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>> so, we're talking about off-ramps, but ukraine's foreign minister says the goal is to push russian forces out of the country completely. now, ukrainian forces have been amazingly over the last few weeks, but surely, it's your fantasy to believe that they can push all russian forces out of their country, out of crimea? >> yeah, what i will tell you, mehdi, in my view, they have enough to compete. we can't underestimate the will and tenacity of the ukrainians. but if they plan to either destroy or push them out of their country, they're gonna need additional weapons. they're gonna need additi...

They have enough to compete. we can't underestimate the will and tenacity of the ukrainians, but if they plan to destroy or push them out of their country, they're going to need additional weapons. they're going to need additional troops to be able to do that in my view. i go back to the powell doctrine. you want to have overwhelming combat power to be able to defeat the russians. and in u.s. army doctrine, we try and have five to one ratio, that means five in terms of ratio, five over the one and right now they don't have that ratio. as you know, the russians have some significant technology....

Putin didn't do yesterday, one of them was to call up for more troops. give us the latest sense there from the pentagon, just in terms of the issue of russian manpower. we've talked about morale. we've talked about poor leadership. their generals get picked off on a daily basis. at a certain point, are they going to have enough men to forge forward with this battle, even a limited one in the donbas? >> jonathan, that's such a good question. it's such a big issue. right now, the pentagon believes that russia is using basically all it ready combat power in ukraine. the russian military is huge, ...

State and his undisciplined cruel violent battalion combat teams. he's lost by some estimates 25% of his combat power that he put into ukraine. it is now absorbed half of his air force, 60% of his ground forces, and he's got almost nothing to show for it. the war is not yet decided. u.s. and nato technology being delivered to these incredible ukrainian fighters is going to make a difference. but i think in the long run, economic sanctions has got to collapse a russian economy for putin to back off his fixation on absorbing ukraine back into mother russia. >> so general, as you look at what has...

That commentators like me have always had is that we're not inside putin's mind and we don't really know what his end state that he's aiming for actually is. i suspect that the consensus is that he's now going to concentrate and trying to annex the donbas area and then, if he feels that he has sufficient combat power and political will, he might try and head towards moldova, to, you know, sort of quote liberate transnistria. i don't think they have the combat power or the resources to do both of those. so, i think -- it's donbas for the moment and see what happens. >> yeah, i mean, of course, ...