[clock ticking]
CARL AZUZ: Hi.
I'm Carl Azuz for "CNN 10."
As you can hear, I've got a bit of laryngitis today,
but we've still got plenty of news to tell you about.
So please bear with my voice, and we'll explain
what's happening in the world.
3 and 1/2 weeks after Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine,
no one knows when the war will end
or exactly what needs to happen to end it.
In a recent phone call with the leader of Turkey,
Russian President Vladimir Putin outlined his conditions
for a cease fire.
They included a promise from Ukraine
that it would never join NATO, an alliance
of European and North American countries.
The Russian leader also wants Ukraine to give up its weapons.
He wants what he calls, quote "Naifixation" in Ukraine
to stop.
And he wants the nation to remove
obstacles to the Russian language
being widely taught there.
What does Ukraine want?
The government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy
is pushing for an immediate cease fire,
a stop in the fighting.
It wants Russia to remove its military forces from Ukraine.
And it wants Russia to give security
guarantees, promises it won't attack its Western neighbor
in the future.
Observers say negotiations between the two sides
are complex and hard to figure out.
And some American and NATO officials reportedly
have doubts about how serious Russia is about bringing
the conflict to an end.
But the war is taking a toll on both sides.
There have been numerous attacks on civilian sites in Ukraine,
places like health care facilities
and a theater where people were hiding.
And thousands of Ukrainian and Russian troops
have reportedly been killed in the fighting.
Russia has a larger and more powerful military than Ukraine,
but analysts say the invasion is not
going as Russia hoped it would.
- Russian munitions are still having
a devastating impact on civilians
in key cities in Mariupol, in the capital Kyiv.
But Russian forces are still making
little progress advancing across Ukrainian territory.
The core US assessment hasn't changed for much of the war.
- The Kremlin's forces remain stalled in many areas.
- And experts agree three weeks in, Russia is in trouble.
- No wars go according to plan.
The problem is that Russia's plan was extremely bad.
- The key question-- why?
- I would argue it is a mix of everything.
It is a failed or botched concept
of operation with plenty of wrong assumptions about the
very nature of the battlefield.
Russia believing, in a way, that Ukrainians would capitulate
or Ukraine would crumble.
- And experts believe Russia's failure
to secure a quick, definitive win
has revealed another major flaw in its planning.
- Russia's out of available combat
forces to put into this fight.
- Analysts say Russia's limited forces are now
divided between taking territory and laying siege
to major cities, reducing their ability
to do both tasks effectively.
And that means Russia must be reassessing
what victory looks like.
- At this stage, we are still talking
about limited gains and goals.
There's simply not enough troops, potentially,
coming from Russia or elsewhere to do
a sort of massive, full scale ground invasion of Ukraine,
keep that territory, hold it and then fight a very costly
counter insurrection war.
- US officials say they're seeing
some early efforts to boost troop
numbers with foreign fighters.
- We believe that out of Syria, there are perhaps
small, small, very small groups of people that may be trying
to make their way to Ukraine.
- How the next phase of the war plays out
will be significantly determined by Russia's intentions in Kyiv.
Trying to take the capital would likely
involve months of bombardment and urban warfare.
- That's going to be a tough order of business.
Those Ukrainians know every single alley, every back room,
every road every intersection.
The Russians are going to find themselves in a hard fight.
- Slow Russian progress can help Ukrainian forces
by allowing them more time to prepare
and be resupplied with advanced weapons from allies.
But experts say it could also inspire greater brutality
from Russia, a willingness to escalate
and destroy in order to compensate
for its stalled invasion.
Phil Black, CNN.
London.
- 10 second trivia.
Which of the following people was not a Hoosier,
Dan Quayle, Neil Armstrong, Michael Jackson,
or Orville Redenbacher?
A Hoosier hails from Indiana, and astronaut Neil
Armstrong was born in Ohio.
CARL AZUZ: Agriculture is a major industry in Indiana,
and that makes the Hoosier State a good place for us
to illustrate how the war in Ukraine
is having widespread effects on global food prices.
