Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Biden Announces New Sanctions On Russia As Putin Orders Troops Into Ukraine; All Three Arbery Killers Found Guilty Of Federal Hate Crimes. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired February 22, 2022 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: In the last few days, I've been in constant contact with European leaders, including with Ukrainian President Zelensky.

Vice President Harris met in person with the leaders in Germany over the weekend at the Munich conference, including President Zelensky.

At every step, we have shown the United States and our allies and partners are working in unison, which he hasn't been counting on, Mr. Putin.

We're united in our support of Ukraine. We are united in our opposition to Russian aggression. And we're united in our resolve to defend our NATO alliance.

And we're united in our understanding of the urgency and seriousness of the threat Russia is making to global peace and stability.

Yesterday, the world heard clearly the full extent of Vladimir Putin's twisted rewrite of history, going back more than a century, as he waxed eloquently, noting that -- well, I'm not going to go into it.

But nothing in Putin's lengthy remarks indicate any interest in pursuing real dialog on European security in the year 2022.

He directly attacked Ukraine's right to exist.

He indirectly threatened territory formerly held by Russia, including nations that today are thriving democracies and members of NATO.

He explicitly threatened war unless his extreme demands were met.

And there's no question that Russia is the aggressor.

So, we're clear eyed about the challenges we're facing. Nonetheless, there's still time to avert the worst-case scenario that will bring untold suffering to millions of people if they move as suggested.

The United States and our allies and partners remain open to diplomacy, if it is serious.

When all is said and done, we're going to judge Russia by its actions, not its words.

And whatever Russia does next, we're ready to respond with unity, clarity, and conviction.

I'll probably have more to say about this as it moves on. I'm hoping diplomacy is still available.

Thank you all very much.

(CROSSTALK)

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: President Biden there announcing what he calls the first tranche of sanctions in response to Russia's actions there along the border and in Ukraine now.

Announcing full blocking sanctions for two banks there. Cutting off Russia from Western financing as well.

Let's bring in the full panel. We're adding chief political analyst, Gloria Borger, to the conversation as well.

But I want to go to Erin Burnett first.

The sanctions that the president announced, are these severe? Are these going to be impactful?

ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: Look, versus what we've heard from the U.K. and Europe, yes, absolutely, they are. They're starting way higher than they started before.

They took five months to do the first sanctions related to Crimea. They are significant, right, cutting off from the financial system, significant.

Keep in mind, though, some of these -- he's giving himself room to ramp up. The Senate couldn't reach a sanctions bill. The bank they put on their list with the investment VBD. You heard the president mentioned it.

Now he's sanctioned that -- it is an investment bank -- it leaves him room to ramp up big time to a Russian bank that, say, Russians all bank at that would impact day-to-day life in Russia.

Hasn't yet done that yet. That's important to keep in mind.

The sovereign debt, you know, a few years ago would have been significant for Russia. It's important. It sends Putin a strong message.

They do, though, have a huge government rainy day fund right now and a surplus. So in that sense, it's not going to immediately -- Putin has been preparing, as Clarissa pointed out, for this eventuality.

So we'll wait and see exactly what that list is. I don't have it yet, of the oligarchs and how big and broad that is. Because that's hugely important. If they get angry and upset, it could have an impact on Putin and put

more pressure on him than anyone in the inner circle that we saw in that room yesterday.

So starting at a higher point than anywhere in Europe, and higher than many may have thought. But there's runway to ramp these up.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: General Zwack, what if the sanctions are not a deterrent for Putin going farther, as President Biden predicted he would into Ukraine? What next here?

BRIG GEN. PETER ZWACK, U.S. ARMY, RETIRED: I agree with the sanctions' approach. However there's a big basket of them out there.

But a scenario that a lot of analysts, a lot of people are concerned about is if the Russians, the Kremlin, decides that Donetsk and Luhansk aren't enough and they want the rest of the Donbass, the rest of eastern Ukraine.

Now they have to conduct military operations where if not hundreds of thousands of soldiers, Ukrainians, and all of that would be killed in trying to push through the Minsk Accord, with a line of contact that is right now dividing the Russians to -- and the Ukrainian militaries.

[14:35:05]

So that becomes a key point that, at that point, it's time to unleash -- I mean, it's out -- there's no -- there already is no ambiguity.

The relentlessness, the implacability of this, is mind boggling.

If the Russians come over that line of contact, thousands will be killed. And at this point, you unleash everything that we have, short of, you know, boots on the ground in Ukraine.

It's that serious now.

