kersk is in russia. what he's trying to do is kick the ukrainians out before there's actual talk about land, right? because if there was an negotiation with both sides of the table, ukraine could say, we're here, we're in kersk, as long as we're trading land, let's keep this. >> exactly. i think that's an important point, john. and remember, that russia is also pressuring ukraine all of the last summer and fall, in parts of the east and west. they're also launching a series of drone attacks, escalating drone attacks on ukrainian cities. electric infrastructure is something they could target even more with winter coming. so when i say facts on the ground, i mean, not only in kersk, but elsewhere along the front lines with ukraine, i think you can expect to see russian activity in the days leading up to donald trump's inauguration. and i think, again, the lack of transparency is important, but remember, donald trump is already signaling pretty hard that he does not want the sort of old republican establish

russian forces are ramping up their ground offensive to try to push ukrainian troops out of russia's kerskion. russia has deployed nearly 50,000 troops whenwhen launched their counteroffense i ive a few months ago. thank you so much. i do find very interesting something that you wrote in or were asked about in an article, where you talked about the difference between a biden/harris approach to ukraine and what you think trump will bring. and you said, we saw the u.s. being slow, reactive, not willing to give ukraine the weapons needed, not willing to give them the authorization to use those weapons, an excessively cautious approach, one that worried too much about escalation and not really one designed to help ukraine win. what i think we have with trump now is the opportunity to compete, the opportunity to see whether we can get a stronger western position in support of ukraine that might actually be decisive. why do you think that? >> well, i think that there's a couple of things. first off on the biden side, we saw that pattern over years, really, of first saying "no" to weapons systems