The US State
Department confirmed that a US
Marine veteran was killed
on the outskirts of Back Mount Ukraine.
26 year old Cooper
Harris Andrews was likely killed
by a mortar on April 19
while helping citizens
evacuate the embattled city,
according to his mother.
She says his body still
has not been recovered
because of the fierce
ongoing fighting there.
CNN's Nick
Paton Walsh reports for us
now from southeastern Ukraine.
As the world awaits
a major new phase in the war
and in the battle in parliament,
It was hard to get much uglier.
But each dawn
still, the battle for parliament
grinds on.
Ukraine Monday said it had pushed
Russian forces back
who had abandoned positions in months
of agonizing
fighting for about a football field.
Every day Say analysts
leaving
political standing
and Russian injured,
the soldiers here said abandoned
assault Then there was a guy laying there
in the reeds, he says, yelling,
Guys, come and help me.
For three days,
only 100 yards from the Russians.
Also emerging, too.
On this,
the road of life,
the last way in and out of the city.
News of the death of Cooper
Harris Andrew's age
26 A former US Marine and firefighter
from Cleveland, Ohio,
who felt compelled
to join Ukraine's fight.
Cooper wanted to correct things
We had a lot of
conversations about fashion.
I used Cooper.
So that means
just going over there
to drive an ambulance
and that is now
you just don't believe in stuff you like.
Do something about it.
I was let's make a picture for a history
Here he is near the front line in January
as part of the Foreign Legion,
described as ideological to the core,
an anti-authoritarian.
His body has yet to be recovered.
From Back Mount
as the fighting is too intense.
His mother recalled
the last time they spoke.
I asked Cooper
because I'm like Hoover's mom.
Like,
is there anything I can try
and get to you or send in?
Cooper said. Yes,
Can you send me
hot sauce and tufts
So I have like a thousand
chopsticks in my house
because I was trying to get chopsticks
for everyone.
I figured people would stop this,
and I have all these little packets of
hot sauce
that I was going to send to Cooper.
Over the past weeks, graphic battle
footage has emerged
showing what it's like
when Russians
get into a Ukrainian trench network here.
A soldier races into cover.
Sure, that was funny.
But soon a shell hit
Oh, they are all miraculously okay.
But the attack has started
You watch
and you see a Russian approach
and throw a grenade
He misses
And they go on to shoot down
Russians advancing meters from them.
Shells continue to land.
The attack persists for over 10 minutes.
But the brutal fight for Buckland
goes on and on
So what is happening around back moot?
A matter of weeks ago,
the Russians seem to be signaling
that they were in the ascendant.
And then we had the Russian head
of the foreign mercenary
group, Evgeny
Prigozhin, over the weekend suggests
they're running out of artillery shells
and might have to pull back.
And now Ukraine says
they're on the front foot
and Russians are abandoning
their positions.
The city is becoming
a kind of signaling game for both sides,
says project strength,
and then possibly
drag each other's forces in.
It is something of a sideshow
despite the extraordinary loss of life.
One indication
from John Kirby,
the National Security
Council spokesperson,
is they might
Russia have lost 100,000 troops
since December, mostly fighting for back
movements, casualties dead and wounded.
The realize though
right now
on the larger
counter offensive
most likely not around back much
but in the south of Ukraine Jake.
All right.
Nick Paton Walsh
live for us in Ukraine, thank you.
Stay safe.
Joining us now
to take a step back on the war
in Ukraine, take a 30,000 foot view.
The Atlantic magazine's
editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg,
he and staff writer.
And Applebaum
wrote the June EDITION's cover
story entitled The Case
for the Total Liberation of Ukraine.
And you can read that online today.
Jeffrey, thanks for being here.
Appreciate it.
You write that a victory for Ukraine
can be easily defined.
It would mean sovereignty,
safety, justice,
but getting there not so easy to define.
You spoke with Zelensky at length twice
Where does his
optimism
about a victory, about a path to this?
This this proposal,
where does it come from?
His optimism comes in part
from the serial underestimation
of the entire world
about Ukraine's capabilities.
I mean, you know, we talk about Obama.
Russia bogged down in this tiny
town, relatively small town
for months and months and months.
