you have to ask yourself sort of what s the point, why? they re successful during this war in 2016. the goal was not only to increase the likelihood of the candidate they liked, kacandida donald trump. do they want to get some congress seats or senators or divide because this is an issue where there is considerable certainly for the times that wes are in now. bipartisan support against pew t putin s war and ukraine. cyber wise we are still very vuln vulnerable. risk tolerance up dramatically. dictator autocrat with 6,000 war heads. putin appointed the new general.
that he wasn t. before that he is prepared to take risk in a way that he wasn t previously. and they re having a very hard time predicting where his head is at right now. we saw it yesterday, he put his new color forces on high alert. that was the headline that reverberated all across the world. does that mean he s likely to use a new killer weapon? no. i think that that s very unlikely. this appears to be a form of pretty extreme saber rivaling from a russian leader who s invasion of ukraine is not going the way he wanted to. who s, economy this morning, is enough financial vice. u.s. defense officials spoke to my colleague and said that they believe that this is posturing. but they are watching it very closely. we don t know in detail what putin s orders mean for russia s new killer posture. we don t know how many additional war heads might be
escalation in the ukraine conflict. now u.s. officials are hunting for signs whether he is seriously considering using nuclear force. nina dos santos with the story. reporter: as russia s tanks rolled into ukraine, vladimir putin made a threat not heard since the height of the world war. translator: russia s response will be immediate and will lead you to such consequences never experienced in your history. reporter: then, days later, he raised the alert level of the world s largest nuclear arsenal. translator: everyone knows that a third world war can only be nuclear. reporter: only nine countries have nuclear weapons. hopefully never to be needed in battle. according to the armed control association, russia has the largest number of war heads at just over 6,000. while the u.s. isn t far behind, no other country, not even israel or north korea, has anywhere near this type of capability.
business. so it s appalling what they re doing. this is back to the days of stalin, and it s going to get worse. and it s not just the big cities either. we can t forget that these smaller urban areas are being hammered all over ukraine. those cruise missiles they fired at the ukrainian military base near poland had 700-pound war heads. these are massive strikes that will indiscriminately hamper not just infrastructure but kill civilians. it s a horrific scene unfolding. i think in the earliest days, someone said this is the first war that s been waged really in a time of universal social media access, that moscow bureau chief for the times who s now in istanbul said even inside russia, there s still mostly access to the internet for people that want it. i wonder your thoughts on where things stand today. certainly from europe s point
women and bloodstain beds and cribs where young patients once slept. a chilling new warning of vladimir putin s plans. the white house now says russian forces may be preparing to use chemical or biological weapons in ukraine. our correspondents are in ukraine and other key locations as russia s brutal war heads into the third week. we want to welcome our viewers here and around the world. i am wolf blitzer and you are in the situation room. tonight we are getting powerful new reaction to the bombing at children s hospital in southern ukraine. president zelenskyy claiming a while ago that the attack is proof his word, proof that genocide is happening in ukraine.