This is John Batchel, speaking with colleague Jeff McCausen of United States Army retired, artillerymen, CBS News, Dickinson College, Diamond Sixth leadership and strategy about the war in Ukraine, and an especially vivid image of how badly it's going for the Russians, not the Kassadna numbers,

a comparison of the Russian advance since 22,

and a snail starting at the same place at the border of Ukraine.

Here's Jeff to give that snail simile.

My heavens.

Slow.

The Russians make snails look fast. Much more of this tonight. Well, Russia once out of this, of course, is intimidation in two ways. One is, I've always said the Russian

goal in the war in Ukraine was not only the defeat of Ukraine, but more broadly the destruction of NATO.

And the degree of which Russia can intimidate NATO members, when the alliance not react in unity,

drives a wedge into that alliance.

That's why the United States as leader of the alliance becomes so important.

I think the Russians realize that on the battlefield, because of the war in Ukraine,

the conventional threat, the Russian shock army coming across the border into Poland, is less likely.

I mean, I noticed while I was in Europe, British intelligence services saying publicly the

Russians have suffered now a quarter of a million dead in the war in Ukraine.

I was particularly struck by a comment by the chief of dissent staff who said, you know,

if a snail had crossed Russia into the Ukraine in 2022, at the pace the snail moves moves, that snail would be in Poland right now.

And the Russians are a long way from Poland.