. >> john: retired four star general david perkins, and a fox news contributor.he area so hard hit, there is the theater there destroyed, killing more than 300 people in this area here, the downtown area. we have seen a tremendous amount of shelling and destruction, even here on the eastern side as well. and you wonder, why are the russians pounding this city to dust. and i should point outgoing through here, like this, is a major highway, m-14 highway, connects western russia with the crimean peninsula. is this strategically important to the russians because it could be a land bridge between russia and crimea they have been looking for for so long? >> a couple things going on. one, we have heard some statements from the russians lately that our plan never was to go to kyiv, we were just looking at the donbas area, etc., if i was a ukrainian i would not put too much stock in that. the russians are trying to consolidate what gains they had, fewer than what they had planned on and overstretched themselves, challenges their command of control and logistics, so creat