are plans to create a people s republic in kherson, of course, this follows reports by ukrainians that are preparing an independence referendum and beginning to use the ruble from next week. what does that tell you, steve, about russia s intentions here in the south as well as the east of ukraine? well, what it tells us is that russia, kind of what s been obvious from the beginning, is that russia wants to conquer ukraine, all of it, or as much as it can actually have. now, they can hold all the referendums they want and change to the ruble and try to form a new people s republic, but the fact is, i don t think they re going to be able to hold this territory. they can do this if they want, but right now, given the abysmal performance of the russian military and the truly amazing performance of the ukrainian military, there s no reason for us to think that somehow they re going to actually be able to conquer this territory and annex it to russia. we do know this is what putin wants to
it, the less effective he s going to be. i have another follow up for you deputy cipher. according to the u.s. ambassador for the organization of security and cooperation in europe, they say that the u.s. has highly credible intelligence reports that russia will try to annex the separatist occupied regions of donetsk and luhansk sometime in mid may and that there are plans to create a similarly so called people s republic in kherson to be annexed as well. i mean well, i want to know what you think about the credibility of that report and if that is the new goal from russia? yeah, in fact, you know, prior to the invasion, they had talked about, you know, annexing those groups in donbas, those places in donbas, too. but, you know, frankly, their goal was also to take kyiv, and you know, some of it has to do with what the defense does and the ukrainians do. that may very well be their goal. do they have the capability to do that? i think they, you know, shot a