sciutto, live in lviv, in ukraine. you have new details on what exactly is in this aid package. that s right. two u.s. officials, senior u.s. officials with knowledge of the draft plan which is still being considered is that it will be focused on artillery. heavy weapons, in particular u.s. made 155 millimeter howitzers, and ammo, ammunition, for those howitzers, and to get the ukrainians what they need, i m told the u.s. is calling upon many nato allies to see what they can contribute to this weapons shipment in that category, again, with that focus on artillery and the reason for this is because they are expecting heavy, heavy combat there, with the dependence on heavy weapons. they want to make sure the ukrainians can stand up to whatever the russians throw at them and we re already seeing some of that happen as well. i also speak with the mayor of irpin, who tells me just harrowing stories about what
intelligence, air superiority, so for now the u.s. officials are fairly confident that because the russians have not been successfully interfering with those convoys with those shipments that they are getting into the right hands here. but, of course, a u.s. official did tell cnn last night that that could change, that they re concerned that the russians could actually ramp up their attacks on these convoys as they try to impact the ukrainians ability to fight off this new offensive in the donbas effectively. so what we re seeing now is u.s. officials are just monitoring this, they say that it is not science, tracking these weapons over the border, but they do realize that the risk here of not arming ukrainians properly is much higher than the risk of these weapons perhaps falling into the wrong happeneds. especially now as barbara mentioned we re entering this new phase of the war, tank on tank battle, scenes reminiscent from world war ii. thank you. i want to bring in our jim
and the u.s. official telling us they are concerned that russia will start attacking the supply routes across ukraine as the weapons come in through the polish border and are taken east to donbas. the worry is the russians will attack those supply routes. the first question is why haven t they done it already as far as we know, and we re told, you know, the russians don t have the best intelligence on it and these are mobile targets, truck convoys, moving railcars, not something that the russians are very good at targeting. but with this vast amount of new weaponry moving in, and now the fight for the donbas on, there is concern that the russians will move to try and hit these supply convoys to make the ukrainians less successful in being able to challenge the russians. this is going to be an armor and artillery fight out in the east to a very large extent. bianna? and the russians warned as much by sending that official letter to the u.s. last week.
when the russians make the determination they want to put boots on the ground in mariupol to a large number and declare success on this particular objective, they re going to have to engage a bunch of ukrainians who have this terrain, it is their home it is a home turf game for them, they understand it, they have the latest capabilities in happened. it will be a very, very difficult fight, but bear in mind, the cost to the ukrainians continues to creep up, based on the russian use of indiscriminate fire. can i just ask you a quick question, we re having some technical issues there, with your setup, but i just want to get you to respond to what president zelenskyy said yesterday by telling world leaders in frustration and understandably so this war would have been won on the part of ukraine had they received the weapons they needed sooner. much sooner, earlier in this war. do you think that s an accurate assessment or is he just, you know, understandably expressing a frustration of
hold of this city of mariupol? a couple of things to think about. the russians say they re going to honor this type of movement and this consideration, this humanitarian consideration. they, the russians don t even treat their own soldiers that have been killed in combat or have been wounded humanely. why should we begin to believe that they re going to do the same? in other words, the guard of the ukrainians must remain up, they must put in place those risk mitigation efforts so they can accomplish these various tasks that they re trying to accomplish. the pace to the second part of the question, the pace of operations in ukraine is not going to be sustained at this level beyond a couple of months. specifically in mariupol, the only thing that indiscriminate from the sea by are artillery fire an rockets by the russians. that can be sustained for a couple more days.