If you recall, think back
14, 15 months ago,
we thought Ukraine was going to be
wiped out,
wiped off the map in a matter of days.
And you know, we were in Kiev.
I was in Kiev last year here and there
this year.
The change is remarkable,
even though it's under periodic
rocket attack.
You know,
there is no
existential threat
to most of the country anymore.
And what
what I mean
by all of that
is that
we have underestimated their resolve.
They're capabilities,
their desire to win.
Russia has no morale whatsoever.
Ukrainians are all morale.
Our argument, of course, is that Ukraine,
the fighters of Ukraine can do this
without foreign troops, without U.S.
troops, NATO's troops.
But what they can't do without is
the support
is the the American materiel,
the weapons systems,
the most advanced weapons systems.
This is the year to do it.
Obviously, the U.S.
has provided
a tremendous amount of material
to the Ukraine, know more than anyone.
By force. By far. By far.
But with the argument
now is
if they have just a little bit more help
and a lot more concentration of help,
they'll actually be able
to change the lines on the battlefield.
You also write about the looming
counter offensive.
You write, quote,
Ukrainians are waiting
for the counter-offensive of Ukraine.
Europeans east and west
are waiting for the counter offensive.
Central Asians are waiting for
the counteroffensive.
Well,
the Russians, Venezuelans, Iranians
and others around the world
whose dictatorships
are propped up by the Russians,
they are all waiting
for the counteroffensive to this spring,
this summer.
This autumn, Ukraine gets a chance
to alter geopolitics for a generation,
and so does the United States.
Do you think President Biden
agrees with that?
I think President Biden
feels that very much
I think he has a pretty acute
understanding of this
and travesty of the U.S. role here.
The U.S.
is the
leader to use a somewhat archaic term,
but no longer archaic the U.S.
is the leader of the free world.
Right. Ukraine.
Ukraine can keep itself from losing.
However, we define losing. Right.
That's what they proved to us
in those opening days of the war
when they didn't get steamrolled. Right.
Ukraine cannot win
without the United States behind it.
100%.
The danger here,
I mean,
obviously, there's a
there's a range of views
inside the Biden administration.
I think everyone's heart.
Certainly the president's heart
is with the people of Ukraine
and the president of Ukraine.
I think there are differing
views about
whether the Ukrainians
can actually push
Russia out of all of its territory,
all the territory that it's holding.
Right. Including Crimea.
The hardest one, obviously.
And obviously an interesting debate over
whether they can achieve that.
The main fear,
of course, is that the US is trying
and Biden has done
a very good job of doing this
caliber shading
to try
to calibrating this
so that they don't provoke Russia
into doing something insane.
And the worry,
of course, is that
the Russians
will use a nuclear weapon in some form
or fashion. Yeah.
President Biden,
when I interviewed him last fall,
he seemed to suggest that
Putin was halfway there in terms of the
the stability.
But I wanted
the interesting part of your story.
You met with Ukrainians
who are working in
these privately financed drone workshops,
and you saw how drones that were used
for wedding photography
before the war were had been transformed
into lethal weapons
that could even destroy a tank.
Is the ingenuity of the Ukrainian people
one of its most secret weapon?
This is this is
this is why they don't need troops
from the United States.
They don't need that much advice
from the United States.
They need they need material help.
The these
these drone factories are amazing.
The defense
minister of Ukraine told us something
that was fascinating.
He said when the war started,
people thought
that this was going to be a war
between a large Soviet army
and a small Soviet army.
But what they didn't understand
was that
Ukraine had changed over the last
20 or 30 years
and was now a Western army,
an innovative or flattened hierarchy.
The Russians are still fighting
like Soviets
The Ukrainians are fighting
like American Special Forces.
The drone
workshops are just a case in point.
The Russians in Bermuda and elsewhere
are just trying to go home alive. Right.
They don't care
The morale is extremely low.
Ukrainians are fighting for their cities.
They're building
I mean, they're using
they're using
literally wedding
drones are using model
airplanes as drones
and they're doing this
in hundreds of different locations
on their own initiative.
It's totally fascinating to watch.
The story is the case
for the Total Liberation of Ukraine.
Written by
Jeffrey End and Applebaum
on the Atlantic.com right now.
Thanks so much for being here.
Thank you. Amazing reporting.