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Russia Making Aggressive Moves in Ukraine?; Still Safe to Fly?

Aired July 24, 2014 - 15:00   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Christiane Amanpour, let me bring you in.

She's our chief international correspondent.

And first, if I may, just get you to respond to this evidence from the U.S. State Department. Talking to David Gergen a moment ago, to his point, this is not only Russia not backing down. This is Russia becoming increasingly aggressive.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's right.

And we were talking to the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, who said not only is Russia not de-escalating. It is escalating, which is incredible, begin the situation right now. In fact, NATO yesterday put out these very alarming statements that said in the week sense MH17 was shot down, they had noticed two things, a surge, a massing of Russian troops towards the border, and a surge of heavy artillery and heavy weaponry moving across into Eastern Ukraine, across that border.

So this is an extremely worrying situation, according to NATO and according to officials in that region. And it begs the question as to why. You know, some people have suggested that Putin is either playing a double game or he's lost control. And that would be pretty, you know, pretty worrying.

Others are saying that they on all counts do not want Ukraine to win the battle for Eastern Ukraine. And if you remember, before the shooting down of MH17 and before the shooting down of several Ukrainian fighter jets by the separatist rebels, Ukraine, the military, was making a very severe inroads into the separatist control of that area. It had already taken back one town, Slavyansk, and was moving on to Donetsk, Luhansk, et cetera.

So it was beginning to neutralize the separatist threat. And then all of that came to a head when the separatists started firing much more heavy weaponry and tanks and artillery and other such thing was coming over, culminating in the shoot-down of MH17 and now these alarming reports of this whole assault continuing and escalating.

BALDWIN: You know, I talked to Mikhail Saakashvili for about 10 minutes this week. You know him. I'm sure you have interviewed him multiple times, former president of Georgia, went to war with Vladimir Putin.

And he called it a game. He said for years, Vladimir Putin has waged this game successfully for placating the world with words. Right? Saying what the world wants to hear, yet doing quite another. Do you think, and again you brought up the point this could be one or the other -- could this really finally be Putin's power play to grab Ukraine?

AMANPOUR: You know, Brooke, with respect, I have actually never interviewed the former Georgian president.

And I will say that history will remember that he took an unreal gamble. He decided to confront Vladimir Putin in Georgia when all the allies were encouraging him not to do so. And they got slapped around, the Georgians, which is precisely why the Ukrainians know that they cannot take on the Russian military machine, which is precisely why, since the very beginning of this armed part of this conflict, the Ukrainians said that there is no military solution.

Their allies in the United States and Europe said, Ukraine, we are not encouraging them to try to take on Russia militarily, because they will not win. And the example of that was what was what happened to Georgia in '08. But the truth of the matter is that it will take a huge amount of concerted diplomatic pressure, economic pressure to get President Putin to change his calculus about Eastern Ukraine and about supporting those separatists.

BALDWIN: With regard, then, to let's say economic sanctions, something more significant than we have seen from the E.U., we know that President Obama has done one thing. But the world in a sense is waiting for those European leaders and David Cameron has been very vocal in this, but yet you see France still planning on delivering the military equipment to Russia as per their agreement come October.

At what point will Europe -- and a lot of that Russian money, as you very well know, has filtered into Europe. At what point will Europe say, OK, Russia, we won't take your money, this is over?

AMANPOUR: Well, it's a double-edged prong or two-pronged situation here. On the one hand, the U.S. has less intricate linkings with Russia than Europe does, whether it's energy, whatever it might be, financial services, et cetera, et cetera.

So the U.S. is more able to put sanctions on Russia with a little less pain. But the truth of the matter is that any nation that wants to create pain for Russia and for the Russian president has to be willing to take pain.

BALDWIN: That's a great point.

AMANPOUR: In other words, sanctions have got to hurt in order to hurt. So unless the West is willing to take the pain, it won't be able to inflict the pain.

And a couple of things here. A lot of people made a huge big deal about Britain, for instance, which has a lot of Russian money, that's true. They take a lot of, you know, business deals, a lot of financial services. There are a lot of oligarchs that have come over here. But it is quite minimal compared to, for instance, you know, Germany and other European nations which are so involved and take Russian energy, et cetera.

But the British treasury secretary this week said, you know, it is much more costly for us to continue to allow Russia to act as a rogue state and to be an outlier in the international community shooting down planes or its allies shooting down planes, or annexing territory, which Russia did over Crimea, you know, disrespecting the rules of the international road, disrespecting other countries' sovereignty, et cetera. It's much more dangerous and economically disadvantageous for us to accept that than to impose sanctions.

