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Air Raid Sirens Sound Across Odessa; Russian Forces Attack Nuclear Plant; Matthew Kroenig is Interviewed about the Russian attack on the Nuclear Plant; U.S. is Sharing Intel with Ukraine; February Jobs Report; Bill Browder is Interviewed about the Sanctions against Russia. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired March 04, 2022 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:23]

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Unprecedented moves by Putin's forces. Russian troops now in control of Europe's largest nuclear power plant after a relentless attack. Managers there working at gunpoint, we're told.

Good morning. I'm Erica Hill in New York.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Jim Sciutto, reporting from Lviv, Ukraine.

Right now, officials say a fire at that nuclear plant is out, radiation levels normal. The plant, it appears, operating normally as well. Overnight, however, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, he called the attack, in his words, terror at an unprecedented level.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): There are 15 nuclear reactors in Ukraine. If one of them blows, that's the end for everyone. That's the end of Europe. All of Europe will have to evacuate. Immediate action must be taken to stop the Russian army. Don't allow the death of Europe. Stop this potential atomic catastrophe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Thankfully, those worst predictions did not come to be last night. The situation there, though, understandably tense.

We also have incredible, new video this morning of the moment Russia attacked Kharkiv's city council building.

Watch this.

That poor man just on a phone call, a video call, when it struck. Shows you just how devastating it was. Local officials say the weapon there was a cruise missile. A remarkably powerful weapon. Amazingly, there were no immediate reports of casualties in that attack.

On the outskirts of the capital, Kyiv, new drone video shows the extent of the destruction there. Defense ministry officials say Russia is focused on encircling the capital, weakening Ukraine's popular resistance. And, look, they're willing to attack civilian areas there to devastating effect. So far Ukrainian forces have held Putin's army at a point about 37 miles from the city center.

Also just in to CNN, the NATO secretary general has confirmed this, that Russia has used cluster bombs in Ukraine. It's a type of artillery. It has been widely band. It's intended to kill people to devastating effect.

We're covering every angle of this breaking story as only CNN can. Our reporters, our correspondents on the ground throughout Ukraine and Russia, Belgium, back home as well.

We begin this morning with CNN international security editor Nick Paton Walsh. He's in Odessa, Ukraine, where, as we've heard in so many cities in this country with regularity now, air sirens going off now.

The concern there has been of an amphibious invasion. Another sort of point of the spear in Russia's attack.

What are you seeing happening now?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR: Yes, Jim, minutes ago we were down in a yacht club watching locals form a human chain and take a holiday beach, frankly, a vacation site, and turn it through canvas bags into barricades for the city center. Then, as we've often see, the air raid sirens began. It's not uncommon this time of day, sort of late afternoon, to begin to hear that. There were two Ukrainian warships on the coastline, seemingly patrolling the bay here. And that may possibly have been part of the reason why we saw everyone leave in a matter of minutes, a couple of hundred people who were putting those barricades together just left. They're simply aware of the fact that their activity down there could make them a target.

And now we're dealing with a, frankly, kind of ghostly beach area here that was brimming with people before. The coastline is the real issue here. The horizon there, where people are deeply concerned they may, at some point, see this Russian amphibious invasion, which western officials have warned about for months, which we got a slight possible sense that may be coming after an Estonian cargo ship was sunk out there in the Black Sea.

Ukrainian officials said it was from Russian shelling, that they were trying to use it as some kind of civilian shield. We can't separately verify that report. But it adds to a fear in this city that something is imminent.

We've seen barricades around its central opera house and we've also seen signs in the neighboring cities along the Black Coast shoreline here, stretching out this way, that Russia's occupation is far from benign.

Kherson, awful reports out of there this morning. As you know, Jim, we've been seeing looting. Men led away at gunpoint from there.

[09:05:01]

The last 48 hours since Russian troops blundered their way in. At this point, local officials are warning that there is a convoy of humanitarian aid trucks. They've been pictured in the city center, which are about, in the words of Ukraine officials, create a kind of fake movie narrative. The, here comes the Russian government with its humanitarian aid to step in amidst all the looting, all of it done by Russian troops themselves, and provide assistance.

