Ukrainian officials claiming
some steady counter offenses
against Russia
Military leaders say
Ukraine has made progress
over the past week,
including in the hard fought
areas of pockmarked and separate year.
Moscow claims
it is repelling any advances
and is not giving up any territory.
CNN's Salma
Abdelaziz is live for us from London
this morning. Bring us up to speed here.
What do we know
is happening on the ground?
Slowly but surely, gradually,
but steadily.
I think these are the words
that we are hearing repeated again
and again by Ukrainian officials.
The Ukrainian military
saying
that it has had some partial success,
particularly along
two parts of the front line to the north.
But, of course, a city
that's been a flashpoint for many months
now where they say that
in about the last ten days,
Ukrainian forces
have been able
to gain
to push
three kilometers
into those
Russian front lines
and then further to the south, along
Zappia to the south of his operation
there.
They say that they have been able
to liberate
the Ukrainian military,
has been able to liberate
about 39
square miles, 100
square kilometers of territory.
But you have to remember,
Russia has been preparing
for this counter
offensive as well,
fortifying its positions
all along
that hundreds of miles
of battlefield that you see.
And if you
take a look
at the map,
probably perhaps
one of the most fortified areas
is that very critical area
to the south of Sopore
You can understand
why that's so important for Moscow
to hold on to
what is part of that land bridge
that connects Crimea
to the rest of that battlefield,
that land bridge means supply
routes, means access to the Black Sea
in the Sea of Azov.
It is absolutely critical
for the Kremlin to continue
to hold on to the territory.
But for Ukraine,
the goal here
is to pierce
through those defensive positions,
cut that land bridge off,
but don't expect this to happen
any time soon.
Again, Russia has been preparing Ukraine.
It's going to take this slowly,
try to find weaknesses
and capitalize on them.
All right, Salima,
thank you so much for that.
Nice to see you.
Ukraine will receive hundreds
more missiles for its air defenses.
NATO's allies
he met in Brussels on Thursday decided
on sending the extra military hardware.
The US defense secretary says
helping Ukraine remains
a long term commitment.
Crane's fight
is a marathon, not a sprint.
So we will continue to provide
Ukraine with the urgent capabilities
that it needs to meet this moment
as well as what it needs
to keep itself secure for the long term
from Russian aggression.
And make no mistake, we will stand
with Ukraine for the long haul.
David Sanger is a CNN political
and national security analyst
as well as White House
and national security correspondent
for The New York Times.
Good to see you.
Great to be with you, John.
Okay, so depending on the day,
the week,
this Ukrainian counter-offensive
is either going gangbusters
or it's slow and steady
or has suffered some early setbacks
with the Russians
proudly display captured
and destroyed U.S. hardware.
And on that is the US secretary
of defense.
I think the
Russians have shown us
that same five vehicles
about a thousand times
from ten different angles.
But quite frankly,
the Ukrainians have still have
a lot of combat capability, combat power
and that power keeps keeps flowing in.
But these initial reports
there really is good
all as bad as they initially sound.
And would you say the sort of
early confusion is fairly typical
Well, it's little bit hard to tell
because nothing in this war
has been typical, right?
I mean,
we started this war
thinking with Europeans
thinking it wasn't going to happen.
Then taking the Russians
would win in five days.
Then, you know,
the war is shifting right back
down to the south and east.
So I'm not quite sure
what to compare it to, John,
but I would say this,
that counteroffensive
is across a pretty broad area.
And we knew that the opening days
and weeks of it
would involve
the Ukrainians testing
to see where the Russians are weakest.
And I think we're seeing some of that.
They're going to lose some equipment, as
they did
The big risk, I think,
for the Ukrainians is really a political
one here.
In addition to the risks of the lives,
of course,
not to be diminished
at all of those who are
who are fighting in all this.
But the political risk is that
having given them all of this equipment,
all this training,
if that doesn't look like it's
punching through.
It may be difficult in the United States,
in Europe
to sustain these levels of support.
Well, the Ukrainians say a lack of air
cover and air
defense is slowing their advance
on the ground.
And Thursday, NATO's moved
one step closer,
it seems, to getting to the point
of maybe supplying
Ukraine with fighter jets.
Listen to this.
Today,
we got the commitment of our partners
to the training
forces will start
and we will build up together
construction of this
consortium of fighter jets.
It's all started with the F-16
with the Netherlands
and Denmark, as the leaders
and other countries will join.
One issue with
the F-16s and Ukraine is
there's a lot of airfields in Ukraine.
It seems we should actually
handle the F-16s. But.
Right.
Besides that,
I want to give you a few ifs here.
So bear with me.
If the Ukrainian counter-offensive
can escape very safe,
the ratings continue
to defy expectations
and learn how to handle this equipment
much faster than,
first of all, as they've done
so far with pretty much everything.
If NATO's allies could deliver F-16s
and if the counter-offensive,
as many predict, drags on
for a few more months and months,
could we see
Ukrainian pilots in F-16s
providing air cover
for this counteroffensive?
Well, I imagine you could.
You know,
in the United States,
an F-16
pilot is,
you know, a year or two training.
But it's not just the pilots.
You have to go
train it to train all the people
who are going to be servicing
these planes, getting them back in shape,
repairing them, getting the spare parts.
And so there's a whole stack of issues
that come along with flying an F-16
as one person Defense Department
put it to me a few weeks ago.
It's a little bit
like you've had a Ford truck
sitting in your driveway
and all of a sudden
you're supposed to go maintain
a fleet of Ferrari
So that's going to be,
I think, the gating issue.
Now, if it's something
completely different
and it's been totally different.
A delegation of leaders
from African nations
are from Senegal,
Uganda, Egypt, Republic of Congo, Zambia
and South Africa
expected in Kiev later Friday
and then Saint Petersburg on Saturday.
They're presenting this peace initiative.
So apart from good intentions,
do they have any leverage here
to try and get concessions
from either side to try and get them to
sit down and begin talking?
They don't have leverage.
The fundamental problem
here is not simply that you need
peace agreements,
but that President Zelensky has to make
a fundamental decision about whether
he is going to declare outright,
as he has so far,
that no peace agreement
can be reached
as long as Russians are on his territory.
Now, Russia's
war on his territory
before the invasion as well
But the question is,
does he include Crimea?
You know, in that definition,
as well
as the areas that have been attacked
since February of last year?
So it's not just, oh, let's propose
a peace agreement.
It's what do those terms look like?
And frankly,
while the counteroffensive is underway,
I don't see a motivation
for either side, John,
to want to necessarily
come to the bargaining table.
Good point to end on.
David, as always, great
to have you with us.
Really appreciate it.
Great to be with you, John.