CNN Newsroom: Interview With Rep. Jeff Jackson (D-NC)

Interview

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The story of Bakhmut has been a story of incredible resilience by the Ukrainians. I think, as recently as a week ago, there were a lot of people who wondered whether or not it would last another week.

But Ukrainian military leadership and Zelenskyy decided to double down to make sure that the people there had what they needed, to make sure that the Russian invasion wasn't successful.

It's remarkable, that after a siege that has lasted, well, almost six months and after being nearly surrounded over the last several weeks that, frankly, we're still talking about civilians being in Bakhmut, that there is still a Ukrainian military presence there.

It does not bode well for the larger Russian offensive that we're expecting this spring.

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No, I don't buy it. But I also don't treat it as the most serious escalation because we've seen this empty threat from him over and over again.

We've seen a pattern of nuclear saber rattling, which, frankly, has become a sign of desperation by the Russian leader because he knows that his military has just been absolutely decimated.

And frankly, I think this year we're going to see the Ukrainians have a much better year on the battlefield than the Russians.

The Russians are going to have an advantage when it comes to troops and the Ukrainians are going to have basically every other advantage. They're going to have better training, better equipment, better morale and better allies.

And I think the counter offensive is going to begin here in the next four to six weeks, and we're going to see more impressive, more impressive work on the half on the part of the Ukrainian forces.

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Well, I think the most important message wasn't mine. But it was the one that our military delivered. We very swiftly responded to the Iranian provocation to the Iranian attacks.

We are there in this part of the world in order to help support local forces. Make sure there's not a resurgence of ISIS.

It's a very important mission. It's one that the Iranians would prefer that we were not carrying out. I imagine they'll continue to test our resolve, and I think they will see swift responses like they just did.

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Well, there are some concerns that apply broadly to the space of social media. But there is a specific concern with respect to TikTok because it is owned by China,.

And at any time the Chinese government can basically knock on the door of TikTok and say, hand over the data. That's a real national security problem.

And I think that's why the administration landed where it did with its ultimatum of saying, look, you can either divest you can choose to sell this app or the app is no longer going to be allowed. The app will be banned.

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I think it's not necessarily going to come to that. China does have a major incentive to divest.

And there's recent precedent for that. There was a dating app that was very popular, called Grindr. It was owned by China and we told China what? You've got to sell that up. You're not going to be able to have it anymore.

And they chose to sell on that app. It's still widely available. So there is recent precedent for having this work.

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Thank you.

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