and western officials that we ve been speaking to agree it is the slowness with which they were able to start it. remember it was called the spring counteroffensive and they didn t manage to really get things under way until early june. president zelenskyy has since said that is because they were waiting for stocks of weapons to arrive until they reached that sort of critical mass. it is the russian defenses because during that time russia was able to really bed in with these mine fields,s like that, made the advance on the battlefield and continues to make itit extremely difficult. and was there enough training, looking at. i think for ukraine, the issue now is time. we re talking about winter and also changing politicay saying with them, but polling that you see in terms of u.s. public
officials who do acknowledge that it is behind schedule and not progressing as well as they would like. president zelenskyy says this was supposed to be a spring counteroffensive, supposed to have started months ago but it was delayed because ukraine didn t have the weapons, the training, the equipment it needed to launch the offensive. rather than rush it, he said it was better to wait. in that time russia was able to build up defenses, dig trenches and lay mines. thank you so much, alex. that was an excellent report. thank you so much. let s get more analysis on this developing situation. victoria croats is a former deputy national security adviser and vice president at the heritage foundation. good to see you. i want to start with these relentless attacks on odessa. what do you make of russia targeting cultural sites and not just military targets.
former intelligence officials told me they were watching, igor just articulated, will russians kill russians. the answer on saturday was no. but that is it feels like a break glass moment should that come to pass. well, i mean, vladimir putin specifically said that in his speech today, in his angry speech, a little while ago. he specifically said they wanted us to fight with each other. he acknowledged that that was actually the goal here. you re right. i mean, igor s right. this is not a good choice between vladimir putin and prigozhin. but for ukrainians there is some hope in the idea that that there s a crack in the russian regime and you are seeing that in a moment where ukrainians both have and needed motivation in the spring counteroffensive. it does seem to be energizing them. when you see the messages being put out on telegram from the leaders in ukraine, from zelenskyy, the speeches that they are giving. they are capitalizing on this