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High-Profile Republicans Leaving Office; Russia Makes Advances in Ukraine; Where Is Alexei Navalny's Body?. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired February 19, 2024 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[13:00:30]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Where is the body of Alexei Navalny? His widow is accusing the Kremlin of a cover-up saying they are hiding his corpse. Outrage over his death and the official explanation is now growing. So, will it inspire new opposition to Vladimir Putin's rule?

And Navalny's death comes as Russia is making gains in Ukraine, as Kyiv faces critical ammunition shortages, and the strain of keeping the Ukrainian military on its feet is now being felt by the U.S. Army. We will explain.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: And NASA is looking for some aspiring Martians for a radical experiment, a simulated one-year mission to the Red Planet.

We're following these stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

SANCHEZ: President Biden says that he may hit Russia with more sanctions over the death of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Navalny's family and his legal team are demanding to see his body, twice visiting the morgue where they believe his body is being kept. Both times, though, they were turned away, told they will not see it for another two weeks. Navalny's widow alleges the delay as part of a deliberate cover-up. She says they are trying to let poison flush out of his system.

Remember, it's widely believed that Vladimir Putin had Russian agents attempt to kill Navalny in 2020 by hiding a Soviet era poison in his underwear. Listen to her message.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

YULIA NAVALNAYA, WIDOW OF ALEXEI NAVALNY (through translator): In a cowardly way, they're hiding his body, not showing to his mother, not giving to his mother. They're lying and they're waiting for the traces of another of Putin's Novichok to disappear.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Now she's asking Russians to share in her rage. This weekend, there were visuals and protests throughout the country,

and hundreds were reportedly rounded up by the Putin regime. At the same time, Russian troops are advancing in Ukraine, taking a key eastern town after months of fighting there.

With ammo and supplies running low for Kyiv, mostly crickets from the House of Representatives. After the Senate passed a foreign aid deal to bring $60 billion in aid to Ukraine, lawmakers are on vacation, with Speaker Mike Johnson casting doubt on whether he's even going to bring that bill to the floor.

Let's take you now live to CNN's Melissa Bell, who's been tracking this.

Melissa, not surprisingly, it sounds like Navalny's family is running into several roadblocks in their search for answers.

MELISSA BELL, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right.

She's been speaking pointedly, as you mentioned a moment ago, in that video message, the nine minutes of video that she's seen -- in which she's seen really for the first time, making clear that she intends to carry on this fight and maybe even take center stage herself.

But, of course, she's in Brussels, where she's been meeting with lawmakers in the wake of her husband's death. It is the harrowing images that we have seen of his mother, Alexei Navalny's mother, trying to get not just answers, but access to her son's corpse at the morgue in that town of Salekhard, which is about 50 kilometers from the penal colony where we know that Alexei Navalny took his final breaths on Friday.

And so many questions, of course, Boris, about how he could have gone from that last video appearance that we saw him in court make, looking gaunt, looking emaciated, but still joking with the judges, with that glint in his eyes, still looking very much well, and how the next day he could have died.

That is the question that the mother was trying to get some answers to. What we understand is that it's now going to be 14 days before anyone can have access to his body. And, of course, this is because Russian investigators have launched this inquiry, which gives them an opportunity to hold on to the body for longer, with that suggestion coming from Alexei Navalny's widow that it is in order to allow the traces of the poison to go, that this has cynically been done.

Now, of course, Novichok is nothing new, as you mentioned, a Soviet era poison that we have seen used repeatedly over the course of the last few years, either with Russians who had gotten too prominent and worrisome for the regime abroad or for people inside the country still. And, indeed, that was where Alexei Navalny had alleged that he'd been poisoned last time.

It was in Russia's far east in Siberia, those traces of Novichok then proven by a German lab, and yet he had gone back to face what we now know turned out to be the paying of the highest price by Alexei Navalny.

[13:05:06]

And, of course, the outpouring of grief that we're seeing so tightly repressed over the course of the last few days, I think an important indication of what the Kremlin was worried about -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: Melissa Bell, thank you so much for that update from Paris -- Brianna.

KEILAR: And now for the latest from the front lines in Russia's invasion of Ukraine, we have Nick Paton Walsh in the southern part of Ukraine for us.

Nick, Russian troops capturing a town in the east. How big of a blow is this for Kyiv's war effort.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, it really functions on two separate levels here.

Avdiivka in the east is a place that Ukraine has been fighting to hold on to since Russia first invaded 10 years ago, but the fight has intensified in recent months as it became the focus of Russia's often very brutal tactics, sending thousands of their troops often to their death to try and retake a town of minor, moderate, significant strategic importance.

