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Russia Launches Large-Scale Military Invasion Of Ukraine. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired February 24, 2022 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

LT. GEN. DOUGLAS LUTE (RET.), FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO NATO: There will be Russian casualties. They will lose aircraft. They will lose armored vehicles and so forth. But the Ukrainian simply cannot stop the Russian assault. What's more telling down the road, however, will be that the Ukrainian populace will fight. So it's one thing to topple the regime in Kyiv. It's another thing to control the country. And if we learned anything from the last 20 years of our own national experience, the hard part will be the control of the country after the regime falls.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Yes, the occupation. Ambassador Douglas Lute, thank you so much. Good to see you. Again, a full-fledged attack by the Russian military on an independent sovereign nation, Ukraine, it's underway right now. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:35:32]

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: I'm Erin Burnett live from Lviv, Ukraine. Soon, President Joe Biden will speak at the White House in a moment of global crisis. Vladimir Putin has set fire to Ukraine. We're in the midst of a war. Russian rockets leaving smoke trails on their way towards targets across this country. Heavy, thick black smoke marking a new Russian attack nearly every hour, it's been groups of onslaughts a pause and then more onslaughts and sirens across this country.

The volleys have pushed Ukrainians into desperation as their military right now as we speak, is fighting across this country trying to mount a defense. Innocent people right now are trying to figure out what to do. Some are just trying to survive, cramming into subway stations in fear of a broader Russian blitzkrieg.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And what will you do now? Will you stay here tonight?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, I think yes. Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you have food? Do you have everything you need? This is what you have?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes and water. That's all.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You seemed remarkably strong, given how scary the situation is.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We try to be brave, because we have children and we don't want it to show them that we are sacred.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: We're going to have more from Ukraine throughout the hour. You know, Jake, I just want to say one thing, you know, going out and walking around today, obviously, you know, it's an eerie experience. You know, most all the shops are shuttered. The only lines as I said, were at ATMs. Some people were still out because humans are humans, they some would come to work. Thank goodness, they came to work at our hotel, right? People trying desperately to figure out what they were supposed to do amidst this fear and what is going to come next.

One young woman I talked to, Jake, I think just captured so much of what we've heard, right? She's not someone who's going to be fighting on the frontlines, but she's so passionate about our country. So what she said to me Jake was, before this happened in the past two weeks, and I've been talking to her, she said I had a plan to go to Poland. I had a plan to get out. And then she said, once it happened, there's no way I'm going to stay until the end because I believe in my country. And sort of, Jake, I'll be honest, it brought tears to my eyes. And that's what we're seeing everywhere.

TAPPER: Erin Burnett in the western part of Ukraine in Lviv, please stay safe. I want to bring in some of my colleagues here to try to break this all down. Dana Bash, Abby Phillip, John King, and CNN national security analyst and former Director of National Intelligence, retired General James clapper. General Clapper, let me try this again to set the stage about why this is so important what Putin did today. It was anticipated that he might try to do what he did with Crimea, which is seize a little bit of a chunk of the country. Not that that makes it acceptable. But that was what he -- people thought he was going to do.

Let me start by showing the map of the Donbass region in southeastern Ukraine, which is the region that people thought he was going to seize. And you can see in the yellow and white shaded area there, that is the one-third of the Donbass region that is controlled by Russian backed separatists. There's a war that's been fought there for the last eight years. And Putin just declared and recognized the entirety of the Donbass region to be two independent states. And then yesterday, he claimed, the Kremlin claimed, that the separatists even though two-thirds of that area is controlled by the Ukrainian government, yesterday, the Kremlin claimed that separatists were saying please come send troops and rescue us and that was the pretext.

But let's take a look, let's pull out to the -- show the larger Ukrainian map. You can see the Donbass region in the in the right corner of Ukraine, but look at where all the places where there are explosions that have been heard and reported. That's all over the country. This no longer looks like he's going to be trying just to seize just the Donbass region again, not that that would be acceptable. But that Matthew Chance was 15, 20 miles outside of the capital of Kyiv. And he saw Russian troops. It had an exchange with them.

JAMES CLAPPER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, a lot of people thought that this would be Georgia 2.0 just seize two regions as he did in Georgia. And as you describe, Jake, the two states of Luhansk and Donetsk are Russian leaning, Russian speaking. The opposition has only control I think it's like one-half of one of those states and one-third of the other. The actual Donbass area that's actually in compass geographically is much greater than that. So yes, I think a lot of people hopefully, thought that he would just seize the Donbass region even that would have set up hostile combat conditions.

[12:40:18]

Well, obviously, by the nature of the attack, we have explosions all over the country, which I think has done for two purposes, military targets, but also the shock and awe make it difficult for the Ukrainian government to respond. And, of course, unfortunately, Ukrainian government in the interest of promoting calm and really not prepared the civil population. So is the catastrophe in the making, in my view, but no question. Putin's objective and you're not very subtle about it was all of Ukraine.