Months before the Russian invasion
began, inflation was driving up the prices of gasoline
and almost every category of groceries.
This rise in costs was at its highest level since 1982.
But Russia is one of the world's biggest exporters
of fertilizer.
Ukraine and Russia combined export more than 25%
of the world's wheat.
So while this can ultimately cause higher prices
for groceries, what happens between the war and the store
to cause that?
VANESSA YURKEVICH: Every day, up to twice a day,
like clockwork, Josh Everhart makes
this trip, rolling corn and soy to the grain elevator in town.
But the constant hauling of crops for his four trucks
and record gas prices makes even the shortest
journey feel like a slow burn.
JOSH EVERHART: You don't want to see the bill.
VANESSA YURKEVICH: You don't. What do you--
JOSH EVERHART: When you look at it you're like, Oh, no.
VANESSA YURKEVICH: What is it looking like?
JOSH EVERHART: Well, I mean, a 1,000 gallon tank is $4,000.
VANESSA YURKEVICH: Gas prices hit a record last week
but are dropping slightly yet still above $4 a gallon
nationally.
And here in Indiana, even steeper
diesel which fills these tanks at nearly $5 a gallon.
CHRIS EVERHART: It's astronomical but it's
part of doing business.
VANESSA YURKEVICH: Chris Everhart, Josh's father,
says inflation has pushed prices up
on just about everything on their farm,
but commodity prices have risen too.
This month, wheat rose to its highest price since 2008.
CHRIS EVERHART: I've never seen anything
like this in the wheat market.
VANESSA YURKEVICH: For only the second time in 25 years,
the Everhart family planted winter wheat, 165 acres of it
to try to capitalize on rising wheat prices,
but it's a risky bet.
CHRIS EVERHART: They're a lot higher than they--
than we ever anticipated them being, but so are inputs.
VANESSA YURKEVICH: That's fuel, seed, fertilizer, and labor.
And Russia's invasion into Ukraine
is only pushing prices higher.
PHIL RAMSEY: This is uncharted territory for me.
VANESSA YURKEVICH: On Phil Ramsay's farm in Shelbyville,
he says he's spending $500,000 more
to plant his crops this year.
The only thing softening that blow,
the higher price he'll hopefully get
for his wheat, soy, and corn.
How much does what is happening in Ukraine
impact you here on the farm?
PHIL RAMSEY: I'm happy that the prices are going up.
I am not happy about the situation
because even though they're a competitor of ours,
it's kind of like playing sports--
you don't want to see somebody on the other team get hurt.
VANESSA YURKEVICH: And fertilizer
has become their biggest expense because it's
made from natural gas, which has also risen significantly.
A key supplier, Russia, has stopped exporting it.
How much more does it take to fill up those bins behind me
this year compared to last year?
PHIL RAMSEY: Today's cost is $60,000 more per tank.
I have four tanks, that's 240,000.
VANESSA YURKEVICH: And those prices
are much slower to come down compared
to the volatile price of crops.
CHRIS EVERHART: And we just lose money when that happens.
It's only happened a few times in my farming career.
But this one's totally different than any that I've
been through in 43 years.
VANESSA YURKEVICH: Vanessa Yurkevich,
CNN, East Morristown, Indiana.
CARL AZUZ: To many people, it might
have looked like a big old block of rock with some ridges in it.
But to this man who just happens to have
a deep interest in prehistoric animals,
it's the tooth of a woolly mammoth.
Justin Blauwet was recently observing a construction site
in Iowa when he spotted it.
It's 11 inches long and weighs more than 11 pounds.
And a paleontology instructor at the University of Iowa
thinks it's thousands of years old.
Its weight explains why the tooth fairy left it alone.
But if you're enameled with the roots of paleontology
on the lookout for bones that cemented their place
and made a dent in history, it's no mammoth tusk
to find the tooth, the whole tooth,
and nothing but the tooth.
I'm Carl Azuz, and we've got love for Loveland High School
today.
Shout out to our viewers watching from Loveland, Ohio.
And thank you for subscribing and leaving a comment
on our YouTube channel.
[music playing]