BLACKWELL: Nic Robertson, not only the economic sanctions announced by the president, but also moving forces already in Europe to the Baltic States, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia.

How do you think this announcement lands in Moscow?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Victor, I got to say, this is a very surreal situation here right now.

For whatever reason, somebody not far from our office here is launching a huge barrage of fireworks here in Moscow. Heaven knows what they're celebrating at the moment.

But it's not that uncommon to have fireworks here. But there were certainly firework in the Donbass region when President Putin made his announcement last night.

I think, to the point of your question, though, that what -- you know, what impact is this going to -- what impact is this going to have? It's hard to see at the moment that President Putin is going to be put

off of his stride. He seems very committed in the direction he's going at the moment.

Ramping up the rhetoric and military force in Ukraine has certainly given the grounds to do that by saying the independent areas that he has recognized are not just the bits controlled by the separatists.

But parts of those areas are controlled by the Ukrainian government.

The -- he knew that this new round of sanctions was going to hit people close to him in his inner circle, people that, it was hoped, would then be pressuring him, you know, to dial back his situation.

But he does seem to be in a position -- we cannot say alone -- but he has put himself in a position where this is very personal, that he has committed himself to this strategy, this line that Ukraine is part of Russia.

This is going to be very hard for him to walk back from unless he hears from some very key people close to him. It's not clear those people are ready to speak up, that they're going to be sufficiently impacted.

The central bank earlier today said, with the reserves of the rainy day fund that he has, that they were going to be able to support the country through economic troubles.

That's what his -- that's the narrative here at the moment.

CAMEROTA: Michael Bociurkiw, give us your assessment of what we just heard from President Biden?

MICHAEL BOCIURKIW, FORMER SPOKESMAN, SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE (OSCE): Very interesting. I think it would have been nice if he had actually arrived on our -- in our inbox a few days or weeks ago.

In terms of sanctioning the bank, since about 2018, Putin has been creating rainy day funds, slush funds, if you will, for the banks and also for Russia oligarchs through the $3 billion slush fund for Russian oligarchs who have been already sanctioned by the West.

So I don't know how far that will hit them.

For the longest time, I have been saying and writing for CNN Opinion that Russia has been deep in the process of inoculating itself against these Western sanctions.

So I don't think, sadly, this will be much of a deterrent.

So I think what the general said about the power available there to Putin is, yes, they will probably cross that contact line.

At the moment, in Donetsk, the Russian-backed thugs control the industrial heartland. Luhansk is more of a hinterland. I think you could probably see a push to Mariupol in the south, which is a port city.

One more quick thing, if I will, in terms of the oligarchs, I think that is a crucial area to fine tune. And Boris Johnson in the U.K. has been working on that.

I think we have to get to a place where you are a persona non grata if you're a Russian oligarch. Whether you go to Miami, London, Vancouver, you will not move around, and your credit cards will not work.

This is the only way that will get pressure back on to Putin to stop.

But like many of the panelists have said, he's probably made up his mind. That the speech last night was blood curdling.

We may be, sadly, in a position where there's little deterrence left.

[14:39:59]

BLACKWELL: Gloria Borger, on the politics of this, for people who bemoaned what they believed was the abdication of American leadership in the world stage in the last administration.

And cheered when President Biden said America is back for the first year of his presidency.

He says now, this is what the cost can be, saying that defending freedom will have a cost.

It comes at a time when the practical costs for a lot of people in this country is stressful.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. And he -- you know, did say that. He didn't go into specifics. I don't think this was the speech he wanted to do that in.

But he did say, look, I care that Americans don't suffer as a result of this. We have to protect our consumer, for example, from rising prices at the pump.

But what really struck me was the president's tone and the president's language here. This really was the language of war, I think.

He called Putin's speech a twisted rewrite of history, saying there's no doubt, no question, that Russia is the aggressor.

And it's very clear that the point he was trying to make today is the one thing that Vladimir Putin did not expect, is that American allies would work in unison.

He also made it very clear that this is the first tranche, as he said, and you've spoken about what that contained. There's more coming. I don't think he wanted to lift the veil on that completely.

But I think the seriousness of the situation was something you could see in the president's face and you can see in his language.

When he spoke about there's no justification for this, Russia bears the full responsibility.

And trying to get Americans to understand about the cost of defending freedom, which has always been a theme for Joe Biden. And now here it is.

Didn't take questions. Walked off the stage curtly. Talking to the allies.