A convoy was spotted coming into the town last night by locals, a civilian convoy, concerns that that is also about providing kind of people, if you will, bodies to show their support for the Russian presence there. We've seen this playbook before in 2014, 2015, in Donetsk and Crimea as well. It looks like it might be about to be repeated in Kherson too.

That's kind of the first major city that Russia seized here and has control over. It doesn't bode well, though, that this sort of clumsy, counternarrative, sort of fake movie, so to speak, is something we're seeing wheeled out this fast, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Yes, and they've really fallen flat, right, including leading up to the invasion, all these -- all these false flag attacks and so on exposed by the U.S. and the west. It didn't work. We'll see if this one does.

Nick Paton Walsh, there in Odessa, thanks so much.

Let's take another look at the situation at the nuclear power plant here in Ukraine. Russian forces have now taken control and the managers, the technicians, working there, the plant seems to be working as normal, but, of course, those technicians now working under gunpoint from Russian forces.

CNN's Scott McLean walks us through the timeline of just how the attack unfolded.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: As early as Wednesday, Russian troops were surrounding this town where the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is located. And they were trying to get in. People, local residents, though, were trying to block them however they could. Things deteriorated further yesterday, and then early this morning the Ukrainian foreign minister was tweeting that Russian troops were firing at the plant from all sides.

By this point, the International Atomic Energy Agency said that staff inside the plant were trying to mitigate any potential risks. Obviously, there were plenty. A fire broke out at some point after that, and the mayor said that firefighters were unable to actually get to the site because of the fighting there. And he was warning about the potential for a nuclear accident.

It turns out the fire itself was actually in an auxiliary building, separate from the actual reactor itself, which had been used for training.

The trouble now is that the Ukrainians have confirmed that the Russians are in charge of that site, or in control of that site. They're controlling a checkpoint, an administration building as well. Thankfully, the folks who actually know how to operate the site, the staff, are still running it right now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: Joining us now, deputy director at the Atlantic Council, Matthew Kroenig. He's worked on nuclear security issues at CIA, also the Department of Defense, a professor at Georgetown University.

Good to have you on this morning.

Listen, it was a dicey situation last night. Anytime you have combat underway near a nuclear facility. It does appear that immediate danger has passed. You have the plant being operated by its technicians, though under gunpoint.

From your vantage point, has the worst of the danger passed for now?

MATTHEW KROENIG, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, ATLANTIC COUNCIL'S SCOWCROFT CENTER FOR STRATEGY AND SECURITY: Well, I think it's passed for now. But this is a really dangerous situation. We've had nuclear accidents before, Chernobyl and Fukushima. But this is the first time in history that a country has attacked and operating nuclear power plant. They're actually international conventions prohibiting this. Putin doesn't seem to care about that.

So, this could have resulted in a major accident, a meltdown, an explosion. As you say, it seems that the worst has passed, at least for now. But this is still an active war zone and I'm still worried about what could happen here or at one of Ukraine's many other nuclear power plants.

HILL: Given where we are, I know as we just said, you know, sort of worst -- past that worst part at the moment. But in terms of how this could be used by Russia, by Vladimir Putin. You know, earlier today, James -- Joe Rubin said this is nuclear blackmail, former deputy assistant secretary of state.

Would you agree with that, that this could, in fact, be used as blackmail, this plant?

KROENIG: Yes, there are a couple of possibilities in terms of what Russia was trying to accomplish here. I mean, one is that they -- the initial shelling was meant to destroy the plant, and cause fears of a nuclear meltdown. And we've seen in the past few days, as Russia's military advance has stalled, it does seem like they've pivoted more to terror tactics, deliberately targeting civilians. And so certainly targeting a nuclear power plant is something that has terrorized Ukrainians and the rest of the world.

The other possibility here is that maybe they want to take the plant offline. It provides about 20 percent of Ukraine's power. [09:10:00]

And they can control the plant. Already one of the reactors has been shut down. That's one way to increase Russia's leverage over Ukraine and the west.

SCIUTTO: That's my understanding what the U.S. intel assessments were coming in, that Russia did not want to destroy them, but did want to use them, cut off the power supply so that they could use that to lay siege to cities.