TAPPER: And John King put this in some sort of context for us most of the people watching right now have not been to Ukraine or not familiar with these cities. These are western areas, and not that that makes them superior but it's just like, what would this be like in the United States?

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: I think the scope of it is why you have the gravity of the words. President Zelensky saying a new Iron Curtain, Boris Johnson saying this is not just an attack on Ukraine, it's an attack on freedom and democracy. Why? You can put that map back up there of where the explosions are. Ukraine is about the size of Texas, if you're thinking about this, from this context of the United States. The population though, is 44 million people. That's about 5 million people more than California. It's about 5 or 6 million more than Iraq or Afghanistan, if you want to think about populations in recent conflicts we have gone through.

But if you look at that map right there, where we see an explosion in the capital of Kyiv, has about 3 million people, little shy of that, so a little bigger than Chicago, a little smaller than Los Angeles. You move over to Kharkiv as you talked about, 1.4 million people, that's Dallas, Texas, right? You drop below that. And you see Dnipro down below there, just shy of a million people, that's Fort Worth, Texas, there have been explosions in.

You drop down to the sea, you see Odessa, San Jose, California, a million people right there. You go out to the West, you see Lviv where we had reporting earlier, that's about the size of D.C. or Boston. You know, a medium sized city like that. So the scope of this is what gets you to the idea that Vladimir Putin does not want to take those separatists regions that he wants to take Ukraine, which is I think as we wait to hear from the President of the United States, what will he say.

Vladimir Putin has taken bites in Georgia, he has taken bites in Crimea, he has taken bites in those separative regions. He's trying to take a country. He's trying to take a country. And this is General Clapper knows this territory better than I do, but this is a giant test for NATO and the West. Ukraine is not a member. But NATO had to redefine itself 33 years ago when the wall fell. It had to redefine itself again, 20 years ago, after 9/11. This is a definitional moment for the Western alliance, this security structure was set up to prevent this even though this is not a member, what does it do?

TAPPER: Right. There are 30 members of NATO. Some of the countries that surround Ukraine are members, some are allied or Belarus is allied with Russia. What does this do, Abby, to the NATO alliance and to the challenges there?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: This is the most important test in many decades for NATO and for President Biden to explain to the American public why they should care. I think many Americans have for a long time felt like these conflicts were more or less stable. They've been dormant for a long time. And this is waking them up to the fact that the world order that we've been living under is no longer rock solid. It's been under attack for many years under former President Trump. And now this is a moment of testing.

And as John explained, this is a large country that is experiencing attacks all across the country, potentially creating a massive humanitarian crisis that will spill into Europe. And also, if you look at the map, where some of these attacks are happening, very close to our NATO allies creating the possibility of inadvertent or maybe even not inadvertent conflict with NATO that President Biden was asked about weeks ago at a press conference, this is a real challenge for President Biden to state what will the United States do if that were to happen? And how do we stop Putin from going any further than he is already gone?

TAPPER: And President Biden Dana has been talking since the beginning of his presidency, and even before then about how the world is now divided between autocracies and democracies. This is exactly what he was talking about.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It is, you know, for the most part, he started out his presidency trying to focus on China, which fits into the first category that you talked about. But he is somebody who, more than a lot of people who ran for this office, everybody who ran for this office, he is somebody who, in theory, understands the region. When he was vice president, he went to the capital of Ukraine, to Kyiv. He was -- he's the highest ranking official to have gone since then. Nobody has gone, the vice president under Donald Trump, Mike Pence, he didn't go for reasons we won't get into now.

[12:45:02]

But that really gives him, should give him an understanding and the people who work for him, worked for him back then. The thing that I'm going to be listening for is what you were mentioning, Abby, how the President sets the scene and explains the stakes for the American people. He's going to be speaking and trying to get a message to Vladimir Putin, to America's allies, but first and foremost, to the American people. Because for so many decades, there has been first a go back to the end of World War II, a fight for democracy, a fight against the likes of Adolf Hitler, and then it was a fight against communism.

And then more recently, it's been a fight against people who have taken over religious ideologies and twisted them around. This is different. This is going to be talking about a man who just wants to expand his power and has a perception that he talked about earlier this week that this is Russia's right. And so how is he going to address that as the leader of the free world along with America's allies?

TAPPER: Interesting. Thank you everyone. Our coverage on Russia's ongoing attack and invasion of Ukraine continues. Our CNN teams on the ground are currently hearing explosions. We're going to be live to the region next. We're going to squeeze in one quick break. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:51:10]

TAPPER: A tangible sense of panic and fear across the independent nation of Ukraine as Russia launches a full scale attack and invasion of that country. Many Ukrainians are now trying to flee as strikes continue on major cities in Ukraine. Some people are lined up at banks, earlier today they did, hoping to withdraw cash from ATMs as they rush to leave the country. CNN senior national security correspondent Alex Marquardt is in the southeastern city of Mariupol. Alex, what have you seen and heard there today?