Now, clearly, it fell over the weekend when Ukraine withdrew its forces, much telegraphed as a potential choice that Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, would indeed have to make. But it cut in two in the middle of the Munich Security Conference, where again Ukraine was trying to make a pitch to the United States to somehow get through that congressional dysfunctionality in the Republican-led Congress to get that $60 billion moving.

So, to Ukrainians still waiting for that aid, seeing how the lack of that aid translates into no ammunition the front lines, really slows down all the Western support chains that have kept Ukraine in the fight here. The fall of Avdiivka potentially marks the beginning of something wider and more significant.

Because it isn't just Avdiivka where they're under pressure, and we're now seeing potentially signs that the areas around Avdiivka, Russia might be trying to push forward as well to the north around Kharkiv in Kupiansk, a town which was retaken by Ukraine just two years ago at the end of 2022.

President Zelenskyy was there trying to shore up support for the troops, tell them to fight on, because there are deep concerns that is the next place where Russia is going to push forward. Remember, the focus was Avdiivka. Now they have it, they can move those troops elsewhere.

Also, in the south, not far from where I am, near Zaporizhzhia, a key village called Robotyne there that was really one of the major gains, or the only gains, of the southern counteroffensive in the summer, which had been much funded by NATO and the West, well, that seems to be under Russian pressure too.

And then Vuhledar to the south of Avdiivka, and also areas around Bakhmut, another town Russia threw everything out to retake in May of last year, these are also under pressure as well. And so I think there's something here where Ukraine is trying to point out to the west that this shortage of ammunition on the front lines is acute and means something other than the political gains that Vice President Kamala Harris referred to in Munich.

People are losing their lives because of it. I should point out, here we are in Kherson in the south. The lights are off across the city because people are worried about Russian drones and strikes on any light source that they see. So, for daily Ukrainians, this is a case of a loss of life, a loss of a relative, a loss of a friend fighting on the front lines.

And that is being accentuated as a fear now because of this slowdown or possible disappearance of American aid money, very real consequences here, certainly.

KEILAR: They're feeling it.

And how does Russia see it, Nick? Is Russia likely to feel emboldened and ride what it sees is its current advantage into other battles?

WALSH: Yes, I mean, look, it's important to point out that the catastrophically bad Russia we saw at the start of the war and indeed late 2022 has picked itself back up again.

It's exceptionally brutal in its tactics. Zelenskyy said that, in the fight for Avdiivka, for every dead Ukrainian, there were seven dead Russians, he claimed. We have no separate evidence to that effect, but it's certainly borne out as an idea by the videos we have of relentless waves, sometimes of Russian convicts who are paid to go to the front line and used in full frontal assaults by the Russians.

But Russia's managed to get its military industrial complex running again. It's getting shells from even allies as dark as North Korea to try and keep its artillery functioning, while Ukrainian guns are falling silent because of a shortage of that.

So, yes, Putin is seeing both his machine getting back on its feet again and the Ukrainians running out of money on their side and their morale slowly chipped away by this extraordinary paralysis in Washington.

KEILAR: Nick Paton Walsh from Ukraine for us, thank you for the very latest there.

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: Boris.

SANCHEZ: Let's get you now to the Pentagon, because we have some new reporting from CNN's Natasha Bertrand.

Natasha, you have learned that trying to help Ukraine maintain its military footing has been straining the U.S. army financially.

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Yes, Boris.

So, speaking of that paralysis that Nick was just speaking to in the U.S. Congress, the Army, because there has been no new supplemental passed by Congress, because there is no budget that has been passed by Congress either, the Army has been having to pay really out of pocket for the training that continues to be done for the Ukrainians, as well as for logistical support to transfer what remaining weaponry is in the pipeline into Ukraine itself.

[13:10:13]

And so we're told that, as of October of 2023, about a couple months ago, the Army has already spent almost $500 billion -- almost $500 million dollars, half-a-billion dollars, to support these operations, including the training of the Ukrainians and that logistical support.

And that is coming from the budget of U.S. Army Europe and Africa. And that is really not sustainable, because, according to officials that we spoke to, they only have about $3 billion left to pay for about $5 billion worth of operations that they have to continue over the next several months.

And all else being equal, we are told they're essentially going to run out of money by May. Now, the Army is going to have to relocate a lot of the funds to support Ukraine, continue supporting them in this mission because it has been deemed mission-critical by the president.

So, essentially, what they're going to have to do is, they're going to have to shuffle funds around. And that means taking money from perhaps less important things, but that are still important, of course, to U.S. Army personnel, like barracks construction, like enlistment incentives, like enlistment recruitment events, in order to pay for this ongoing fight to help the Ukrainians.

Now, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, we spoke to her, and she said -- quote -- "Every incremental dollar I have, it's very important where I put that dollar. I'm constantly choosing between, do we put it on barracks, do I put it on enlistment incentives, or do I put it on exercises?"

