favored? and, the winter olympic games. just four days away. we re going to show you the dark controversies that beijing wants to distract from during the games. our new series. behind china s wall. welcome to the lead. we start in the health lead. a bipartisan group of governors is calling on president biden to offer clear guidelines on how the u.s. can move beyond the pandemic now that new covid cases and hospitalizations are falling dramatically in the united states. even in places where the omicron variant hit later in the surge. in fact, 45 states in the u.s. are currently seeing cases decline or hold steady in the past week. but that s not the map that local officials used to determine when or if restrictions such as mask wearing and social distancing can be ditched. this is the map they used. the level of community transmission. it measures new cases per 100,000 residents. and nearly every u.s. county, as you see there, is still considered high. cnn s nick watt repor
so. this just into cnn. ukrainian national police have arrested a group of individuals who they accuse of planning a violent protest in kyiv. their goal, police say, was to shake up and destabilize ukraine even further. let s bring in matthew chance reporting hive from kyiv. what are you learning about this group that ukrainian police arrested? reporter: there is a lot of concern in ukraine at the moment that russia is really working overtime to sow discord and destabilize the situation here, using sub versive methods. and it is something they re on a constantly lookout for. today there have been a series of arrests. three people taken into custody. one of them known to be planning what was meant to be, according to the security forces here, a very violent set of protests that were expected to take place, planned to take place tomorrow in the country, involving thousands of people outside the presidential palace in the capital, kyiv. with the security forces, there would be
Ambassador to the u.s. said when russia tried to point the finger back to the united states. you ve heard from our russian colleagues that we re calling for this meeting to make you all feel uncomfortable. imagine how uncomfortable you would be if you had 100,000 troops sitting on your border in the way that these troops are sit go on the border with ukraine. this is not about antics. this is not about rhetoric. it is not about u.s. and russia. what this is about is the peace and security of one of our member states. reporter: now, she also said that the united states has information that russia intends to increase the number of russian troops in belarus to 30,000 by early february. that is in the next few weeks here, indicating that russia has in plans to de-escalate this situation. all right. at the united nations for us, thank you.