So, again, it takes a united voice and the Ukrainian officials from President Poroshenko on down have told me that they -- you know, they are very pleased with Western support, obviously. But they need the world to act with one voice and to speak with one voice.

BALDWIN: It's incredible. And it's incredibly complicated and exactly as you said it with regard to the sanctions. In order for it to hurt, it has to hurt, and it's up to those nations to say yes or no. Christiane Amanpour, thank you so much, as always.

Now to yet another tragedy in the skies rattling nerves around the world and it's got some asking, is it safe to fly? One week after a suspected missile took down air Flight 17, killing 298 people on board, today, another crash. Now, we don't know the cause yet.

What we do know, that it was flying over a conflict zone. Air Algerie Flight 5017 crashed in a remote desert area of Mali. As many as 119 people may have been on board. Just a little more than 24 hours ago, a plane crashed while trying to land in an area off the western coast of Taiwan, and 48 people were killed. The cause of that crash remains unclear.

So let's just be real about this. Even though flying is still considered one of the safest ways to travel, the headlines, they're frightening. And these crashes are getting increasingly bizarre. We have lots of different analysts to just parse through this standing by for me.

But, first, let's go to CNN's Miguel Marquez on how this year stands up in terms of deadly crashes.

Miguel, can you just lay it out for us?

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I don't know how reassuring I will be. But I will certainly try to be.

Look, this year is not as bad as the worst crash year in history, which was in 1972. But it's ahead of last year where we were at this time. But these things do tend to happen, you know, in a very random order. If you look over the years, there's not a lot of reason why these things have happened.

If you look at 1972, for instance, the worst year for crashes, this was a year where you had many, many planes just crashing for either human error or the plane not functioning properly. And, you know, over some 2,500 people died in that year. (CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Twenty-five hundred?

MARQUEZ: Twenty-five hundred in 55 different incidents.

And I just want to tell folks, it's a little difficult when you start looking at the numbers, because what we're using are from Aviation Safety Network, and we're only using commercial flights of flights over 14 people. And they include both sabotage and hijackings as well. So that's the metric we're working with here.

BALDWIN: OK. And then within 1972, does that include the worst aviation accidents ever? Or is that separate?

MARQUEZ: It doesn't. The worst aviation accident ever was horrific in Tenerife off the coast of Spain, where two 747s in a very thick fog were directed literally into each other on this very small airport because there was a bomb threat at another airport and they were all forced to land in Tenerife and then in the fog these two 747s smashed into each other. That was in 1978. That was a horrible, horrible accident.

BALDWIN: And then, of course, we think of 2001 and 9/11. How many people died that day?

MARQUEZ: Yes. We go back to that. Amazingly enough, looking at the numbers, for 2001, it was a fairly low year for the number of accidents, and for the number of deaths, just over 800 people in that entire year worldwide died in plane accidents.

That is, you know, far lower than many, many years around it.

BALDWIN: Miguel Marquez, OK. Take those numbers and next ask the big question, is it a bigger risk to fly these days from terror to just bizarre incidents to war conflict? I have a panel standing by. Erin Burnett, Kimberly Dozier, Les Abend will have a huge discussion. Do not miss this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Have more breaking news for you on this Thursday. You're looking at live pictures. This is just out of a hospital. This is west of Philadelphia in Darby, PA.

And so what we know, according to the mayor of the city of Darby, a doctor has been reportedly shot in the head within this hospital. This is Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital, and we have no update on the doctor specifically. But the mayor says the suspect is in custody, so as soon as we get more information for you, we will pass it along here on CNN.

Let's move along, though, because, just before the break, we told you about yet another airline tragedy today, this plane apparently crashing after disappearing from radar. This, if you are keeping count, this is now the third incident this week alone. So is it a bigger risk to fly these days?

Let's talk about this with CNN aviation analyst Les Abend, also 777 pilot, CNN global affairs analyst Kimberly Dozier, and CNN "OUTFRONT" anchor Erin Burnett.

Welcome to all of you.

Erin Burnett, let me just begin with you. You have been to Burkina Faso. This is where this plane took off. What's the airport like?

ERIN BURNETT, HOST, "ERIN BURNETT OUTFRONT": You know, this is interesting. It's like many airports in that region, Brooke, in some sense. It's small, it's chaotic, it's not air-conditioned. It's not what you would -- the kind of airport you would see here in the United States.

We actually spent quite a bit of time actually circling this airport. It wasn't that we just flew in and out of it. We circled it because it might be a little bit more sophisticated of an airport than some give it credit for.

