It's been a while

been a while since we've talked about the war in Ukraine.

You remember the war in Ukraine.

It's been grinding on for 22 months with tens of thousands of deaths on both sides.

In all that time, with all that loss, the battle lines have barely budged.

But last weekend, Russia tried to take a sledgehammer to that stalemate.

I asked Slates Fred Kaplan, what happened? Well, Russia, which you know, usually launches a few rockets at a time or maybe a dozen is a lot. They launch

something like 180 rockets all at once against cities all over Ukraine.

Tonight Russia ups its aerial assault sending missiles raining down on Ukraine.

Bombs dropped like never before.

Absolutely, these were targeted.

I mean, it was the biggest attack ever.

The barrage comes as Ukrainian officials are urgently pleading for more air defense systems from their Western allies.

People are saying it was the biggest attack since counting began.

Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right. I think if somebody had guessed the day before

whether Russia even had that many missiles ready to go. They might have doubted it.

Dozens were reportedly killed in this attack. Afterward, Ukraine fired its own rockets into Russian territory as retaliation.

They also killed civilians. It seemed to me like a new kind of escalation

after two years of day-to-day battle on the ground.

One security expert said it wasn't just the sheer number of missiles Russia fired that surprised them. It was the way those missiles seemed to allude any defense,

with some of them flying in circles before looping around to their targets.

I was struck that even a Ukrainian defense expert called it cleverly constructed.

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