i m ana cabrera reporting from new york, and this morning our first glimpse into donald trump s new game plan after he pleaded not guilty to federal charges. i hadn t had a chance to go through all the boxes. it s a long, tedious job. i did everything right, and they indicted me. he projected confidence in front of a supportive new jersey audience. we have new nbc news reporting that trump knows he s in for a long legal showdown, potentially even more charges making this challenge unlike anything trump s faced in the past. and as trump prepares his legal defense, the republican party is preparing its own defense in the court of public opinion. nbc s steve kornacki will be here at the big board to break down the reaction from voters. and later, inflation heading down, yes. so will the federal reserve raise interest rates again, or is it time for a break? we re expecting a decision from the fed in just a few hours, what it all means for your wallet. we re going to begin
And what we have not yet seen the ukrainians do is mount an all-out assault on those russian fortified positions, and that is going to be the really big test. can the ukrainians put to use all that western weaponry, all that western armor that they have received in recent months, can they punch through russian lines, and can they take and hold territory? now what we think the ukrainians are doing at this stage is they are probing for weaknesses. they are looking for places to strike, and that is where they will commit the bulk of their forces. but the ukrainians at this point are saying it s very early days in this counteroffensive. i want to ask you about this other headline we re getting and information around putin and apparently he held what is being described as an unusual round table with 18 journalists to discuss his ongoing efforts in ukraine. what more are you learning about this? what do you make of it? reporter: yeah, this was unusual. so putin gathered a bunch of
Ground. and taking them away from their earlier training, top down training and allowing them not only to become familiar with western weaponry, but also with becoming more flexible in terms of decision-making on the ground, more nimble in having that authority. talk about the roles that all of that training has played to help the ukrainians become as successful as they re showing they are right now. well, the training has been really important. the focus of training, of course, is really to train leaders. now, the military and the west have noncommissioned officers. and i think that s a differencemaker as we have seen in the war against russia. because they don t. we have decisionmakers at the tip of the spear that can make decisions on the ground. and so training helps to facility fate that knowledge and that capability. and we need to continue to push these trainers, these special forces trainers and the like, teach them how to use the
Stay focused on it. and your stories every night are helping us. molly, you know i m going back, but you are going to be here for a while. we are going to make sure that those stories that you bring us every night make it on to our tv sets and our viewers can see them. molly, thanks again, we ll talk to you later. nbc s molly hunter, in kyiv, she is on the capital of ukraine. joining me now is the retired military colonel alexander vindman. he s charge of european affairs for the security council, and author of the important book here, right matters, an american story. colonel vindman, i want to talk about something that you have said to us many times over the past weeks. i m not 100 percent sure our viewers know what it means. but, with respect to the weaponry that ukraine has been asking for from the west, you discuss something called a lend lease program. something that united states congress has now overwhelmingly approved, what is it and how will it help? it will be a huge impro
Be finally getting off the sidelines for a reluctant administration, a reluctant national security council. what it would mean is that we actually start taking a longer view of the fact that this will be a protracted war and start looking to train ukraine on more advanced weaponry, western weaponry. not just weaponry. in a lot of, ways it means that we re pushing equipment further to the border in poland, the border in hungary, if they allow. it to the border and slovakia in romania. ukrainians couldn t start to dry out equipment as they need. it they don t make a request and that it has to sit in some sort of bureaucratic process, it doesn t have to be then transported, which takes some time. it s already there for them to draw on. that is the part that we need to start working, on the implementation. that is right now ukrainians are doing a great job receiving equipment from all these donor countries that are coming in individually. we need a coordinator coming in