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White House Announces Additional Sanctions on Russia Soon; Germany Halts Nord Stream 2 Pipeline Because of Russia's Actions; Russia Formally Recognizes Separatist Territories of Ukraine; State Department Says Putin's Actions Are "Major Escalation". Aired 9-9:30 ET

Aired February 22, 2022 - 09:00   ET

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

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BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Breaking news this morning: Vladimir Putin moves in. The Russian president ordering troops into Eastern Ukraine as secretary of state Antony Blinken calls it, quote, "a clear attack on Ukraine's sovereignty."

Good morning, everyone. I'm Bianna Golodryga in New York.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): And I'm Jim Sciutto, reporting from Lviv, Ukraine.

New this morning, a fierce response and a clear message from Germany and the U.K. to Putin's provocation. The German chancellor has halted the certification for Nord Stream 2, a Russia-to-Germany natural gas pipeline, with major economic and geopolitical implications.

While the U.K. has levied new sanctions on Russian banks and oligarchs, the White House says the U.S. will be imposing its own additional sanctions on Russia in the coming hours this morning, describing what is to come as, quote, "significant."

And while the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, says he does not think there will be a war, he is warning his people to prepare for further Russian aggression.

Our reporters and correspondents are following every angle of this story from across the region and back home. Let's begin this morning in the region. International diplomatic editor, Nic Robertson, in Moscow and Europe editor, Nina dos Santos, in London.

Nic, Russian president Vladimir Putin, he has ordered troops into the separatist-held regions of Ukraine in the east last night. We heard White House official press this morning as to whether this constitutes an invasion, using the phrasing, "it is the beginning of an invasion."

What do you see from where you are?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: What we're hearing here is from the spokesman for President Putin. He's being typically, if you will, unclear about whether Russian forces actually went in last night, if they're going in today or when they might be going in.

Clearly Putin has enabled it to happen. He said they would be going in as peacekeepers; Russia typically opaque about these sorts of movements. But what has been very clear for some time is that Russia has been advising, directing, supporting and supplying, though they deny it, the separatists in Donbas.

So this does appear to be something that is in the process of happening. And typically the way that Russia has sort of been dissembling its information, there is every reason to believe at the moment that the forces could have crossed or are crossing at this time.

But the official line is that the spokesman just doesn't know.

What we are hearing in the last few minutes from the deputy chairperson of Russia's national security council, Dmitry Medvedev, who, by the way, used to be the prime minister of Russia, used to be the president as well, he's saying, about Germany's Nord Stream 2 decision, welcome to the brave new world, where Europeans are going to be paying much higher prices for their gas.

So a threat already coming on account of that first implication of Russia's recognition of those separatist areas.

SCIUTTO: Yes. You might even call it energy extortion.

Nina, Nic brought it up there, Germany halting certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. This has enormous economic implications for Europe, also geopolitical implications as well. And it has been discussed for some time, Germany was not willing to pull the trigger; they are now.

What is the significance?

NINA DOS SANTOS, CNNMONEY EUROPE EDITOR: Yes, finally under intense international pressure here, Jim. This also is significant because it comes at a time when Europe is contending with an energy crisis, where energy prices are higher.

The supplies coming from Russia, the largest supplier to this region, have been dwindling for some time, all part of that plethora of different levers that Vladimir Putin has been using and ones that he's used on countries in this part of the world a decade or so ago, when he turned off the taps to places like Ukraine and also Belarus a number of years ago.

So this is a situation that the E.U. has seen before. But nevertheless many people in this part of the world have been aghast that Germany has allowed this pipeline to be built, completed in September and actually filled with gas.

But as you pointed out again, now, finally, it has come to the 11th hour and the new German government has decided to halt the ratification process of this pipeline.

This is significant for Russia because it robs the Russians of vital amounts of money for a country that isn't even among the top 10 economies in the world. Russia is about 11th at the moment. And it was supposed to get about $15 billion from this pipeline.

Also for Germany as well, Germany had a big energy policy change back in 2011, when the former chancellor, Angela Merkel, decided to pivot away from nuclear energy. And this is what has got Germany into this predicament. This pipeline was supposed to supply about 50 percent more gas for Germany at a time when people needed it.

