that, primarily from the black sea. you would also see forces that have been able to maneuver from the donbas region in the vicinity of odesa that can provide some long-range fires, surface-to-surface missiles that we ve seen used a bunch and additional artillery fire. all of that is the initial stage of what we would see would be a siege against odesa. when you try to evaluate what the strategy is here, by taking out, you know, civilians in what would seem to be safe spaces or these soft target areas, what is the message that russia is trying to send? i mean, besides intimidation to its civilians, but it s not seemingly targeting what military presence ukraine has, so what is the overarching goal here, just annihilation, or is
ukrainians will maneuver into those locations. and i guarantee you, we ll see a repeat of what we saw in kyiv. the russian forces are going to levy a bunch of power. and we re going to see the ukrainians in a home game. they understand it better than others do. to that point of the, i guess, russian vulnerability at this point, we heard from an official who said about a quarter of russian forces are now effectively inoperable. and we ve seen reports that russia was starting to recruit upwards of 60,000 troops. so what is this effectively inoperableability mean? is their arsenal destroyed? personnel killed? or is it some other way they re suspended? yeah, what you see is the
a very volatile and continuing dangerous situation there in the northeastern part of the country. regional military officials saying that there has been about 50 different strikes from artillery, mortars and tanks. this is significant because ukrainian officials and military officials are saying that they believe that this is an area where the russian forces are regathering and are going to make a major offensive push into the donbas region of eastern ukraine and that is why that battle there in kharkiv will be so significant, to be able to slow that move down by the ukrainians and that s why they re paying so much close attention to that particular those particular battles and the fighting in that area. and what about these new humanitarian corridors that are going to be opening up? i mean, we ve seen already that these aren t always safe spaces for people. so how are they approaching the
there something else? what you re describing is clearly a battle of annihilation. the strategy is to subjugate ukraine. the tactics that they re using are these indiscriminate dumb weapon systems that are not guided and they re going against civilian targets primarily because as we ve seen when the ukrainians engage with russia forces, the russia forces get slaughtered. they re poorly led. they don t know what they re doing. they ve been exposed for being inept, but they have modern equipment and a lot of folks. they back off from those kinds of engagements and they take on these long-range fires. they re going to the donbas, they re shifting forces to the donbas region where a lot of ukrainian forces do not exist right now. yet they will maneuver,
and will always source of threats for ukraine and democratic conscious. u.s. officials tell me they see increased fuel supplies to the front line russia forces. more concerns on the ground here in ukraine. dana: lucas, thank you. bill: mark meredith from the white house. busy day, north lawn. what s happening? good morning to you. the white house says russia s actions will trigger significant sanctions but we re still waiting to see what those will be. we expect we ll get more details later this afternoon. on monday hours after president putin made his speech in moscow we saw president biden issue an executive order, early set of sanctions targeting the areas russia says are now independent prohibiting americans where trading and doing business with people in those areas that russia sees as separate from ukraine.