Alex Marquardt
is OUTFRONT in Kiev tonight
to begin our coverage.
And Alex,
what is the latest
on the ground there tonight?
Aaron, we are seeing the beginning stages
of this new Russian offensive and so far
it is not going well.
One senior
State Department
official on Thursday
said that it is very pathetic.
We are getting that update
on the fighting in back
moved from the White House, that city
where for the past few months,
Ukraine has been locked
in a fierce battle
with Russian forces
from the Virginia group
made up of mercenaries and convicts.
The White House is John Kirby saying that
in December.
90% of the deaths from Virginia
were convicts,
a recruitment tool,
he says that shows no sign of abating.
Plus,
just a week from the first anniversary
of the Russian invasion.
This is according to President Vladimir.
The toughest fight in Ukraine right now
in the eastern city of Bermuda
called a meat grinder by both sides.
Russian troops
from the Wagner mercenary group,
most of them convicts,
continue to be sent in
wave after wave to their deaths.
Men that he just plucked out of prisons
and threw on a battlefield
with no training, no equipping,
no organization or command,
just throw him into the fight.
90% killed were convicts.
We believe that Wagner continues
to rely heavily
on these convicts
in the back fighting,
and that doesn't show
any signs of abating.
The battle
laying bare,
the stark divisions on the Russian side.
You would get a common video button
with Bognor chief Evgeny Prigozhin
openly blasting
Russia's official military
leadership,
saying they managed soldiers
from beauty salons and country
clubs, arguing
that if there were more
of his private troops,
they would be halfway across
Ukraine by now.
The toll has been so severe
on the Russian side
that according
to Ukrainian officials,
regular troops
have been back filling Wagner
mechanized infantry
and tank units
supported by artillery and aircraft.
If Russia were to take back mud,
it would change little
but be a symbolic victory
as Ukraine struggles to keep them at bay.
President
Zelensky today urging world
leaders at the Munich Security Conference
to speed up their military aid
comparing the fight to Goliath,
taking on David and his sling.
We need to hurry up.
We need the speed,
speed of our agreements,
speed of our delivery
to strengthen
our slowing speed of decisions to limit
Russian potential
that Russian potential
is still significant,
with hundreds of thousands
of mobilized troops
believed to be in reserve.
And Russian President Vladimir Putin
able to call up more
to offset his enormous losses.
Now, according to the U.S.
State Department,
numbering over
200,000 Russian dead and wounded
We should note that
Ukraine has also suffered
tremendous losses
both in this fight and Mahmud
and all across the country
over the past year.
But Ukraine and the U.S.
are less transparent about those numbers.
Now, the United States would like to see
Ukraine shift
its focus from back mount
to a looming
counter-offensive in the south
that would be made up of some newly
trained troops and armored vehicles.
Today, we learned that 635
Ukrainian troops have just finished
a five week training course at a U.S.
base in Germany.
Second phase has now started with 710
new Ukrainian troops.
Much of the training
focus on combined arms and maneuvers
with those armored vehicles that the U.S.
believes will be critical
in taking back territory from Russia.
Alex, thank you very much,
from Kiev tonight.
And OUTFRONT now, Michael Bociurkiw,
the senior fellow
at the Atlantic Council,
He is based in the southern Ukrainian
city of Odessa.
And retired Air Force Colonel
Cedric Leighton.
Thanks so much to both of you.
Colonel Leighton,
let me just start with you.
Where
what with what Alex was saying,
that Russia is struggling
to get a new offensive
going, a battered military,
the tremendous losses, obviously,
from Wagner being a part of that.
What would a massive Russian offensive
look like with the military
that they have now?
You know,
presuming that they have
tens of thousands or more
troops that they're
about to commit to it.
Yeah, Erin, that's really interesting.
In normal times,
you would see a Russian offensive
would look
like a huge massive of soldiers
going forward
with locked
tanks, helicopters and air support.
The air support is definitely lacking.
It has been lacking so far.
You also have a situation where there are
really problems back
showing the losses
that the Russians have had
that Alex mentioned in his report.
So you're going to see
probably is this attempt
to like
you see in Barbuda
and in other places along the front
where there are going to be
these probes that are moving forward.
But those probes
are not going to be effective
unless they find certain weaknesses
in the Ukrainian lines.
But generally
speaking, it's going to be an attempt
with a lot of artillery,
with a lot of a movement forward.