I think we're going to see this unfold in real time in the hours to come as there are more sanctions, if Putin doesn't change his mind, which nobody predicts, of course, that he will.

CAMEROTA: Yes. I was struck by the language, too. It was quintessential Biden, I thought --

BORGER: Yes.

CAMEROTA: -- when he said, who in the lord's name does Putin think gives him the authority to declare, you know, this of his independent neighbors. That was, I thought, pretty Biden-esque.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Clarissa, how do you think President Biden's words will be received in Kyiv now and beyond?

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think, in Kyiv, there will be a sense of appreciation. These are robust sanctions and robust rhetoric. And that's what they want to hear. So there will be a degree of gratitude.

But I think there's a real sense at the moment that, no matter what sanctions were announced, that is not going to necessarily deter President Putin from his current course of action.

So I guess the question becomes, for people here, is there still an opportunity to deescalate? Is there an off ramp for President Putin? What would that look like?

Before, behind closed doors, people had talked about, well, maybe Ukraine would be forced to implement the Minsk agreements, which were traditionally seen as being in favor of Russia.

Now Minsk is completely off the table. We know that the issue of NATO's open-door policy is off the table.

You start scratching your head and asking yourself, is there anything left that could be done to try to forge ahead a diplomatic path?

And maybe it's not just coming to me right now. But I can't think of anything off the top of my head.

Which then leads me to go back to the line that President Biden said during his announcement just now where he talked about them setting up a rationale to take more territory by force. Of course, as President Putin had earlier said, talking about those

two breakaway separatist republics and recognizing them by their own self-declared borders.

Which, as you've heard from Michael and Nic, go beyond the areas that they hold right now and go into large city centers.

You're talking about Mariupol, a port city, half a million people. We've seen people gathering in the streets there tonight carrying Ukrainian flags.

What happens to these people if they do decide to go ahead -- Russian troops -- with those pro-Russian separatists and launch some kind of major incursion?

How is the West going to respond now? How does the U.S. respond to that?

Because at a certain point, it becomes obvious that the sanctions are not enough to prevent that kind of an escalation because it's so clear that President Putin has already factored them in to his equation.

I guess the question diplomats are asking themselves now is, what is left? What more can be done? Is there something that could still avert a catastrophe?

[14:45:08]

And people here are on the ground in Ukraine, needless to say, very much hoping there's and very much committed to a path of peace.

And yet, a grim recognition is apparently settling in that it just may not be possible.

BLACKWELL: John Harwood, on the question of the possibilities of diplomacy moving forward, there had been this summit agreed to in principle.

No specific date or time or any of the particulars there between President Putin and President Biden.

Considering the context, if there had been no invasion -- the White House is calling it that. So they have not been clear if that will move forward.

But do we know if the meeting between the Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and Secretary of State Blinken is moving forward?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Victor, that's why I think the point that Clarissa was just making is so important.

It is still -- as grim as the situation appears, we still do not have a clear picture of Vladimir Putin's end game in any near-term scenario.

You did not hear from President Biden that the Secretary of State Blinken/Sergey Lavrov meeting that's scheduled for Thursday, you did not hear that was off.

You did not hear anything about the potential for this -- for a meeting with Vladimir Putin, or virtual or otherwise, which is, of course, all contingent on there not being an invasion.

But we also did not hear the president lay out in any detail what the United States believes has actually crossed the border.

We saw some video from Russian-controlled media, but we don't have a clear picture of how much has gone on.

I was just having a text exchange with our colleague, retired General Hertling, former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe.

He said there's been no kinetic activity yet. That makes the sanctions, the first tranche, appropriate to where we are in this scenario.

Until you have kinetic activity, you still do have some possibility for Vladimir Putin to pull back.

Does it look like that's what he's doing? He's laid out the justification and the angry argument for why Russia thinks it can seize more territory. So you have to assume that is the likely scenario.

But we don't have that in detail yet. And the president clearly left the path to diplomacy open.

CAMEROTA: General Zwack, you have laid out for us at the beginning of this conversation a chilling scenario of what happens next as Putin pushes towards that contact line and possibly beyond.

You know, President Biden has said for weeks, I mean, more than a month, the U.S. is not going to go to war with Russia, the U.S. is not going to go into Ukraine.

We already have troops in theater, but we're positioning them, you know, in NATO countries.

But what happens if we start to watch, you know, swaths of civilians being killed?

ZWACK: Yes. First, I believe that it is too darn dangerous not to talk until it really -- until they cross that line and start -- and if they start to get into a combat with the Ukrainians.