I do want to ask, though, because, listen, it's combat, there are a lot of bombs flying around this country and the U.S. military's view of Russian targeting is that it's not great.

What size of explosion would be necessary, close or on a reactor, to cause an accident, right? Could something as small as a single artillery shell do that? Multiple? Does it have to be a rocket? Could it be a grenade? Gunfire? What's required, right, to create that kind of scenario?

KROENIG: Well, these reactors are built with safety standards in mind. They're meant to be able to withstand plausible incidents, an airplane crash, for example.

But one of the things we learned at the Fukushima disaster is it's not just the safety of the reactor itself. What happened at Fukushima is that the power supply was compromised. That meant that the cooling systems that usually keep the reactor and the fuel cool weren't able to operate and so the reactor core melted down.

And so there are -- these are complicated systems. There's a lot that could go wrong. And a meltdown here, as you can see on the map, this reactor is right on the river. So there could really be an ecological disaster if the radioactive material got into the river and could flow into the Black Sea.

You know, in Fukushima there were traces of radioactivity all the way in California, across the ocean. So, the risks are real.

SCIUTTO: Goodness. Playing with fire, right? Playing with the fire in the middle of a war.

Matthew Kroenig, thanks so much.

KROENIG: Thank you.

HILL: U.S. officials say the Biden administration has multiple channels open and is sharing intelligence with Ukraine at a frenetic pace.

CNN's Natasha Bertrand is in Brussels this morning.

So, Natasha, those open channels are actually becoming increasingly difficult to execute as this invasion wages on. Talk to us a little bit more about that. NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, Erica. So, obviously,

as the war gets worse and as communications become severed on the ground, it is becoming increasingly difficult for U.S. officials to transfer that intelligence to Ukrainian officials for their use in targeting Russian forces. But what we're also told is that there's been a work around here. There is -- well, several work arounds. There is, for example, a portal that the U.S. has set up in recent days that allows the Ukrainians to kind of log in and access that intelligence in virtually real time. Often it's only taking about 30 to 60 minutes for the U.S. intelligence officials to receive that intelligence and then transfer it over to the Ukrainians.

And the intelligence that they are providing, we're told, has to do with Russian military movements. It's intercepted communications about Russian military plans. And they say that it has been useful to the Ukrainians in terms of allowing them to have situational awareness. It is not necessarily something that the U.S. is prepared to say is allowing the Ukrainians to actually target and kill Russian soldiers, but they are saying that they are providing this intelligence to allow them to have situational awareness about where Russian forces are in the country and their next steps crucially.

But that may not be helping the Ukrainians all that much as Russia doubles down and begins to use even heavier lethal equipment against the Ukrainians, as they kind of become more desperate to take over the country as we know the Ukrainians have had a lot of momentum in recent days.

Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general, actually just told reporters here that Russia has been using cluster munitions, which are obviously highly lethal explosives that are very, very dangerous for civilians. He said also that the situation in Ukraine could actually get worse over the coming days.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JENS STOLTENBERG, NATO SECRETARY GENERAL: This is the worst military aggression in Europe for decades. With the cities under siege, schools, hospitals, and residential buildings shelled, reckless actions around a nuclear power plant last night, and many civilians killed or wounded. The days to come are likely to be worse, with more death, more suffering, and more destruction.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERTRAND: Now, he did confirm that the foreign ministers here at NATO could discuss a no-fly zone, setting up a space that would be protected by U.S. and NATO forces, but that is not on the table at this moment. They all agreed that it would be too dangerous for NATO forces to get involved, to start shooting down Russian planes over Ukrainian air space.

[09:15:03]

Jim. Erica. HILL: And yet we keep hearing the calls for that no-fly zone from Ukraine. It will be interesting to see where this moves in the days to come.

Natasha, appreciate the reporting. Thank you.

Up next, the man who helped create the system the west is using now to sanction Russia will join us live. Hear why Bill Browder says the U.S. needs to implement a complete economic embargo.

Plus, new video of yet another school targeted by Russian forces. Our military expert explains how Ukraine can counter Putin when he's ignoring every international norm.

