that was the thrust of a terrific "new york times" artillery but the moscow reporters valerie hopkinsrom moscow. welcome, valerie. i want to start about talking about something i found interesting in reporting you've done before this article and including this article, which is president biden has said a couple of times, i think, once the body bags start coming back, the russian people will stop supporting this war. or words to that effect. and what you found is that the body backs are coming back but it is actually increasing the support for the war. explain what is going on. >> well thank you very much, fareed, for having me and i wish i didn't have to talk about this with you today. but it is true. in my reporting, across russia what i found when talking to people, mothers of those who have been lost or relatives, people are finding that their losses are actually making them support the war even more. they're starting to feel it even more. and of course, the kremlin has refused to actually release the full statistical data of how many people have been killed, how many soldiers have

"the new york times" valerie hopkins will explain. but first, here's my take.r into russia's naked aggression against ukraine, it's become clear that neither side is strong enough to win the war nor weak enough to sue for peace. the conflict has settled into a stalemate. after making impressive gains, ukraine's armed forces have not made significant advances in months. russia, meanwhile, has dug into the territories it occupies and its further attacks are having little success so far. the numbers tell the story. according to a washington post analysis, russia occupied 70% of the territory when it launched the invasion in february 2022. it swept into eastern ukraine and in a month it was holding 22% of the country and then came ukraine counter offensives which by mid-november had taken back about a third of those gains. in the last three months nothing significant has changed. ukraine and russia are both planning new moves, but it would take massive victories to fundamentally change the situation. to put it another way, ukraine would need to recover roughly twis