Reportedly, Brooke, there is a CIA drone base there, and the reports are -- this has never been admitted by the CIA. We were looking for them, we didn't see them, but we have a lot of footage of that airport. They were operating those drones, reports say, to look at the situation in northern Mali, which, of course, borders Burkina Faso, where those al Qaeda-linked rebels were amassing weapons.

And, of course, at the time, there were concern those were shoulder- fired missiles and RPGs, which is why some have raised that question linking to this Air Algerie crash today.

But I should emphasize, from the people I have talked to in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, today, Brooke, and others, right now, all signs in this particular crash are leaning towards weather, that there had been horrific weather. And it's the rainy season there now, when the storms come through there, incredibly powerful. And that is the working theory is right now that might have caused this crash.

BALDWIN: OK, so working theory being weather.

Les Abend, though, we have talked multiple times just even this week about another airline tragedy, MH17. You said on the show, it was a game-changer, the fact that a commercial airliner was shot, presumably out of the sky. How will this affect a pilot's checklist going forward?

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, you know, this is -- this is something that most of us don't consider or haven't considered, at least in the past, you know, especially out of the United States.

There's numerous aspects of our preflight planning that we even do before we get into the cockpit. And we do this in conjunction and collaboration with our dispatcher, who is in a remote a spot away from our particular bases most of the time. But, you know, now we have got to take this into consideration.

Shortly after September 11, we were considering MANPADs being the biggest threat after what we experienced. But, you know, even that was considered a low risk, and it just didn't warrant the costs.

So now we're talking about missiles that can go all the way up to cruise altitude in the 70,000-plus thousand feet. You know, it's just an incredible aspect that we're going to have to consider in our preflight planning.

BALDWIN: You brought up MANPADs. It's an acronym for shoulder- launched missiles, Kimberly Dozier, and I think we touched on this yesterday, but the fact is, a lot of these MANPADs around the world and especially in Africa, they're missing.

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Missing and they have been sold to the highest bidder in places like Libya.

There are credible reports that al Qaeda-linked organizations like al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb have scores of these. And TSA Administrator John Pistole actually addressed this, this morning here at the Aspen Security Forum. He talked about the fact that while airports in the United States have had security checks done on them to make sure that the perimeter is wide enough and someone with a shoulder-fired missile couldn't threaten a plane, but he said airports overseas, not so much.

And the TSA regularly briefs U.S. airlines on which airports are considered more dangerous. And then they're working with some of those airports to do things like establish a perimeter fence. Some of them don't even have fences or they don't have cameras on those fences to make sure that someone couldn't just sneak to the edge and wait for one of the planes to take off.

BALDWIN: You know, I feel like this then brings us to a bigger discussion just about flying. I'm sure all of us hop planes pretty often, and, Erin, you have been many places all around the world. And when you think about, let's say, if you, you know, take a plane, a lot of Americans, whether they want to admit to it or not, some people really look more to who is sitting next to them, for example, than maybe some missile, right, that could lurk underneath.

But do you think that this, just all these multiple incidents may really change the mind-set if you're flying internationally? Because if you're hopping a plane, let's say, going to Dubai or elsewhere in Africa, perhaps you would be thinking differently.

BURNETT: You might be.

And you bring up Dubai as a good example. Right? The main route in and out of that airport goes over Iraq. You know, it's very hard to find a way in and out of that airport that doesn't go over some sort of a war zone and they end up using the route over Iran. But also when you look at what happened with this latest -- this crash out of Burkina Faso over Mali, again all signs point to, weather but it raises the question. They have had concerns there that those militants who no doubt, at least from what we saw when we were there, all the local people were talking about the RPGs and the weapons that those al Qaeda-linked groups had obtained from Libya, that there was concern that they could shoot planes out of the sky. This was a couple years ago and people kind of mentioned it, sort of in passing, that, oh, maybe some of the Air France flights aren't going to fly directly over northern Mali because they would be aiming at Air France.

Now that has become a tangible reality for people. And I don't think there's any question that people are going to think about it more than they did before.

BALDWIN: Still -- go ahead, Les.

ABEND: Yes, Brooke. If I can interject here, you know, let's not tell the flying public that one of their biggest dangers is to get shot down by a missile.

(CROSSTALK)

ABEND: I think there's more environmental factors that are out there that are bigger threats than that at this point in time.

And pure speculation, you know, that maybe this was involved with this Algerian tragedy. We don't know. And even weather may be pure speculation at this point in time. This is all part of accident investigation which should have really been occurring with MH17, you know, in the first place.