But those movements
are going to be stopped
pretty much up front line at this point.
So, Michael, you know,
Colonel Leighton says,
you know,
you would have a lot of air support
and there hasn't been that thus far.
That's true.
But we do understand that you know,
today in the meeting
with Alexander Lukashenko,
Lukashenko promised Putin
that Belarus is ready to produce
fighter jets for Russia.
We know from Western intelligence
that they have been
putting a lot of fighter
jets on Belarus and bases.
And U.S.
intelligence is saying
or Western intelligence
is warning of a massive air assault.
So it's unclear how that would play in.
But all of those pieces are in place.
And you say
Russia is currently using balloons
in some way related to this.
What more do you know about that? Right.
So from Ukraine, to media
and other sources,
this is basically a cheap Russian tactic
to distract Ukrainian radar,
to confuse its air defense systems
and to lure the Ukrainians
into wasting ammunition
on these balloons.
But I think what we're seeing is
another attempt
by Russia to ratchet things up.
And I don't like
to be the bearer of bad news
but I think what we're looking at right
now, Erin, is a
another attempt by Russia
taking advantage of that gap
between when
pledges of western tanks were made
and when the tanks actually arrive
to do another major assault
from the north,
from the east and from the south.
It could be devastating to Ukraine.
But being in Ukraine as long as I have,
I know that there's resilience.
There is very strong.
The Western weaponry is coming.
But Putin,
I think, is a man
who cannot accept defeat
and I think it was Mitch McConnell
who said today
that unless he's pushed back,
we can expect
not only other dictators
to be emboldened,
but this to turn into a very,
very expensive war,
because we will continue
to fight this from many,
many more fronts.
Yeah.
And you know
what this offensive could look like.
Of course, this is the crucial question.
And Colonel Leighton,
to this point
that Michael's
making about the weaponry coming in.
You've got a bipartisan group in Congress
or he mentions that Senator McConnell
calling on the Biden administration
to send F-16 fighter
jets to Kiev as soon as possible.
Now, there's a gap of time,
as Michael points out. Right.
Tanks are promised.
Those Abrams tanks are not coming
any time soon. They're just not ready.
Biden has resisted the F-16s.
And he said, you know,
it would it would seriously escalate
the situation.
This has been from the very beginning.
Did the US wait too long on this front?
First for the F-16s for air?
Yes, it absolutely did.
Yeah.
And what should have happened
is about two months into this war,
starting from February of last year,
we should have started the training
of F-16 pilots,
or at least the transition
of Ukrainian pilots into F-16.
That would have then
given the Ukrainians time
to get familiar with the platform,
be able
to employ the platform
and also get familiar with the avionics.
Plus,
it would also have allowed them to train
maintenance troops
as well as the intelligence
forces and radar operators
in order
to effectively employ
this weapon system
in a combined arms manner.
And that would be the kind of thing
that would have been necessary.
So at this point,
you know, points out
we're going to be racing
against the clock
in several different ways.
And that's going to be very tough
on the Ukrainians.
And Michael, all in the U.S.
has spent about $100 billion
pledged in aid to Ukraine.
Zelensky
said he's going to appoint a new leader
to the anti-corruption agency there.
He's fired.
Now, there's been to sort of big purges,
one last summer
and one recently of officials
for corruption,
most recently
tied to were supplies, procurement.
So how big of an issue is this?
Absolutely huge.
Both inside and outside of Ukraine.
Outside of Ukraine,
the world is watching how Ukrainian
is conducting itself militarily,
but also spending these billions in aid.
And they have to be spent very carefully.
So these
allegations come at a very bad time.
And by the way,
they were uncovered
by Ukrainian journalists.
Secondly,
I speak to a lot of Ukrainians
both inside and outside of Ukraine.
And the one thing
the one thing they want
other than Russia
being completely pushed out of Ukraine
and defeated,
is that war on corruption to continue
to the very end. It will take some time.
But I think that the Ukrainians
who have, for example, left
Ukraine millions of them,
especially the young ones,
the ones in high tech,
for example,
want to come to back to Ukraine,
which is build back better,
where corruption is no longer
a daily fact of life.
So Zelensky credit to him
for cracking down
as he did,
but there are still
a lot of officials there
and who were
allowed to gracefully resign.
So he really has to come
down hard on this. All right.