Welcome back to Chester's news wrap the war in
Ukraine is approaching its fourth week now it's almost
been a month while Russian troops continue the brutal
attacks in different parts of the country so far,
just one city,
Kherson has fallen to Vladimir Putin's forces
and Ukraine continues to resist the invasion.
Earlier today,
it rejected Russia's demand to surrender the embattled ports city of Mariupol
and while a powerful blast rocked a shopping mall in the capital,
Kiev,
the government of Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelinski
is still seated joining me now is David
to for a former Obama campaign foreign
policy adviser and former State Department official.
David welcome back Russia has failed to achieve major victories in Ukraine.
Can you explain to us what its military tactics were so far and how it
may shifted moving forward obviously as things
aren't going according to plan for Russia?
Well,
it began with a blitzkrieg type invasion where it through
a lot of forces at Ukraine all at once moved in
Most of its 190,000 troops that it had
around Ukraine on three sides and it thought that
it would be able to take the cities in Ukraine pretty quickly within a few days.
And as you mentioned,
they failed to take any major city and only really one city,
Kherson has been taken so far.
They're getting closer to being being able to
take more people but the Ukrainians have refused
to surrender their So we see a mori poll perhaps what their new strategy is,
which is to lay siege to cities and try to practice
a war of attrition and to target civilians in order to create
a scare inside the city and to decrease the morale of the Ukrainians.
But what we've seen over the nearly four weeks of the Ukrainians are united.
They're fighting very hard.
They're very spirited and they don't want to surrender and led by their president,
President Zelensky,
who has inspired them to keep fighting and has refused to surrender or to
given to any of the terms that Russia has demanded. So far.
We see that they are going to continue to fight.
And so now Russia is pursuing this new strategy and I can expect that there will be
more shelling more bombardments as Russia has failed to
be able to move troops inside the city's.
So Putin's troops have made some advances in the southern part of the country.
Can you break that down for us, David?
Well, that's one of his target areas is the southern part of Ukraine.
Of course he already holds Crimea.
He very much wants to take Odessa and I think
that will be the next big target after Maria paul.
Uh, but it's going to be very difficult for him.
This is also a competition uh, in logistics and Russia
as has been well reported as having very serious logistical problems.
It hasn't been able to get enough fuel to keep the the armored vehicles and tanks
moving in the way that Russia wants its had problems getting food to the troops.
It may even, according to some reports,
be having trouble getting enough ammunition
to the troops on the other side.
The Ukrainians who are not nearly as well armed have
been getting some very important arms from NATO countries.
The these include the javelin missiles and the
end laws which allow them to fight guerilla
style war against Russia and allows them to
move quickly and to hide in different places.
And with these handheld missiles to take out tanks
and armored vehicles and also using stinger missiles,
they're able to take out aircraft.
And so they've been very successful so far.
And that's why they've been able to hold off Russia from entering the cities.
I have about two minutes left with you, David. I want to get to a few questions.
So I'm going to go a little rapid fire here. What is Kremlin's narrative for this war?
Do you do the Russian people approve of the war that's happening?
Well, the Russian people don't have access to real truthful accurate information.
Russia is now a police state.
It has been for a while and it has become
even more tight in terms of the access to information as
Putin has done everything he can to prevent the real story
of what's happening in Ukraine getting to the Russian people.
So I you have to assume,
and we've seen some evidence of it that
Russian people are not entirely happy with this,
There are some people that are protesting.
But because it's a police state,
it's unlikely that the Russian people are going to be able to rise up and
it's unlikely that they really still fully
understand what's going on and they've been parking
brainwashed with lots of propaganda,
untruthful things about what's actually happening in Ukraine.
Russia reportedly asked military asked for military aid from china.
President Biden and President Xi Jinping spoke over video call last week.
Where does china stand on this issue? What do we know about that nation?
That's a big wild card?
So we know that Russia and China have formed this new alliance agreed
to cooperate together and they said they would stand by each other.
And I think it's fair to say that Russia
at least coordinated the timing of this attack,
so that it happened a couple of days after the olympic ceremonies in Beijing ended.
That was probably
China's request.
But so far there's no concrete evidence that China is doing anything
significant to help Russia in terms of supporting
it in evading sanctions or in terms of
providing it with financial support or most importantly
not providing it with any weapons yet.
But that is reportedly what Russia is asking for
and because Russia is in dire straits and its
military is tiring and it's facing very significant economic
consequences from sanctions and other economic retaliation very,
very much want that help from china and the
US government is trying to pressure china not to support
Russia and to stay on the sidelines.
And that's very important for the success of Ukraine
joining us from Poland David to for a former Obama
campaign foreign policy adviser and former State Department official.
We always appreciate your time. David, thank you so much.