And a bit later, we'll be joined live by a Ukrainian woman who is living in Canada. She chose to go back to Kyiv just days before the fighting broke out. Why she made that dangerous decision and how she's helping the resistance now.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:20:10]

HILL: Just in to CNN, the U.S. added 678,000 new jobs in February. That does beat expectations for the second month in a row.

CNN's chief business correspondent Christine Romans joining me now.

So, you know, bottom line, we look at these numbers every month. What do the latest numbers saying about the state of the economy?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Look, they're strong. It shows a job market that's really strong here. For some context, Erica, in 2019, in the year 2019, before this pandemic, the average monthly job gain was 164,000. So, think about that. I mean that was the average monthly job gain. We saw 678,000 jobs added and an unemployment rate that fell to 3.8 percent.

And the trend here for jobs added has been strong. It really has. Revisions again. Remember, it's been really hard to sort of pin these numbers down, but, ultimately, we've been getting these revisions that are almost always higher. So, you had another 90,000 some added in revisions there. And the unemployment rate very decisively back here very close -- this is a pandemic low for the unemployment rate at 3.8 percent. So that is a big, big improvement and has been the trend.

And the jobs added were across sectors here, 179,000 in leisure and hospitality. Professional business services, construction, healthcare, just solid hiring. We got over that omicron hump from January better than many people had thought we would and companies are hiring.

HILL: So, that's good news, right?

ROMANS: That's good news.

HILL: So we look at that as good news. ROMANS: It's good news.

HILL: I want to ask you about these latest sanctions.

ROMANS: Sure.

HILL: President Biden handing down a new round of sanctions. Nineteen Russian oligarchs have now been targeted, along with their family members and close associates.

ROMANS: That's absolutely right. And when you look here, also as well, eight specifically in the inner circle of Vladimir Putin. So, this is really a vice grip of sanctions tightening around the richest oligarchs and their families, targeting yachts, targeting property, targeting investments, and also on the lookout for any kind of misstep in sanctions that immediately there's a new Justice Department task force we told you about yesterday that will be going after, you know, the klepto-capture. So, there is a new -- you know, an -- all the allies really working hard to try to choke off the money for the Russian machine.

HILL: There are also questions about whether -- we're looking at all these sanctions, right, and this vice that is tightening on the Russian economy.

ROMANS: Sure.

HILL: Is it also -- could it also be creating opportunity for investors and how much of a concern is that?

ROMANS: So, there's a little bit of buzz this morning about distress debt trading desks on Wall Street and some hedge funds that may or may not be looking into buying up distressed Russian corporate bonds. There are desks, you know, on trading debt that are -- it's risky, obviously. There are a lot of firms who are just avoiding all Russian debt and Russian investments altogether. And sanctions don't specifically hit those yet. Also, sanctions don't specifically hit the oil and gas industry, but it's on the table here. So, there could be more pain for Russian investments. And so a lot of investors are being very, very careful here.

But it is in the nature of Wall Street, isn't it, to capitalize. That's what capitalism is, right?

HILL: Yes.

ROMANS: So trying to find distress. It's risky, but I'm sure somebody out there is doing it.

HILL: All right, Christine, appreciate it. Thank you.

ROMANS: You're welcome.

HILL: Jim.

SCIUTTO: Also undermines the sanctions and a big part of the western response to Russia's invasion has been to impose economic penalties on Russia.

Joining me now to discuss, Bill Browder. He's the founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management. He's also the head of the global Magnitsky Justice Campaign. It worked to sanctioning human rights violators. He was the largest foreign investor in Russia until he exposed Kremlin corruption back in 2005, very much a target of the Kremlin since then.

Bill, it's good to have you on this morning.

BILL BROWDER, FOUNDER AND CEO, HERMITAGE CAPITAL MANAGEMENT: Great to be here.

SCIUTTO: So, these sanctions are causing tremendous economic pain to Russia. But Putin is forging ahead. In fact, the military campaign has become more, not less, brutal since those sanctions have been imposed. Does Putin care about these sanctions? Does it deter him at all?

