doctor donald jensen, thank you so much . to stop it now. h for joining us— jensen, thank you so much for joining us._ the i jensen, thank you so much for joining us._ the top j joining us. thank you. the top story now. _ joining us. thank you. the top story now. on _ joining us. thank you. the top story now, on our _ joining us. thank you. the top story now, on our website, i joining us. thank you. the top i story now, on our website, many thousands of people trapped in the south after the failed possibility of humanitarian corridors. you will find analysis and background from our main correspondence in the region. head to bbc news online or use the bbc news app. the united nations estimates 1.5 million people will have led ukraine by the end of this weekend. thousands of refugees have made their way westwards towards poland, romania, hungary and moldova. at least 90,000 have crossed the border into slovakia as well. tens of thousands of people have been demonstrating across european cities in support of ukraine, demanding an end to the russ

dr donald jensen is director of russia and europe at the us institute of peace.ssy in moscow. iasked him how he assessed the state of the conflict 11 days in. well, the state of the conflict is, i think, about to to broaden, to become more fierce, to become more violent. the russians, having been frankly shocked at the amount of ukrainian resistance, have steadily shifted their tactics this week — going from a so—called russian version of blitzkrieg, which was stopped, to grinding powerful old—style soviet tactics. that includes a lot of artillery and that includes, unfortunately, bombing cities and civilians. i think that's what we're going to face in the next couple of days. looking back in history, russia had a long war in afghanistan in the 1980s. i wonder if there are any similarities at all with its war in ukraine. oh, there are many. ukraine's goal is not to to defeat militarily the russian forces. ukraine's goal is not to lose. there's already, as we've seen, a lot of domestic opposition inside russia to what's going on — significantly in the putin elite.

kimberly hawk, it's falling developments that are in brussels. donald jensen is the director for rush in europe at the u. s. institute of peace joins us live from alexandra virginia by skype as well. can i ask you how russian president let him a cushion might have viewed this meeting in brussels today with alarm. unfortunately, he probably would see it as threatening. it's not really, it's a response to russian aggression. but i think we've seen no sign really, that food is willing to really barton seriously at the table is likely to see all this as a way to play that was base at home to justify his actions in ukraine. they're not justifiable, of course, but present by the other western leaders really have no alternative given the, the high stakes game that, that, that person is playing. when you're trying to chemical weapons, you're talking about a weapon of mass destruction, and i think it's pretty clear the russian have those stocks. it's really their intention that we're debating right now. how to western countries continue to exert pressure on, on my team uprooting. if we have al