We are now going to bring in Colonel Cedric Leighton. You have been watching this since the beginning. You have been talking about this since the beginning. The invasion happened, I think on the 24th. I ended up on Poland on the 26th, as thousands of refugees were coming over the border from from Ukraine. I’m curious what your thoughts are on hearing the President of the United States in a country that is currently in war with sirens going off there are no U.S. troops there. And yet he says we are going to stick with you for the long haul. In other words, you have our full support. What does that mean to Ukraine? What does that say to Russia and the rest of the world? Well, Sarah, good morning. This is a really big deal. And the way that the president has orchestrated this this would kind of be like if Roosevelt had visited London during the blitz in World War Two. This is that significant. So what we’re seeing here is really a transformation of the world order. The Russians, by their invasion of Ukraine, have tried to go in and they’ve tried to upend the world order.
The they and the Chinese are very much interested in making sure that the United States is not the dominant power in the world. And by doing this invasion of Ukraine, you know, almost a year ago today, you see that there is so many different aspects to this. You had the initial attack on Kiev the one that was repulsed. We all remember that 40 mile long column of tanks that was into armored personnel carriers and trucks that was supposed to make it to Kiev. They never made it to Kiev. And the very fact that the president of the United States a year on, can say two presidents, Alinsky on presidents. Alinsky’s home turf that we are standing by you, that we’re standing with you. That is incredibly significant because what it shows is that there are so many different things so you look at, for example, the tanks that all the allies have pledged. You know, you’ve got 31 tanks from the United States, the Abrams tanks, the Germans with their leopard tubes, and the Canadians as well, and the Brits bringing their challengers in.
That’s just symptomatic of what’s really going on here. Those tanks can make a big difference on the battlefield, because what we want the Ukrainians to do is engage in a war of maneuver. Right now, there is a bit of a you know, some people would call it a stalemate, but basically the forces are stalled, especially in the east. And if they can break out of that, it would be kind of like what happened in World War One, where the United States came in the tanks were invented. And that really increased mobility on the very static front on the Western front in that war. And this same kind of philosophy is what the military part of this is going to be like. And, you know, seeing these pictures coming out of Kiev, that not only underlines the military dimension of this, but it also underlines the geopolitical part of this, which is very significant because because the United States is not going to go quietly as the dominant power of the world.
And we’re saying to the Russians and to anybody else who’s watching that we are not only sticking with Ukraine, but we’re going to do this for as the president said, as long as it takes. I think the next question, Colonel, is what else will come to get the job done for Ukraine. Right. And the fact that Russia is tapped almost all of its ground forces. But as our reporting show still has a significant air power reserve that it hasn’t tapped. Can this be won by Ukraine? Without us F-16s? Well, the bottom line, Poppy, on that is probably no. And the reason I say that is in modern warfare, the air superiority has been key to the success of land forces. And it’s also been key to providing that a cover for the military’s actions of whatever domain they’re using. So what’s remarkable is that the Russians haven’t achieved air superiority at all in anything that they’ve done here.
And when you see the, you know, the possibility of an F-16 coming in there with, you know, its ability to not only hit ground targets but hit air to air targets, that becomes a significant element of an air campaign. The problem that we have is bringing all these forces together and making sure that the Ukrainians have the training that they need in order to effectively use this weapon system. And, of course, we’re seeing them do this. You know, in Britain, we have the initial aspects of training pilots, Ukrainian pilots. That’s going to be exceptionally important to get this right. And in order for Ukraine to succeed, I believe that air power is going to be a significant component to that. And you made a very interesting point, Poppy, because the Russians have not used a significant portion of their air power.
Probably several reasons of that for that. But the very fact that they’re not doing that shows that either they have it in reserve or it doesn’t work. And if it doesn’t work, the Russians have major problems, even more significant than what we’ve seen so far. Yesterday, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham called on the US to start training Ukrainian pilots today on those F-16s. Thank you very much, Colonel Leighton. We appreciate it very much. And for more perspective on this just absolutely historic visit that we are now seeing still underway right now, I want to bring in David Sanger, who is CNN’s national security analyst and national security correspondent for The New York Times. David, obviously, you and I both covered Biden and this has been a trip that he had been wanting to take for about a year now. He has not done so so far. They were talking about security reasons why he could not go.
I think one big question, though, is what do you think the reaction is like right now? What’s the response happening inside the Kremlin as they are watching President Biden on the ground with President Zelensky You know, it’s a fascinating question because President Putin is supposed to give a speech tomorrow that was supposed to be his rationale for continuing a war that has already produced about 200,000 Russian casualties, including we think, 50,000 or more dead. That was not the plan. The plan was that, of course, Ukraine, and he was supposed to be Russian territory by now. And so what you’re going to see tomorrow are two very different visions of not only where the war could go, but between President Putin’s speech and then President Biden’s speech, two very different visions of how Europe should be organized. And that’s why this is really such a critical moment in that that the end of that post-Cold War order we’ve been discussing for so long And so President Biden will then come here to Poland, of course, where he is supposed to speak tomorrow.
That’s going to be a huge aspect of this as well. We’ve talked about the role that Poland has played, a critical role. They’ve had a big change in just the last year. But a big question has been where they’ve been funneling, of course, these weapons and arms shipments that they have been getting into Ukraine. Obviously, Ukraine wants to see different levels of that. And what the White House announced today, the half a billion dollars in aid package but a lot of the things that we’ve seen them send before, it obviously did not include the longer range missiles that Ukraine is in wanting or the F-16 fighter jets. They’ve also said that they believe they so desperately need. What are you watching on that front, David? Well, Caitlin, I spent the weekend at the Munich Security Conference, so we had about 50 members of Congress, a number of members of the Cabinet, Secretary of State Blinken, and, of course, Vice President Harris, who gave a speech calling, I think was was good evidence that the Russians have conducted not only war crimes, but are crimes against humanity.
But that leaves open the question of how far President Biden is ready to go to expand their support, because while he says we’re there as long as it takes, he doesn’t say what we’re there with. And the complaint that we heard here from the Ukrainians who were at the conference in large numbers was that they simply don’t have what they need to sustain over the long term. And there is, in fact, some tension inside the White House and inside the administration about whether you give them what they need for the next few months or you give them what they need to make it impossible for Russia to try something like this again. And those may be very different things. And, of course, President Biden increasingly concerned that weapons that can reach deep inside Russia could provoke a much wider war or nuclear use.
