There's a new reporting, Justin, tonight from CNN's monoraju with Senate aide telling him that members will get a classified briefing next week on Ukraine. This comes with the administration advocating for another $37 billion in military aid, which would be attached to a much larger general government spending bill.
This comes as Russia continues pounding civilian targets in Ukraine. Along, a campaign is underway to terrorize Ukrainian diplomats around the world with a series of letters containing explosives or animal parts.
Matthew Chance joins us now after an exclusive interview with Ukraine's foreign minister. So, Matthew, what does the Foreign minister make of these letters that have been showing up at Ukrainian embassies?
Yeah, he's obviously quite stunned by it. I mean, the Foreign Ministry called us up earlier tonight and said, look, we want you to come over and speak with the Foreign Minister because he is so disturbed about what has been taking place in various diplomatic missions for Ukraine around the world.
These extraordinary letters, some of them obviously very dangerous, but all of them very sort of upsetting. Demetria Coleba is the Foreign Minister of Ukraine. Take a listen to how he explains it. Well, it started with an explosion at the embassy of Ukrainian Spain, but what followed was this explosion was more weird, and I would even say sick, because we started receiving letters with eyes, animal eyes cut off animal eyes?
Yes. In one case, it's most probably an eye of a cow and an eye of a pig. In another case, let me ask you, who do you suspect? Who does Ukraine suspect of being behind this? Well, of course, I feel tempted to say to name Russia straight away because, first of all, you have to answer the question, who benefits from that?
And. It's definitely this campaign is aimed at sowing fear and terrorizing Ukrainian diplomats. I think it's either Russia itself or someone who sympathizes the Russian cause. Well, Adam said the thought is worse.
I've reached out to the Kremlin as well, and the Russian Foreign Ministry to see if they've got a response to it. They haven't got back to me. The Ukrainians say there are investigations underway in all of those cities where the letters were sent, and they're determined to get to the bottom of this.
Your president has said that there could be more waves of Russian missile attacks coming in the near future when the Foreign Ministry say anything about the types of weapons they hope to acquire to defend themselves.
Yeah, of course. Every opportunity Ukrainian officials get, they sort of restate this idea. They want more weapons from the United States in particular, also from other countries as well. The emphasis at the moment is anti missile systems, particularly Patriot missile systems, to defend against the massive onslaught of missiles that are coming from Russia, attacking infrastructure targets across the country.
Davidj Kaliba again said that they've been asking you to be the foreign Minister said they've been asking for this from the outset, actually, from before the war, for the latest invasion began back in February.
Now is the time, Demetria Clever said, for decisions on this issue to be made. There's certainly been a lot of discussion ongoing about opening lines for negotiation with Russia to potentially end this war.
Did he have anything to say about that? Yeah, I mean, I put it to him. This idea that President Biden had come out in that press conference yesterday, I think it was, with the French leader saying that he would be prepared to speak with President Putin of Russia to end this war.
And David Clever, the Foreign minister, saying that, look, as long as that is conditional on Russia. Withdrawing from Ukrainian territory, then the Ukrainians were all in favor of that, but he made it clear he didn't see any suggestion.
At this moment, no green shoots at all of any kind of peace process taking place, particularly with this continuing threat of more missile strikes hanging over Ukraine. It's appreciative. Thank you. Joining us now Senn military analyst, retired Arm Lieutenant General Mark Hurtling.
General, what's your reaction about these, first of all, these packages sounds? I mean, what do you make of that descending animalized to embassies? Well, the Foreign Minister said it was weird. Anderson I'd give it a different word than that, which I probably can't repeat on air, but it's just strange.
It's almost mafia like. It's like putting a horse's head in someone's bed. But it's a threat to other countries. They have done it now, by my count, to at least four different embassies. And it's beyond weird.
You can't say it's Russia who is doing it, but all indications are it matches some of the mode of operations they've been using to try and intimidate people to not support Ukraine. So let's talk about the military stuff and the Ukraine authorities.
They've been asking for Patriot missile systems, other interface systems for months now. What other factors do you think the United States has taken into account before sending systems like those? Well, Anderson, everyone wants to give Ukraine what they're asking for.
Secretary Austin has been talking to the Minister of Defense Resnikov, and they have attempted to try and fill all of their needs. Patriots, though I got to tell you, I keep hearing this as well as attacking, it's a special kind of system.
And what I mean by that, it's something that the US military calls a high demand, low density piece of equipment, which means a lot of people want them in different theaters. But there's not a whole lot of them.
There's barely enough of them to COVID all of the requirements that the US. Military has. They're extremely expensive. They have not just the missile, but the launcher, the radar, and the command and control center, which are all part of the package.
It takes a year plus to train missile crewmen with even more time to spend training, go through, repair them. This isn't a rifle or even a high Mars where you just teach someone how to point and shoot.
This is a very complicated system. And by the way, each one of the missiles that are fired costs between three and $5 million apiece. The missile, not the launch, the missile. So these are all things that add up.
And I think Secretary Austin has been replacing that demand for Patriots with some of our older systems, which still work very well, like the Hawk missiles and others. So I think we're trying our best to give Ukraine what they need, but it's not always what they're demanding.
And remember, these are part of aid packages. They're not paying for these systems. So that $37 billion package that Matthew just talked about, that's a huge package. That's a significant amount of money for weapons.
How do you see the world right now as you see the kind of the big picture of it? Yeah, I think we're going to see, because of a variety of factors, ukraine having to cross over the Genevae River, russia trying to force mobilized forces to the front.
Some very good victories recently by Ukraine in both the northeast and the southeast. I think we're going to see a little bit of slowing down, but Ukraine continues to defend well and fight and gain more ground.
What we're seeing, and what's been reported by both CNN and The Washington Post is this potential opportunity to train large numbers of Ukrainian forces at some of the U training areas, a place where I used to command graph and beer in Germany and some other places in Europe which will.
Create the capability for Russia, for Ukrainian forces to counter what we've seen so far as very poor Russian tactics and capabilities. If Ukraine can train these large amounts of forces, large forces in combined arms operations I think we'll continue to see Ukraine getting more and more victories as the days go on, but it's going to take a little bit more time.