just the importance. when you think about where we are, all the modern technology, the power of a river.
how much danger is in kyiv in? what are you looking at? it s in tremendous danger. already has been reported. and i have to tell you, all those available sources of commercial intelligence, as well as cnn contributors on the ground and correspondents on the ground is quite phenomenal. we re getting a good sense of what all that looks like. what s important to realize is that these forces that are in the direction of kyiv, as we ve all read, matthew chance has already pointed out, have really put a marker on the ground in antonov airfield, the northwest of kyiv. that s the largest city in the country. and then you have kharkiv and odesa are one, two and three, three and four in terms of the size. so what s significant is putin has defined that correctly as the center of gravity. everything hinges on the control of kyiv and how he can influence activities in kyiv. there s more to the story. i ll get to that in a second. also what s key here is if they can get to kharkiv, they ve alread
but by dawn, it was a case of the russians are coming, but also maybe not. ukrainian forces had reclaimed the bridge but not without a cost. i asked victor if the russians would move back. about 3,000 meters. reporter: locals picked through the wreckage for ammunition. it s strange to see civilians picking up leftover armor from vehicles here. it shows you how many people are involved now on a local level in this war effort. he s doing it again. stopping everywhere to pick up whatever they can. it s unclear if the bodies here were discarded because they were russians or because there were just too many. the ukrainian military you can see here is the bit that was pushed back. the defenders still holding this bridge stayed hidden.
northeast. and, of course, that s the location where we know there are concentrations of russian military forces on the outskirts of the city. six miles away in the suburb. we have a large force of russians with tanks and armored personnel carriers and things like that and troops that are positioned to enter the city. they ve been confronted by ukrainian forces trying defend this city. further around to the north over there is that antonov air base that i visited yesterday and met face-to-face with the russian special forces that had taken control of that area. the big concern is those forces will combine, they ll be reinforced, they will circle the city and advance into it. that s what the call is from ukrainian officials, from president zelenskyy to the mayor of kyiv that this is going to be potentially a very, very
like so many parts of this story, it s reminded us of just these images from the past from wars so long ago, now so relevant again tonight. seth, you ve been looking at all ofimages, the data. how would you describe what you re seeing right now in kyiv? well, i think it s very clear at this point that the political objective right now by vladimir putin is to overthrow the ukrainian government. that s why his forces are in kyiv. and that s his objective in that sense. i think what will be very concerning is the more resistance that russian forces face by military conventional forces and if there s neighborhood resistance from the kinds of people, erin, that you described, the concern i have is watching russian forces in chechnya as well as russian operations in syrian cities like