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DOS SANTOS: But that situation will change. And this is just part of the plethora of sanctions that we're expecting later today.

SCIUTTO: Nic Robertson, we're in something of a gray zone now. The U.S., NATO have been warning of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. We have not seen that yet, though we should remind folks at home that the forces Russia has arranged around Ukraine, they remain, they maintain the capability.

But this is not that, Nic.

This presents a challenge, does it not, to the U.S. and NATO as to how they respond further going forward?

ROBERTSON: It does. It is not as simple as it might have seemed on paper a week or so ago. But what is clear, this is from President Putin's playbook, this steady pressure and squeeze on Ukraine, squeezing because the provocations going across the line of control toward -- from the Donbas separatist side toward the Ukrainian side -- and the accusations from the Russian government, that it is the Ukrainians stirring up the fight here, those kind of military provocations will go on.

And the Ukrainian government very well aware that what Putin is trying to do is tempt and goad them into a fight. Those separatist forces will now be bolstered by more direct support from the Russian government; although those Russian forces going in will be peacekeepers.

So there is that military squeeze, trying to goad a reaction that Russia can then respond to. That's what Ukraine is expecting.

And then there is the political squeeze, because, by taking essentially, you know, taking a step toward annexing the territory, recognizing the independence of those separatist areas, what Vladimir Putin is doing is putting pressure on Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian leader, and looking for political divisions to open up, to weaken the leadership, to find the narrative, to probe further, create weakness and hope that somebody launches a military response against his forces that he can then respond back to.

SCIUTTO: Those forces, by the way, will be much closer to the line of contact that has been maintained so far between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces. Now these would be conceivably uniformed Russian forces.

Nic Robertson, Nina dos Santos, thanks so much to both of you.

Bianna, so much to consider here.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, and, Jim, we should remind our viewers that Volodymyr Zelensky, this is why he was arguing that sanctions should be preemptive, coming before any Russian troops enter his country once again.

And now here we are, finally seeing the sanctions enacted and announced. But once again, we already have Russian troops in his country.

Meantime, the White House is now describing Russia's actions as the, quote, "beginning of an invasion" and vowing a strong response. CNN's chief business correspondent Christine Romans joins me now.

But let's begin with CNN's Jeremy Diamond at the White House.

Jeremy, this morning we heard from the deputy national security adviser, Jon Finer, saying significant sanction steps were coming in the next few hours.

How far will the White House go now?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, the White House is now describing these sanctions as significant and severe. And they will be coming in a matter of hours, according to the principal deputy national security adviser, Jon Finer.

And what is also notable is that the White House is now officially calling this an invasion, an invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces, after president Vladimir Putin ordered Russian forces to go into the Donbas, those regions controlled by those pro-Russian separatists after Putin recognized those two separatist regions as independent states.

I want you to listen to the words of the deputy national security adviser earlier today on CNN.

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JON FINER, U.S. DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: We think this is, yes, the beginning of an invasion, Russia's latest invasion into Ukraine. And you're already seeing the beginning of our response that we have said will be swift and severe.

I think the latest is important here. An invasion is an invasion and that is what is underway. But Russia has been invading Ukraine since 2014.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DIAMOND: And so now the question is, how far will the sanctions that the White House intends to impose today actually go?

We saw yesterday, of course, in the wake of the recognition of those two breakaway regions by Russia, U.S. prohibited new investment and trade to those two regions. Expect what is happening today to go a lot further.

But will it amount to the full package of swift and severe sanctions that President Biden has been promising if Russia invades Ukraine?

And it appears it won't go -- be the full package entirely but it will be something significant.

What Finer said today is that the White House always envisioned doing the sanctions as waves of sanctions as Russia continues to escalate its invasion on the path to war.

Will this include, for example, the steps of cutting off Russian banks from the SWIFT financial services system?

Will it include the export controls?

We'll have to wait and see. This will be a severe response from the United States, expected in a matter of hours -- Bianna.

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GOLODRYGA: That first wave seemed like nothing more than window dressing or symbolic, nothing really significant. We'll see what happens when the White House announces their continued sanctions later this morning. Jeremy, thank you.

