army major mike lyons. so good to see you t. director saying putin is pursuing military aid from china and possibly even iran. what's your point of view here? >> well, he needs two things. he needs ammunition. shells coming from china would go a long way with russia. there's a stalemate along the front that needs a lot more ammunition. the second thing he needs is more people if he wants to go on the offensive. there's a natural boundary between the forces and it exists with the dnipro river there. you saw the chinese, for example, hand over one of the proposals to make peace, that russia has anything to the east of the dnipro river. i wouldn't be surprised if the chinese do those two things, the drones and ammunition. that would escalate the opportunity for russia to go on the offensive. >> with that it sounds like you're describing a russia that's in trouble, a weakening russia as it pertains to its arsenal. >> yeah, i think so. i think time is still not on the ukrainian military side. however, if they can break through in dif

army major mike lyons. major lyons, thanks for being here.ear right at this moment that russia has begun this spring offensive. do you think that it is still coming? >> hi, abby. i do. what the russians are doing right now is fighting what's called the covering force battle happen. they're doing is sending out small units well ahead of the main body of forces they have. we know there's about 60,000 troops, three divisions that they have in reserve there, in eastern part of ukraine. and they're sending out these small units to probe and find weaknesses in the ukraine military and force the ukraine military to use resources against them. i think this is all part of a grander scheme. there's no question russia has the initiative right now in that region. and this is a part of an offense that's likely started but, again, covering force battling with the military refers to it, designed to show where the enemy is weak. >> and ukraine's military in 2022, in the last year, seemed to have a lot of momentum. they were performing i think perhaps better

army major mike lyons joins us now.claiming control of back mud. it's not just the ability to take over the village, but the ability to hold it. do you think the russian forces are better equipped this time around to hold this territory throughout the rest of the winter into the spring offensive it's expecting? >> victor, it's going to depend on how many reenforcements that russians can get into the town and whether they decide to go on a full offensive. if they did, they would bypass that and not just look to stay there and hold it. what i see happening right now from a military perspective is a covering force battle. that happens right before the primary larger offensive scale operations. reports i've seen show them fighting along a front of about 500, 600 kilometers, very wide there in the east. again, it's not giving the russians enough time to reenforce with certain soldiers as they planned on doing. ukraine is doing a very incredible job using artillery to fight back, as you saw, attacking some of the russian sold

army major mike lyons. evelyn, let me start with you. the white house notified the kremlin of this visit. the administration says for de-escalation purposes. is this visit especially escalatory or incendiary any more than the billions of dollars of lethal aid that the u.s. has supplied to ukraine? >> no, i mean, victor, this is just essentially underlining to the russians and of course the world that the united states remains with ukraine. and frankly, to the russian people that putin is losing. but i don't think it's escalatory. i think they just wanted to make sure the russians didn't inadvertently strike kyiv and then create an escalatory situation. >> of course, vladimir putin in his speech tomorrow will likely use this as another way to say the united states is at war with russia as well, it's not just ukraine russia is fighting but it is the west collectively. major, we heard the president say he would be announcing another $500 million in military aid from the united states. what wasn't mentioned was whether that aid would include

army major, mike lyons. good to see you again.et's talk about this failed intercontinental ballistic missile test that we learned that russia attempted on monday, about the time the president was there in ukraine. how much should we deduce from a failed test? especially in the context of russia suspending its participation in the new s.t.a.r.t. treaty? >> well, it does show that they have ineffective weapons that have been stored for a long period of time. we see this in the current weapons system that we brought to the battlefield already. they need wins they would and have liked to have this be some sort of victory for them, that they can still do this. it does question what the rest of this fleet looks like of these missiles that have been in storage for decades and have likely not been maintained. it's not something they wanted to do. they had to tell us because of the previous start treaty that they're in. it's not good news that they're not going to participate in the next one. we've always been able to celebrate the two, be

let's bring back natasha bertrand, kylie atwood, cedric leighton and mike lyons. colonel, the details that we're getting do not answer the big questions, what exactly it is, who is the owner of this object, considering that they knew about it last night, only shot it down less than two hours ago and they have not yet retrieved that. should we know more now? should they know more than they do? >> well, victor, it's in this particular case probably not. there's always the fog of war and in this case the fog of the incident. what we're dealing with is a situation where in the wake of the balloon incident that happened just six days ago or so, now we're looking at something that's very -- perhaps a little bit different but what similar. so out of an abundance of political caution, the craft was taken out because it posed -- as general ryder said, it posed a threat to civilian aircraft and could possibly have also been some type of a collection platform. we don't know that yet, but they decided they didn't want to take this chance again. as a result, we have what we ha

mike pence's home today was searched by the fbi. they found one more classified document. so, major, lyons, as a former intelligence officer, you had nuke codes. >> yeah. >> so you know the seriousness -- the true seriousness of classified information. >> mm-hmm. >> what is going on with this? politicians do not seem to take this with the level of importance that people like you do. >> that's probably right. there is an overclassification of information in the government. something like 50 million documents a year get classified. usually it's by -- >> 50 million? >> 50 million a year. on top of that, normal policy is a 25-year expiration before they can become not classified. so there's a billion or so documents running around our government that are still technically classified but it could be a weather report on an op they were going to run on something that really has nothing to do that's actually really classified. having said that, i don't know what was in the vice president's house. i don't know what they recovered. it could have been something important. but the bottom line there is