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, we are not too far from that line of contact between the Ukrainian forces and the Russia back forces those territories that now we know Russian actual troops are heading into more and more every day. And we have heard shelling throughout the course of the day. It sounds like a low rumble kind of like thunder coming from there in the east from that direction of the line of contact.

Jake, you and I have talked a lot over the past two weeks about the calm, the lack of chaos here among Ukrainians. There has been understandably a palpable shift. We get came back to Mariupol today after a couple of days away. And it is significantly different. Those lines you mentioned at -- all of the ATMs that we saw people sneaking up to those ATMs to try to get money out. We asked them if they planned on leaving. Some said that they would like to, some said they didn't know whether they would be able to, and others asked, well, where will we go?

So there is a real change here coming into Mariupol. People we're streaming out in cars and trucks. We saw long lines at gas stations. People lining up to get gas which they may assume will be soon in short supply. But, Jake, people here Mariupol know that they are wedged between two significant Russian forces. To the east, you have those Russian troops and the Russian backed forces in the separatists areas. To the west, you have troops in Crimea. And just a short time ago, we heard from President Zelensky saying that, who gave an update on the fight. He said that the forces, Ukrainian forces in the East and Donbass are doing exceptionally well, but that the toughest fighting is in the south around Crimea.

He said that troops from Russia are trying to come up through Crimea and head towards a town west of us just about 100 miles away. Jake, you know, well, that, you know, this is a strategic town for, it could be very strategic for the Russians. And so now you have Russian forces who appeared to be aiming for it on both sides. You have designs on this area from both sides, Jake?

TAPPER: Alex Marquardt in Mariupol thank you so much. Let's go now back to Erin Burnett, who's in the western part of Ukraine of the city of Lviv. Erin?

BURNETT: Yes, I mean, you know, that's one of the things you've seen, right? You have missiles as Antony Blinken said that they would come down across this country and they did. And now you have those ground troops that have been coming in through the day and in the fog of war. Jake, we're learning exactly where they're fighting and what they're doing in the south without heavy fighting in the north up near Chernobyl around in so many points of this country.

Well, as this is happening here, much of the word uniting to condemn Russia's predawn attack on Ukraine, including right here in Lviv. On the left, Russian missiles are being fired across the border at targets in Ukraine. On the right side of your screen, Russian tanks, part of the arsenal unleashed, armored vehicles, attack helicopters, jets, Russian airborne troops. We've seen artillery. It is a full scale invasion. It is well underway. It is happening now. It has already killed dozens of civilians and military personnel.

Meantime, Russian President Putin has called on Ukrainian forces to lay down their arms to avoid widespread bloodshed. There's no indication of any such thing occurring. Nic Robertson is in Moscow for us today. And Nic, you know where you are today, a crucial place to be. A short time ago Russian riot police ordered anti-war protesters who I understand did brave things to come out there near you to disperse. Tell me what you're seeing and how much resistance is there to President Putin?

[12:55:30]

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, Erin, I'm literally going to step out of the way of the camera right now, because you can see three people here, just being arrested. There isn't so much of a central protest here, these are some leaders here that are in this central area of Moscow while we've been here for the past 45 minutes as another person being dragged out of the subway here by his face being dragged by the police getting arrested for stuff against the vehicle.

We've seen dozens of people being arrested here over the last 45 minutes. Now what the police have been explaining here is that there is no authorized anti-war protest allowed here. We've seen people when they've been arrested, the police search their bags, and they take out of their bags, signs that say, stop the war. Then they're loaded into the police vans, we've seen that happen time after time after time over the last 45 minutes here.

We know across the country and dozens of cities there have been protests similar to this. The government says they're not authorized protests. They warn people not to attend them. They say that people can get arrested, that there will be legal repercussions. And the government even says, you know, if you get a criminal record for criminal activity at one of these events, then that can affect you for the rest of your life. And I'll just spin around this way. Here's another man just be taken away and arrested here.

This is happening literally by the minute and I'm looking at another one, two people coming up behind Lilian (ph) our cameraman -- camerawoman, two, three, four, five, six. So there's six other people here. Literally while we've been talking to you in the past couple of minutes, more than 10 people have been arrested. There's another man being taken away. That's what we're witnessing here.

And we just spin the camera around a little bit and you can see some of the other police officers that are here. They're dotted all around here, lined along the road in this direction, the other side of the street, across the road over there, the big square close to where we are, that's been closed off to the public. And the police are getting on their megaphones every few minutes to tell people you're not authorized to be here. Go in the metro, take the underground, take the tube and leave the area.

But every so often people are getting arrested. We know so far today at least about an hour ago, more than 160 people across the country have been arrested. It will seem to me now it's at least 200 from what we've seen here. Erin?

BURNETT: Wow, Nic Robertson, those people it is bold and it is brave what they are doing. Thank you so very much. And our breaking news coverage continues after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)