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Sources: U.S. Expected To Impose Sanctions On Putin As Soon As Today; Ukraine's President Pledges To Defend His Country; Biden Nominates Ketanji Brown Jackson To Supreme Court. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired February 25, 2022 - 15:00   ET

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

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[15:02:21]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: It's the top of the hour on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Alisyn Camerota.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: I'm Victor Blackwell.

Erin Burnett is in Lviv, Ukraine.

Erin, what are you seeing there?

ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: Right now we have just had the beginning of the curfew. It's 10:00 local time. And the curfew has begun here, no one supposed to be out. And to be honest with you, even the afternoon hours when it was still daylight, very few people were out. Everything has very notably and significantly changed here in terms of people's attitudes and their willingness to be outside.

So, we do have that curfew just beginning here. And sources say President Biden could sanction Putin directly as soon as today for his decision to attack this country. The capital of Ukraine, as I speak, under siege. Russian forces are advancing towards it. There's fighting, constant fighting around that city. The skies over Ukraine's city have been lighting up with missile strikes.

U.S. intelligence believes Kyiv could fall within the next days. They said up to four days from the invasion and, of course, now we are days past that. It could be at any moment. Intelligence predicts that Vladimir Putin's plan now is to install his own puppet government if Kyiv topples.

Today, President Biden spoke with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had a conversation. And he asked the United States for more defense assistance.

Earlier, Zelensky said he's target number one for the Russians. His family is target number two as they move toward the capital where he's been in a bunker.

You see him coming out here appearing with his family. I'm sorry, all of his close advisers. He posted it online a short time ago. His defense minister was there.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT: Good evening, everyone. The leader of fraction is here. The head of the president's administration is here. Prime Minister Shmyhal is here. Podolyak is here. The president is here.

We are all here, our military are here. Citizens and society are here. We are all here defending our independence, our state and it will remain so.

Glory to our defenders. Glory to our women defenders. Glory to Ukraine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: And, of course, in the darkness the fighting continues in the battle for Kyiv. That's where Clarissa Ward is tonight. And our Sam Kylie is also in the eastern side of the country, Kropyvntskyi, Ukraine.

[15:05:03]

Nick Paton Walsh is in Kherson, Ukraine.

So, let's go across the country.

Clarissa, first in the capital where I know the mayor has said these next few hours into the early hours of Saturday morning could be the most crucial hours for the future of Kyiv. What are you seeing?

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, that's what we're hearing, Erin. And we can hear some light arms fire in the distance. We've also been able to hear a steady stream of thuds again in the distance, still some ways outside of the city. But we know that Russian paratroopers have managed to take over an airfield on the outskirts and there's a very real and palpable sense here that things could get really ugly tonight.

There's also a curfew in place. I don't know if we're able to pull up a couple of shots that we had from our cameras on the roof that give you a sense of the city. It's just absolutely silent. There's not a car on the street.

The only sound you can hear thuds in the distance. You can hear the church bells still every hour and you can also hear, well, yes the church bells. We heard air raid sirens as we were arriving. No, there was no air strike following those sirens. But everyone here on a high state of alert certainly.

But everyone here on a high state of alert certainly. As we were driving into the city, as well, we were coming from the city of Kharkiv. We saw Ukrainian military convoy that had been struck. It looked like it had been struck by the air. We saw one dead Ukrainian soldier. Firemen were still trying to put out the blaze because a fuel truck was part of this small convoy that was hit.

The Russians are striking from the air and just how difficult it for the Ukrainian forces to respond and mobilize when they can be seen from the air but they don't have any air defenses.

And so, it makes it incredibly challenging for them to move their weaponry to the strategically necessary places. Another thing we saw on the out skirts of the city was large gathering of civil defense volunteers. They had a huge pile of tires with them. One can only assume they were collecting the tires to try to block off the road from Russian forces if they came from that direction by setting fire to them.

But, again, for me, this was just a very poignant reminder, Erin, of the sort of David and Goliath dynamic of this battle. Ukrainian forces are fighting and fighting hard. I think the Russians are having a tougher time getting to the heart of the capital than they expected.

But ultimately civil defense volunteers with tires burning, even if they have a lot of fight in them are simply not going to be a match for one of the world's most sophisticated militaries. So, there's absolutely a real sense of fear and dread here tonight.