There's got to be a mechanism to blow off steam.

What we have seen, the tiger has shown its stripes. And any discussion I think that we would be very, very clear eyed and Europe.

On what could happen? We have a -- all of these are -- when I say minimal options, they're all dangerous and very significant.

One, is that, again, the -- all of Donetsk, including Mariupol, would be bloody. And there would be combat. That's one for the Russians. They may be able to justify it in their own mind.

Two, they go big. They go beyond Mariupol and try to push down to the Crimea, it becomes a long front, the becomes increasingly dangerous also for the Russians.

And then, three, the maximalist tragedy -- which is really the unbelievable because it would be crossing the Rubicon for the Russians as well -- is you do the Belarus down towards Kyiv, come down and through, and do the full-up thing.

Which, in my mind, is the road to perdition for the Russian military and the folks that would go in there.

And the other thing on the side is now the negotiations. Yes, you're talking to Putin, but you're talking to the regime. And through them, you're talking to the oligarchs and the money interest.

And a bad, extended war for Russia is bad for business. And that matters.

CAMEROTA: Well, obviously, this is a very precarious moment. And it is so helpful to have all of your expertise, everyone on our panel.

John Harwood, Erin Burnett, Gloria Borger, Clarissa Ward, Nic Robertson, retired Brigadier General Peter Zwack and Michael Bociurkiw, thank you all so much for helping us understand exactly where we are at this moment.

[14:50:07]

BLACKWELL: Thank you, everyone.

Now a day shy of two years since Ahmaud Arbery was chased down and killed. A jury just found the three men who killed him guilty of hate crime charges. We're live outside the Georgia courthouse. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:55:03]

BLACKWELL: In Brunswick, Georgia, a jury today found all three of Ahmaud Arbery's killers guilty of federal hate crimes.

The jury found that Gregory McMichael, his son, Travis McMichael, and their neighbor, William "Roddy" Byran, chased down and killed Arbery as he was jogging in a neighborhood two years ago because he was black.

CAMEROTA: Arbery's mother and father were emotional after the verdict.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WANDA COOPER-JONES, MOTHER OF AHMAUD ARBERY: I, as a mom, will never heal.

(CROSSTALK) COOPER-JONES: I want to go back to the DOJ. I told the DOJ that, yes, they were prosecutors. But one thing they didn't have, they didn't have a son that was lying in a cold grave.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER-JONES: And they still didn't hear my cry.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CNN's Nick Valencia joins us now from Brunswick, Georgia.

Nick, I assume this is why the family did not want the defendants to be able to plead guilty. There was so much evidence that came out at trial.

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And Alisyn, to think this trial almost didn't happen, if not for the courageous fight from Arbery's family.

We saw that evidence repeatedly put into evidence here. The repeated use of the N-word, referring to black people as savages or subhuman. That evidence would not have come out.

Remember, last month, the McMichaels had agreed to take a plea deal offered by the Department of Justice where they plead guilty to these hate crimes.

In return, they would have been allowed to serve out their sentence in federal prison. If they were still alive, would have then gone to serve their convicted murder sentence in state prison.

But ultimately, this is how the federal prosecutors painted these men as targeting, chasing down, shooting and killing Ahmaud Arbery simply because he was black. And a jury of their peers agreed.

After the verdict was announced, Wanda Cooper-Jones as well as Marcus Arbery Sr emerged from court holding their hands up briefly, saying they had gotten full justice.

You heard a short time ago, Wanda Cooper-Jones taking the moment to put the Department of Justice on blast and criticized them for the plea deal.

It was something Merrick Garland addressed, seeming to choke back tears of emotion.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MERRICK GARLAND, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: I cannot imagine the pain that a mother feels to have her son run down and then gunned down while taking a jog on a public street.

My heart goes out to her and to the family. That's really all I can say about this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VALENCIA: After the verdict, Wanda Cooper-Jones said to me that this message was farther beyond, that this was more important than just Brunswick, that this sends a message not just to the community here but all across the world that racism will not be tolerated.

I asked her, what kind of message does this send to the former district attorney who was effectively charged for covering this incident up, refusing to prosecute this case, initially?

She said that, to Jackie Johnson, "You covered up a murder."

And her attorney, Ben Crump, added, "We're coming for you next, Jackie Johnson" -- Victor, Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: Nick Valencia, thank you very much.

BLACKWELL: Well, ahead, we have more on the breaking news from Washington. President Biden announcing new sanctions on Russia after Vladmir Putin ordered Russian troops into parts of Ukraine.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)