She said: "I don't have spare cash to just sort of be donating it. This was money that we anticipated to be replenished, obviously, by the supplemental."

Obviously that supplemental is now in limbo, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Natasha Bertrand live from the Pentagon, thanks for the reporting -- Brianna.

KEILAR: We're joined now by retired Brigadier General Peter Zwack. He's a Wilson Center global fellow at the Kennan Institute.

General Zwack, tell us why this town Avdiivka that Ukraine just lost to Russian forces is so important and so symbolic. BRIG. GEN. PETER ZWACK (RET.), U.S. ARMY: Brianna, the -- Avdiivka

has been -- Avdiivka has been part of the Ukrainian fight since 2014, when the first Russian invasion occurred.

I was in Moscow at the time, and we were all tracking this very closely. They bigger battles around Donetsk, the Russians were pushing into the Donbass. And the Ukrainians -- and were able to maintain a line with Avdiivka in holding half of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Now, 10 years later, the Russians, for the last nine months, especially after the fall of Bakhmut -- think of Verdun when you think of these places -- are going all out for Avdiivka. And the Ukrainians have fought hard, as they have in Bakhmut.

They're taking heavily -- heavy losses. They are inflicting terrible losses on the Russians. But the pressure is heavy. It's increasingly across the front, less ammunition for all-important artillery and less air defense. And the Ukrainian defense is straining and creaking.

And Avdiivka is not going to be the end of the defense by being taken. It's important, but not critical. But, at the same point, it is a prestige victory, especially for Putin, as was Bakhmut and as was Mariupol, if we all remember a year ago.

KEILAR: Yes.

ZWACK: And -- but the Ukraine is going to withdraw more defensible lines and fight. But they are under enormous strain for all the reasons both on the combat field and in supplies and international aid.

KEILAR: And, obviously, there's this fight in Washington over aid to Ukraine.

The U.S. Army has been using funds from its Europe and Africa commands and shifting it to the fight in Ukraine. But it's getting to the point where if Congress doesn't pass aid to support Ukraine, the Army is going to be diverting money from things like barracks construction and recruiting incentives.

Obviously, there's a recruiting problem for the armed forces here in the U.S. Explain why the U.S. government would make that choice, rather than just sort of throwing up its arms and saying, well, we can't send any more military aid to Ukraine.

ZWACK: First of all, there are defense supplementals that can be passed, can make it a priority. We can do all these things, including the wall. And if one former ex-president said, oh, I support Ukraine, everything would open up. But he hates Ukraine.

[13:15:08]

Remember, Trump was called out by -- in 2019 on a phone call during the campaign, and that led to his first impeachment, when he was trying to put pressure on Zelenskyy. So he has terrorized his Republican Party, and they're -- and it's blocked. And he is visceral about it and his admiration for Vladimir Putin.

I'm sorry to go on the track, but it's all related. We can do this. I think you would ask most senior American military and policymakers, commanders in policy that would they support continuing to help Ukraine, and they would say yes.

We are an amazing nation, Brianna. We all know it. And we can make it happen. We can do...

KEILAR: Why would they give up things, General, like barracks repair, much, much needed? Why would they -- why would that be a calculation where would they would say, this would make sense, we need to give up recruiting incentives, we need to shift those funds for now, this is actually more important?

Can you explain, as you would to the American people, that calculation?

ZWACK: I think -- Brianna, I think we're looking at this as an existential issue.

What is remarkable at this time is that NATO just had its ministerial. You had the Munich Security Conference. We have a huge NATO exercise involved, and, God bless, Navalny was killed just a few days ago.

All of this should play in our domestic debate. The funds are there. If they shift them around or do a supplemental, I believe that it can be done. The urgency of supporting Ukraine at this time is -- I mean, we're all seeing it with the fall of Avdiivka and the increasing Russian pressure, the increasing confidence, seemingly, with Putin.

And this is to our national interest, and that needs to be pulled and sold to our U.S. public of all stripes. Again, the military, we need the barracks, we need the training and all that, and I believe that we can balance it.

But this is a time I don't want us in a year or two years having the big debate domestically, who lost Ukraine, and a really, really unsettled, unstable Eastern Europe and a resurgent Putin-led Russia.

KEILAR: And that may be the reality if this doesn't happen.

General Zwack, thank you so much for being with us. We appreciate it.

ZWACK: As always, Brianna.

KEILAR: So, ahead this hour: A sudden string of high-profile House Republicans head for the exits, rattling lawmakers. One GOP congressman calling his party's time in the majority foolish. The reasons behind their growing frustration.

Plus, the White House considers easing up on its key goal to get more electric vehicles on U.S. roads. Why the about-face?

And Texas police are searching for an 11-year-old girl who disappeared on the way to her school bus stop. A person of interest is in custody. What we are learning about the man.