BURNETT: Yeah. I mean, it is incredible. The numbers, we're told, Kyiv, 18,000 guns were given out to reservists who showed up. And as Clarissa points out, it appears that sort of the number. That sort of a thing is more suited to an insurgency that may come later as opposed to an organized real military front line.

Clarissa, thank you very much. She's in Kyiv which is in those crucial hours and she is there for us.

Sam Kiley, tell me what you're seeing where you are.

SAM KILEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Erin, I mean, Kropyvntskyi, we've been on the road now for about six or six hours passing a number of civilian convoys. People are moving in convoy groups. It would appear. And so, the whole communities beginning to flee, very deep inside Ukrainian territory if you take the line of advance being either the south or the far north.

We're about 200 kilometers south of the capital Kyiv. Kropyvntskyi, a town that is traditionally normally about 200,000 people. There is a military base here that has been attacked. What was really striking here is that every single hotel is full to the gills, beyond full.

The one behind me, receptionist told CNN when asked how much a room was, or whether anybody else could be fitted in, the receptionist said money is meaningless here. In moments after that, a whole coach load of refugees, we believe from Kyiv turned up. They had been driving around the city for some time looking for somewhere to stay as they tried to flee the country.

The numbers of civilians been moved out of Kyiv originally part of the planning was to get about half a million of the civilian population of the capital out of the country. They laid on special trains, the advice to trains. They've been getting on the trains is don't be surprised if there's only emergency lighting because you don't want the light up the railways.

[15:10:05]

The really strong fear obviously that their country -- right across the country is being attacked by Russia. That's the case in terms of the aerial bombardment. If it moves into a land war, as Clarissa was hinting at there, and as you've mentioned here, there is great deal of potential for an insurgency.

We passed a number of roadblocks on our way down here. They were being manned by elderly men but they were all armed with small arms. Again, no match for a Russian professional armored column or something like that but the sort of individual who is could melt into society and perhaps give an occupies force a bloody nose.

Of course, people will recall the swift nature of Iraq that decapitated the system but there were many years and many deaths and consequence of the subsequent insurgency. Here in this town, very much like Kyiv, it's not entirely dark. There's still some street lighting. The only people that are moving on the streets are people looking for somewhere to stay on their way either out to the Polish border which is still several hours drive away.

And, of course, there's also a growing fuel shortage, Erin. As a consequence, it's very, very difficult to find fuel even for people to try to escape.

BURNETT: It's a really important thing you point out. We have heard people making the drive to the border and because it's literally completely backed up, they run out of fuel on their way. You talk about it taking several hours. Even we're told it could take two hours from where we are taking up to 12.

You are just seeing a complete onslaught onto that border. There's 44 million people who live in this country. The sheer number of refugees who are heading west and trying to head for those borders over to Hungary, Poland, it's hard to comprehend and we are just starting to see it.

Let's go to Nick Paton Walsh. He's in the port city of Kherson tonight.

Nick, you have seen a lot of what's happening, some Ukrainian tactics and fighting back. Tell us what you saw today.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR: And, we have seen another change of hands of control of the bridge on the edge of the city. And essentially this is defenses. An announcement that suggest the city's defenses have fallen. Now, that did happen last night when the Russians appear to cross the bridge on the edge of the city into town the they got pushed back in the night and the morning.

Now, we went down in the bridge in the morning to see that Ukrainians were controlling it. But there have been fire for much of the day. Rockets launched impacting around this town, artillery as well.

We were down at the bridge at dusk and there were shells flying over our head landing in the nearby villages and what must have been Ukrainian positions, and a very acute awful sounds, an attack helicopter coming in, fired multiple rockets, a lot of heavy gunfire and then silence, shortly followed by what we think is this legitimate statement from a local official. We haven't interviewed them ourselves, but it appears that there's some acceptance that there's been another change in who controls that bridge.

Why is it important? Well, it runs across the Dnieper River, that splits the country in two, up from Crimea in the south, it's been controlled by Russia illegally since 2014 and then towards the Kyiv. If they were to pull more towards the capital, Russia needs to control that bridge. They did last night. They probably do tonight. We haven't been over there to see it ourselves.

But now, this is the consequence of around paging sophisticated military, blasting past a town you live in. People don't know who is in control at this point. The Ukrainian flag is still up. Police are saying stay indoors. We see ghostly cars racing down the drag here. Real sense of people wondering if their lives have been changed and part of Putin's expanding warped vision of Russia or whether they are still part of Ukraine and the bridge may change hands again now.