So, Christine, Russia has always been saying they have built a fortress, right, in supplying themselves with enough reserves to withstand any sanctions from the West.

But question whether the West would be able to withstand any aftereffect, meaning that the threat of oil and gas not flowing to Europe at the rate that it was, we heard that threat and that tweet from --

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CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Sure.

GOLODRYGA: -- earlier.

What can investors expect to see and Americans expect to see in terms of the market?

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ROMANS: Nord Stream 2 is a really important sign of German, U.S. and NATO unity on this front here because this is important. A third of all of the natural gas consumed by the E.U. is from Russia.

So that Nord Stream 2 pipeline really incredibly important here. Global oil prices is where you're seeing this. Putin's provocation, his obsession with Ukraine threatens global stability.

Already this is feeding into this global inflation story we have been talking about. Oil prices around the world nearing $100 a barrel here. U.S. gas prices already up 20 cents over the past few weeks.

So that is showing you that all of this is still very uneasy for Europe and for the United States. It feeds into this inflation picture so much here. We have seen the ruble collapse; we have seen the Russian stock market get hurt. So these moves by Putin are hurting him.

But the country has been making moves recently to try to protect itself. The central bank overnight announced it would help protect Russian banks and Russian companies. And also Russian banks have been importing foreign currency.

When you look at foreign currency imports in Russia, just in December, double the pace of the prior year. So something happening there, at the highest levels of the government, preparing for what the fallout will be from global participants.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, Russia has over $650 billion in reserves, in preparation for a situation like this.

We should note, for viewers at home, Nord Stream 2 is not even completed yet, it is not functional.

ROMANS: That's right.

GOLODRYGA: So the threat of withholding gas supply has nothing to do with Nord Stream 2. It would come from Russia directly deciding to withhold that gas.

ROMANS: Also really important to note that, you know, the Europeans have had years to try to figure out a way to be less reliant on Russia, if Russia is not going to be a good player with NATO and with the rest of Europe. And so it just shows you how vulnerable they still are there.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, so many years later.

ROMANS: Right.

GOLODRYGA: Christine Romans, thank you.

And up next, a general who commanded NATO forces during Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014, joins CNN live. What he thinks the U.S. must do now in response to Vladimir Putin.

Plus, jury deliberations underway in the federal hate crimes trial for the three men convicted of killing Ahmaud Arbery. We're live in Brunswick, Georgia, ahead.

And breaking this morning, a victory for women's soccer: Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan and other members of the U.S. national team just reached a multimillion dollar settlement over equal pay. We have got the details up next.

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SCIUTTO: As Russian troops head into what is known as the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine, here are the facts about those territories.

The war in Eastern Ukraine began in 2014 after Russia's annexation of Crimea. And the fighting in Luhansk and Donetsk has killed more than 14,000 people in the years since.

To be clear, both Crimea and Donbas are parts of Ukraine, inside its sovereign borders, whatever claim Moscow makes over them.

Russian-backed separatists control about a third of the Donbas area. But until now, no government, including Russia, formally recognized those self-declared republics as independent. Ukrainians refer to them as invaders and occupiers. They refuse to talk to their leaders directly.

Russia has always maintained it had no soldiers on the ground there but the U.S. and NATO say, no, the Kremlin supplies the separatists with weapons and embeds their own officers inside their ranks. Now the Russian military support is direct and in clear violation of international law.

GOLODRYGA: For more on this we're joined now by retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges. He was the NATO commander when Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea.

Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, thank you so much for joining us this morning. So listen, for anybody watching this space or our network, for that matter, going into Eastern Ukraine for Russia really was sort of low-hanging fruit.

That was the most likely option in terms of sending troops in, if that's what Vladimir Putin ultimately would decide.

I'm curious; given that, do you think it is surprising that it seems to have been hours and now we're still waiting for a definitive or a more aggressive response from the United States, in terms of sanctions, as opposed to what we saw last night, really just sanctioning that region as a whole?

LT. GEN. BEN HODGES (RET.), FORMER COMMANDER, NATO ALLIED LAND COMMAND: Well, thanks. You and Jim both have perfectly framed the situation and the description. And I wish more elected officials would talk about the fact that this is really a continuation of what started in 2014. This is not a new war or something.