These stories and more ahead this hour on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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[13:22:59]

SANCHEZ: We want to zero in now on some of the dysfunction we have been watching unfold on Capitol Hill.

There are some very senior high-level House Republicans that are not coming back to Congress after this term, including Mike (sic) Green -- he's the chair of the Homeland Security Committee -- and Cathy McMorris Rodgers. She's the chair of Energy and Commerce.

The veteran lawmakers are among nearly a dozen Republicans leaving the chamber. The exits follow a historic year of dysfunction, including the ouster of then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the failure of a landmark border bill that would have provided billions in aid to Ukraine and Israel that Speaker Johnson refused to take up.

CNN's Melanie Zanona has details on this story.

So, Melanie, what are you hearing from House Republicans who've decided that their time on Capitol Hill is up?

MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CAPITOL HILL REPORTER: Yes, well, there are a lot of different factors that go into the decision like this.

It is a very personal one. Members have cited family reasons. Some members are running for higher office. But one thing that me and my colleague Annie Grayer really picked up on when we were reporting the story is that there is a deep level of frustration with just how dysfunctional this House majority has been this session of Congress, from all of the chaotic speaker drama, to even just their struggle to pass a basic procedural votes on the House floor.

Just take a look at what some members told us on the record. Ken Buck -- he's one of those retiring members -- said: "We're not doing serious things."

Carlos Gimenez, who was an ally of Kevin McCarthy, told us: "I thought that some of our members would be smarter."

And Steve Womack, a veteran lawmaker, said: "We are fractured."

And it's not just the number of Republicans who are retiring. It is really the caliber of the members who are retiring. There are five committee chairs alone who are deciding to call it quits. And that includes Cathy McMorris Rodgers.

She is the chairwoman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. And she's not even term-limited in that post. It's a very powerful position that many members spend their whole careers working to achieve. And then there's Mike Gallagher. He's only 39 years old. He was long seen as a rising star in the GOP, but he announced that he was retiring shortly after he voted against the impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary.

[13:25:00]

So there's a lot of concern, Boris, right now about what this means for the Republican Party. A lot of these members have a ton of institutional knowledge that they will be taking out the door with them. And there's also concern for that governing wing.

And when you have those members leaving, in their place, you have more hard-line members like Bob Good. So, just a lot of frustration, a lot of concerns about what this means for the GOP right now, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Yes.

And yet some of those hard-line members that you mentioned are actually thrilled about this. They wanted to see new blood in Congress. We will see how it all turns out in the long term, though.

Melanie Zanona on Capitol Hill, thank you so much.

We want to bring in senior data reporter Harry Enten for a closer look at this.

Harry, walk us through exactly how many people on Capitol Hill are headed to the exits.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: Yes, Boris, Melanie hit on the number of Republicans that are leaving, but there are a ton of Democrats who are also leaving the House.

In fact, there are more Democrats who are departing the House of Representatives than Republicans, 25 Democrats, 23 Republicans. And that, to me, is the remarkable thing that's going on here. Look, there are plenty of years when more Republicans retire, a lot of Republicans, and years which a lot of Democrats retire, but the fact that you're getting a bunch on both sides, that is what's so historically unusual here.

In fact, I went back over the last 20 years or so and looked back to see, OK, at this point in Congresses, was there at least 23 folks leaving on both sides of the aisle? Boris, this is the first time it has happened this early since at least 2006.

So, something is clearly going awry for both sides of the aisle, where a bunch of Democrats and a bunch of Republicans are saying, you know what, forget about it. We don't want to be members of the House anymore.

SANCHEZ: Well, obviously, for each individual member, there might be different circumstances kind of edging them out the door.

But I'm wondering, generally, is there an overarching theme as to why they're leaving?

ENTEN: Yes, I mean, it's because Congress isn't getting anything done, Boris. I mean, look at the number of bills and resolutions that have been

passed on right now through the Congress. It's only been 39. That is a record low at this point since Congress -- in Congress since 1973. The prior low a decade ago, it was 83, so we're less than half that level, right?

So a lot of people have often complained outside of Washington, Washington doesn't get anything done. Well, that is certainly being the case this time around. And, in fact, it's not just that Washington isn't getting anything done. It's that people hate Washington and hate Congress. I mean, what is Congress' approval rating at this point?

It's 19 percent. So they're not doing anything. People hate Congress. That's why they're getting out of there, a lot of them are, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Harry Enten, thanks so much for walking us through those numbers. Appreciate it.

ENTEN: My pleasure.

SANCHEZ: Still to come on CNN NEWS CENTRAL: Nearly all of California is under flood alerts, as the West Coast is hit by yet another winter storm. We're going to give you a closer look at the threat.

And do you think you have what it takes to live on Mars? NASA's looking for participants to live like a Martian for a year. We will explain this experiment when we come back.

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