let me bring in jim townsend. he was in the obama administration, assistant secretary of -- for european policy, secretary of defense for european and nato policy. so let me ask specifically about what bill burns said. it raised my antenna because bill burns probably has had more time to think and study putin than anybody else in the administration right now. he's had plenty of face to faces with him. so when bill burns says he's worried about the use of a tactical nuke, i take it pretty seriously. what would we be watching for if russia is indeed thinking about this? >> i think the first indications would come from intelligence. there's certain moves that any military that has nuclear weapons would do in terms of pulling that nuclear weapon out of storage, whether dropped from a plane or military movement, there are telltale signs. you can bet right now bill burn has the satellites and other ways in which we collect intelligence looking down hard on those sites to see if we can see some movement. to date we haven

. >>> let's bring in assistant defense secretary for europe and nato under president obama, jim townsend. and i can't help but to begin just asking about any hope left for the civilians inside that steel plant in mariupol. >> i'm afraid there's no hope. i have been thinking the same thing. some type of humanitarian corridor, something that could be done. but i'm afraid what the russians are going to do is pound that steel plant from the air with missiles. they don't want to go in there and fight, as you're reporting. that would be a very difficult fight for them. so what they'll do is stand off and just pound it, and we'll have a horrible humanitarian situation on our hands. we've seen this in bucha. we've seen this in other parts of ukraine as well as in syria, grozny, chechnya. this is what the russians do, and i'm afraid we're going to see just a horrible sight in the coming days. >> so what do we need to do as we look at the donbas? what do we need to do regarding weapons systems? obviously the united states and our nato allies countries have been sending a massive amount of weapons

ali arouzi is there live, courtney kube is at the pentagon and jim townsend, former deputy secretary of state. ali, the new warnings that we are getting from u.s. defense officials and ukrainians who are left in the east scrambling to get out. >> that's right, hallie. we've seen them trying to scramble to get out the other day at the kramatorsk rail station and they got there. one of our local producers here knew somebody who had parents sent their 16-year-old child to that train station to get them to safety and unfortunately she was killed in that attack there. they are trying to get out but it's not safe to get out. every ukrainian you talk to here knows what's coming to the donbas region. they are very afraid. they have seen what's happened in mariupol, that cascading humanitarian disaster there. they feel that's what's going to happen in the donbas area. ukrainian intelligence is putting out as much information as you can get from them. they're telling us that they think that the russians are going to move now southeast towards a city called izium, which they captured from the u