This is just the next phase. I believe that the Kremlin understands that we would be hesitant or uncertain when it comes to sanctions, because they didn't launch 100,000 troops in a gigantic assault headed down the highway toward Kyiv. Instead, they have found this kind of a middle ground.

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HODGES: Your phrase "low-hanging fruit" is not far off the mark, because the objective is to bring about the collapse of the Zelensky government. And they want to do that by choking the Ukrainian economy like a boa constrictor wrapped around the country.

That's why I think going into the Donbas will help contribute to that squeezing of Ukraine's economy.

SCIUTTO: So if this is more a suffocation strategy as opposed to a blitzkrieg-like assault that U.S. officials have been warning for some time, do you believe the response so far, the sanctions today -- we should be hearing some more in the coming hours -- as well as the movement of some NATO forces further to the east -- not inside Ukraine, we should note but NATO allies in the east -- do you believe that mix of steps has been sufficient?

HODGES: Not yet. Look, the White House and the Pentagon obviously have access to intelligence that I would not have. And I do believe that what they have reported or predicted was absolutely on one of our list of options for the Kremlin.

The Russian general staff has done a good job of providing options for Putin to use, depending on how they saw the reaction and so on. But I just don't believe that the large assault like that is feasible or that they would be willing to accept the casualties they would incur against Ukrainian forces.

Having said that, I wish that our first response last night, coming out of the blocks, had been something a little bit more robust than just putting sanctions on these characters from the two breakaway republics.

I was heartened to see what I heard from Prime Minister Johnson today about banks being targeted. This is a little bit more substantial. I think that we need to continue to increase the delivery of things like Javelin, counterfire radar and so on. This should look like the Berlin airlift.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, especially since we have been hearing for weeks now from this administration that their approach would be different; following the invasion and annexation in 2014, that they learned a lot of lessons since then and they have done many counter tabletop exercises to plan for any scenario.

And then here we are, still waiting to hear for firmer sanctions out of the administration.

What is your take about the continued Russian troop presence in Belarus and the fact that Russia announced, following their joint exercises, that they will be there indefinitely? HODGES: Yes, this is all connected, of course. And I don't think anybody would be surprised -- was surprised to hear that Russian troops were going to stay in Belarus a little bit longer than what everybody said, the Russian and Belarusian officials said would be the end of the exercise.

The fact that they're still there, not a surprise. I think this is the next step in the annexation or what they refer to as the union state, where Belarus joins Russia into one large union state; President Putin becoming the head of the union state.

Lukashenko, probably the illegitimate president of Belarus, goes into retirement this summer out to Sochi, I'm guessing. And now you've got -- of course, nobody in Europe will shed a tear for Lukashenko. I mean, the guy's terrible.

So there won't be a lot of pushback about this creation of the union state, except that you're going to end up with thousands of Russian troops that are based in Belarus. And our allies in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, this is not a good situation there, particularly around what we call the Suwalki corridor.

So this is happening at the same time while we're all looking at Ukraine.

GOLODRYGA: It does appear to be a situation where Vladimir Putin only seems to be more and more emboldened by the moment. Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, thank you as always.

HODGES: Thanks for the privilege.

GOLODRYGA: In the next hour, closing arguments are set to begin in the trial for three former police officers accused of violating George Floyd's civil rights. We're live in Minnesota.

Plus, the opening bell on Wall Street is just moments away. The first day of trading this week after the President's Day holiday. U.S. stock futures are down as investors weigh the impact of the Russian incursion into Ukraine.

Global markets tumbled overnight as well and crude oil prices surged to $99 a barrel. Moscow's stock index has lost, meantime, more than $40 billion this week alone.

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GOLODRYGA: Just moments ago, jurors began their second day of deliberations in the federal hate crimes trial for the three white men convicted of chasing down and killing Ahmaud Arbery.

At the heart of the case, the defendants' history of racist text messages. CNN's Nadia Romero is live in Brunswick, Georgia.

Nadia, jurors had just begun deliberations this morning, when they came to the judge with a question.

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GOLODRYGA: What do we know about that that question was?