So, that's the kind of world people are living in here. And it is startling to see the blackouts there, the panic, the children in basement in this hotel who are playing -- they're out now because the air raid sirens have stopped. But it's a very dark moment for all of us sleepily towners who are just wondering why they are caught in this.

[15:15:04]

BURNETT: Yeah.

Clarissa, Sam, Nick Paton Walsh, thanks so much.

And, Victor and Alisyn, as I send it back to you, you know, it's interesting what Nick says about those taking shelter. As these sirens go now, you do see people quickly moving to shelter and taking shelter.

We were in shelter this morning and our hotel is packed, completely packed. The hotels are packed. Everybody the moving bit by bit by bit trying to get to those borders. It is an incredibly sobering and unbelievable thing to witness.

BLACKWELL: Yeah, it certainly is. Erin, thank you for your work there in Lviv.

And we're just getting some new reporting in, this from our State Department team, Kylie Atwood and Jennifer Hansler, in which the Biden administration believes that Russia will threaten to kill the families of Ukrainian soldiers if they do not surrender. That's from U.S. official. I'm going to read a quote here from the reporting. Our information

also indicates that Russia plans to threaten killing the family members of Ukrainian soldiers if they do not surrender. We reached out to the State Department for specific details. More on that.

But again, this is the latest reporting from the State Department that they believe Russia will threaten to kill those who do not surrender and families of those soldiers who do not surrender.

CAMEROTA: We continue to be on the ground in Ukraine and we will continue to follow that reporting.

We're also covering another breaking story today and that is President Biden has made his pick for the Supreme Court official. Moments ago, we watched Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. She stood alongside the president as he announced her nomination and now senators are weighing in.

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[15:21:13]

BLACKWELL: Last hour, President Biden announced his choice to serve on the Supreme Court, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Now, if confirmed, she will be the first black woman to serve on the high court.

CAMEROTA: She would replace Justice Stephen Breyer, set to retire later this year. She's currently a federal judge on D.C.'s circuit -- a U.S. judge on the appeals court.

BLACKWELL: What? What's happening?

CAMEROTA: The prompter says one thing. Our producer is saying something else and out of my mouth, who knows what is happening.

BLACKWELL: All right.

CAMEROTA: CNN chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins was there. How did the president come to this decision?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, of course, it seems obvious that she was the front-runner in recent days if you talk to people here at the White House. There are about three nominees or three contenders to be the nominee that President Biden had been speaking to and his team had been talking about.

But, of course, she emerged as the front-runner. Clearly, she was the pick and she got the call from President Biden last night informing her that she was going to be his nominee. And he came out here today at this ceremony to make it official. He acknowledged what is happening in Ukraine saying as there are these efforts to reserve freedom and liberty abroad, he's doing his work you should the Constitution to preserve freedom and liberty by nominating her to the Supreme Court.

Of course, it's a historic pick by President Biden two years to the day that he pledged to put the first black woman on the Supreme Court and his historic vice presidential choice was standing over heat advisory shoulder as he made the remarks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUDGE KETANJI BROWN JACKSON, SUPREME COURT NOMINEE: If I'm fortunate enough to be confirmed as the next associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, I can only hope that my life and career, my love of this country and the Constitution and my commitment to upholding the rule of law and the sacred principles upon which this great nation was founded will inspire future generations of Americans.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: Saying there that she hopes her nomination does inspire future nomination, future generations as well. President Biden was saying he does believe it's long past time for the court to look like the rest of America does.

Now, Judge Jackson is on the influential federal appeals court in washed. She was a public defender, something President Biden served as not too long ago as well. That was something that drew him to her as they were describing this search process that's been about a month long to replace Justice Breyer when he steps down at the end of the term. And, of course, now that the pick has been made, it goes to the nomination process, the confirmation process up on Capitol Hill where Judge Jackson will be meeting with several lawmakers trying to get their vote for her nomination.

We have seen some Republicans that have come out and seem to indicate they will not be voting her even if they are ones like Lindsey Graham who voted to put her on the district appeals court. And so, of course, we are waiting to see how those meetings with lawmakers go, what the outcome of them is and that will be the next step to get the first black woman on the Supreme Court by President Biden.

BLACKWELL: Kaitlan Collins at the White House for us, thank you.

Now, with us to discuss, CNN political commentator, Bakari Sellers; Amanda Tyler, she is a law professor at UC Berkeley and she's a friend of Judge Jackson. Also with us, CNN Supreme Court reporter Arianne de Vogue, and CNN chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju.