BROWDER: Well, he's not a guy who have a reverse gear. Once he gets started, his only options, his only psychological way of moving forward is to escalate. I've seen that in my own experience with him.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

BROWDER: And so the sanctions aren't to deter him at this point, the sanctions are to bleed him dry so he doesn't have any economic resources to execute the war in the future. And that means the sanctions need to be tightened.

SCIUTTO: So, another piece of this, right, you hear, is by sanctioning the oligarchs, the people around him, who have got a lot of money around the world, that that will -- that they will then pressure Putin to change his ways. Do you believe they have the interest or the influence, frankly, to do that?

BROWDER: I don't think -- that doesn't ring true to me.

[09:25:01]

Oligarchs are there at Putin's pleasure. He can make them non- oligarchs in a split second. He can put in jail. He can kill them. He has done this in the past.

I believe that the reason why you want to sanction the oligarchs is not because you want to pressure them to overthrow him, you want to sanction the oligarchs because Vladimir Putin is a very rich man and the oligarchs, one of the big services they provide to Putin is as nominees and trustees for his own money. And so when you're sanctioning the oligarch, you're sanctioning Putin. If you're freezing their assets, you're freezing his assets. And that's what I think this is all about.

SCIUTTO: Given what you know about the operations of this Kremlin, when you hear folks, Lindsey Graham among them, overnight, raise the prospect of a palace coup, as it were, to take him down, I mean Gorbachev faced his own unsuccessful coup after the fall of the Soviet Union, is that a realistic prospect knowing the way the Kremlin is organized and the way it works?

BROWDER: Vladimir Putin is probably the most paranoid man in the world. And he has been for 20 years. He's a very little man. He's very scared of everybody and he's very vindictive. And so he's constantly looking around for betrayal, and any type of -- any type of nastiness that's going on around him and will act preemptively.

And so -- and just look at it. You know, he sits at this 30-foot table, you know, a long way away from everybody because he's scared of them. He's scared of them. You know, some people say it's because of Covid. I think he's scared because he thinks they're going to assassinate him. And I don't think that there's going to be a palace coup because he's looking out to try to stop it.

SCIUTTO: So if Putin, as you say, only has a forward gear, right, sounds to me like you're saying the off ramp, at least as it relates to Ukraine, is off the table. So then the question becomes, where does this end? Does he satisfy himself if and when he's able to subjugate Ukraine?

BROWDER: Absolutely not. And this is the key point. He's going to go, as President Zelensky said, he's going to go for the Baltics next. And then we're going to be in a face-to-face confrontation, a military confrontation with Russia. And so he doesn't have a reverse gear, only forward.

But what we can do is make his car stall out. And the way we make his car stall out is by depleting him of resources. It's very expensive to run this operation if we've frozen his central bank money, if we freeze his oligarchs' money and we do it properly, all of them, then we have a chance that he basically runs out of money. And that should be the objective.

SCIUTTO: You heard, before we go, Christine and Erica speaking there about Bloomberg's reporting this morning that U.S. firms, among them JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, according to Bloomberg, are now scooping up underpriced, bargain basement, Russian securities, which in effect, I suppose, reverses their disconnect from the international financial markets, which seems to be an intention of these sanctions. Are you, in your view, are those U.S. institutions undermining the sanctions regime by doing that?

BROWDER: Well, it's pretty distasteful and disgusting for any American to be doing anything with Russian securities when you have effectively a terrorist Holocaust-type of operation going on. But if someone's buying a piece of debt instrument that's trading, it doesn't help Russia. It just either trades up or down. As long as you're not giving Russian money -- Russians money, that's the key.

But I think, frankly, that there should be a total economic embargo on Russia, top to bottom, by the west. That would be the way we get them to stall out. And what that means is that everybody's going to have to like stop looking for economic opportunities there, whatever those may be.

SCIUTTO: And maybe stop buying Russian oil. A lot of debate on that. Bill Browder, great to have you on today.

BROWDER: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Big development this morning, from NATO. NATO now says that Russia is already using cluster bombs here in Ukraine. It's a devastating weapon designed to kill people, banned. This after Russian troops attacked and took control of Europe's second -- rather their largest nuclear power plant. Are these latest moves all part of Putin's plans? Are they signs of desperation? We're going to discuss.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)