But we really need to get the facts and put everything together, because as most of us have been saying, David Soucie and myself, there's a lot of causal factors to any aircraft accident. The fact that it's that -- we have got three in such a short period of time, you know, I believe very much so that it's a random type of situation.

BALDWIN: I am still getting on a plane next week. I have got to go to New York. Granted, it's not Dubai, but I'm not thinking twice about it, and I'm getting on that plane.

But, Kim, finally, just to you. It is interesting, both pre-9/11, post-9/11, it is planes. That seems to still be that the prime target, the weapon of choice for terrorists.

DOZIER: Absolutely.

And another thing that Pistole said this morning was that his leading worry was that a terrorist would get on an aircraft with some non- metallic, undetectable explosive device, and that he said that there's an ongoing and credible threat that they're trying to do that.

BALDWIN: Kimberly Dozier, Erin Burnett, we will see you tonight at 7:00, of course. Les Abend, thank you all so much. I really appreciate it. Great discussion there.

Also, a Dutch journalist slept next to the wreckage of Flight 17 and the remains of his fellow countrymen. We will talk to this journalist about his emotional experience and what he thought having covered all of this since November, the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine.

Also in Gaza, an explosion rocked the United Nations shelter. We have the latest information on just this frantic push for stopping the violence, for a cease-fire.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: And 298 lives lost on Malaysian Air Flight 17 just about a week ago now over Eastern Ukraine.

And we are getting word now that investigators are finding more human remains, more victims at the crash site. But we saw the 40 coffins yesterday, now 74 today arriving within hearse after hearse after hearse in the Netherlands now in the hands of Dutch forensic investigators.

And our own chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, is standing amidst this really growing memorial outside of this military facility in Hilversum in the Netherlands, where these bodies are now being handed over for identification.

But first, Sanjay, can we just talk about the dignified and respectful procession that we witnessed, not just today with these victims, but yesterday as well?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: It is exactly as you described it, Brooke. It was respectful, it was quiet. Thousands of people lining the streets, waiting for some time. It was pretty warm here. Brooke, I don't know if you can hear behind me.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Wailing.

GUPTA: Obviously, it's a very emotional time. I don't know if people here are family members or just citizens of this area. But nobody has gone unaffected by what has happened here.

These 74 hearses came in. I was so struck by just how quiet it was. They came in a simple wooden casket in the back, a single white rose on the hood of every car. It was incredibly moving, Brooke. And, again, they came in here right behind me. This is the military base where 75 forensic examiners have come together to try and identify these remains for the primary goal of continuing that dignity, returning these remains back to the people who loved them.

And it's tough, Brooke. I mean, people here have been so, so warm, military officials consoling people. It's hard to describe. I have not seen anything quite like this. The culture here, I would say, in the Netherlands is more reserved, more conservative. You don't typically hear outbursts. People tend to grieve quietly, in private. But you did see, obviously, for good reason, some of that today, Brooke. BALDWIN: With -- we're watching -- this is video from earlier today,

through this roundabout, hearse after hearse carrying these different victims on to be identified, Sanjay.

As far as that process goes, how long are officials telling you this will take?

GUPTA: Well, what they say is, they don't know. And that's the right answer. They say they don't rush this. We can get some context from previous type of mass forensic examinations, the plane crash in Tripoli, you may remember, back in 2010, 104 people aboard that plane.

It took about a month, 30 days, to create positive identification. One of the worst outcomes would be that they get it wrong, that they make a mistake in some way. It would be catastrophic both emotionally and in many other ways, I should say. So they just don't want that to happen. Also, as part of this process, these examiners, they have to go to these families, Brooke, and they have to say, look, describe your loved one, tell me maybe what they were wearing, any jewelry, any unique characteristics, tattoos, piercings, but also obtaining dental records, medical records, DNA if they can, just anything they can to try and help that identification process.

But I can't help but think, Brooke, can you imagine being the examiners that have to have those conversations with the families in the wake of all of this? It's challenging. It should take time. It should not be rushed. And, you know, we're talking about weeks and months here, not hours and days, to get some of these answers back.

BALDWIN: On that point, I was just talking to a forensics expert yesterday, and just even wondering off the top how these examiners are trained to have to, you know, work with these bodies after several days at the crash site to go through this, just the difficulty, just we have -- should keep them in mind as well, of course, as the friends and family members of the loved ones who died on that plane.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta for us in Hilversum, thank you so much.

And Eastern Ukraine, it is one of the most dangerous war zones in the world right now. And it just got a whole lot more dangerous with reports now that Russia is firing heavy artillery across the Ukrainian border. This is coming from the U.S. State Department based upon evidence they have obtained.