Welcome, everyone.

And, Professor Tyler, I want to start with you. Most people have known Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for about an hour now. You have known her for some time. You clerked alongside her. You're friend.

What are you feeling today and what do we need know about her?

AMANDA TYLER, PROFESSOR OF LAW, UC BERKELEY: I'm overwhelmed with emotion. I'm so proud to be her friend and so excited about this nomination.

[15:25:01] Ketanji Brown Jackson brings the most exceptional and impeccable credentials. She's someone who's been at the top of the legal profession at every stage of her career. She's also, as you started to get a sense of who that incredible speech, a wonderful human being. She is a great friend and for those of us who are lucky enough to call her a friend, she is one of the best.

But she's also someone -- I should say -- and she's also someone who is brilliant, but who is careful, and thoughtful, and meticulous, who has so, so much integrity and character and who has incredible judgment, something that I got to see working alongside her, now a little over 20 years ago when we both clerked at the Supreme Court. She struck me then as someone who was wise beyond her years.

And I remember thinking not knowing at the time she put this goal in her high school yearbook. I remember thinking, she's going to be a judge.

CAMEROTA: And you were right.

Bakari, you're a South Carolinian. Senator Lindsey Graham is a South Carolinian and he really wanted Judge Michelle Childs. And he, this morning, before President Biden announced his nominee, seemed to suggest that Judge Childs had been the target of some left wing hit job.

So, what do you think lies ahead for this confirmation process now?

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think that he staked out his ground through this confirmation process. We're both from South Carolina but our politics couldn't be more different, Senator Graham and I. We did come together on Judge Childs, both thinking she would be great asset to the United States Supreme Court. But she wasn't the person chosen.

I am somebody who is so thrilled that Ketanji Brown Jackson will be the next member of the United States Supreme Court. The diversity she brings, the history that's being made, her brilliance. And one of things that's not talked about enough when we talked about diversity of this pick is that most Supreme Court justices, most jurist on the federal bench come from a pool of Supreme Court law clerks. She'll be able to go in with the keen eye, add to that diversity because right now, it's not the most diverse pool of lawyers but she will add to that diversity, add to that ecosystem and we'll have more black judges.

So, I'm excited about the pick, and she's going to have these attacks from right. There are people who aren't going to vote for her, although they voted for her. I still expect her to get Murkowski and Collins and she should get a bipartisan vote just as she's done two or three times prior.

BLACKWELL: Ariane, Bakari mentioned diversity. Of course, the first line most obvious here, the first black woman to be on the Supreme Court but also that experience as a public defender, her experience in trials as well, something that the White House placed a premium on. ARIANE DE VOGUE, CNN SUPREME COURT REPORTER: Right. You saw that the

president started with her qualification. She went to Harvard, Harvard Law, sits on one of the most powerful federal appeals court across the country. Then he said two important things.

He said that she used to work for Justice Breyer. He was making the point that he is replacing one liberal with another liberal, and he noted that she had recently been confirmed and she had gotten some key votes.

And then he turned to something that he has really emphasized since the beginning of his tenure, that he wants to change face of the courts, the lower courts and the Supreme Court. He wants people -- he wants candidate who have spent time in public service. She checks that box as well, because as you said, she served as a federal public defender.

We don't have anybody on the Supreme Court right now with that kind of depth of experience in the criminal justice system. We haven't had that since Thurgood Marshall. In her own remarks she was touching on that because although we have reported this, she's never commented on the fact she had an uncle who was serving a lifetime sentence for drug offenses. And she mentioned that and then she pivoted to fact she also had a brother and two other uncle who served in law enforcement.

So, she was making the point that Biden had meant, that she is bringing this new perspective, this new outlook to the court. Again, it's not going to change the balance of the court but she comes in as a liberal, a much younger liberal and she's going to serve for decades.

CAMEROTA: Yeah. We remarked on that. She's relatable on many different levels to lots of -- cross section really of Americans.

Manu, how is Capitol Hill responding?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, right now, Democrats are making very clear they expect this nomination to move quickly. Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, just told reporters she wants to move this expeditiously and he's calling on Republicans to get behind this as well.

Now, in a 50-50 Senate, if all members of the Democratic Caucus stay together, they can get this nomination confirmed. One member has been out, Ben Ray Lujan. He suffered a stroke. He is expected to come back in time for the confirmation vote.

There's also been questions about where Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, two swing votes have been on this issue.