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Ukrainian Village of Markhalivka Hit by Russian Attack; Senior U.S. Official Says Russia Has Fired 600 Missiles; Ukrainian Photographer Uses TikTok to Document the War; Interview with Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) about the Ukraine Crisis; VP Harris Walks Across Iconic Bridge on Bloody Sunday Anniversary. Aired 8-9p ET

Aired March 06, 2022 - 20:00   ET

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

[20:00:52]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR (voice-over): Significant developments along the Black Sea coast where I'm standing.

PRES. VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY, UKRAINE (through translator): They are preparing to bomb Odessa. Bombs against Odessa. This will be a war crime. This will be a historical crime.

ANTONY BLINKEN, SECRETARY OF STATE: We've seen very credible reports of deliberate attacks on civilians. It would constitute a war crime.

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: This village is about six miles, 10 kilometers from the closest military installation. There's no reason that if Russia is trying to avoid civilians that there should be any strike anywhere near here.

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Every person you talk to here has a story of loss and fear and no answer for their children of what the next day may bring.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Now I feel safe but I'm very depressed because my family was divided by war into parts and I left my heart there in Ukraine.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: I'm Pamela Brown in Washington. You are live in the CNN NEWSROOM on this Sunday. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world.

And we begin tonight with the brutal reality for civilians in Ukraine trying to survive the war that is swallowing their country. We want to warn you, what you're about to see is violent and disturbing, and the language is raw.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking in foreign language) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My fucking film.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking in foreign language)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stay there.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All right. (INAUDIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, no, no.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on, medic.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Medic!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Incredible to see those Ukrainian soldiers rush to that family's aid trying to help them yelling medic knowing that they are putting their own life right there in harm's way, not knowing if another bomb is going to drop right where they are standing. That Russian shelling instantly killed a mother, father and two children.

This is also Irpin, a suburb northwest of Kyiv where our Clarissa Ward was reporting just a couple of days ago. We just brought you her story yesterday on the show and all eight people in that town were killed by shelling today. Civilians just trying to escape the violence, trying to go somewhere safe to protect their families.

The aftermath we warn is stark and unsettling. This image from the Associated Press shows the human toll. Ukraine's president says Russia's shelling of civilian areas is, quote, "deliberate murder."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ZELENSKY (through translator): It seems it is not enough for the Russian troops. Not enough ruined destinies, crippled lives. They want to kill more. For tomorrow, Russia is officially announced an attack on our territory and defense facilities. Most of them were built decades ago under the Soviet government. They were built in cities and now they are in the urban setting, where thousands of people work and hundreds of thousands live nearby. This is murder, deliberate murder.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: It is indeed. It makes you sick to your stomach. Every day Russia's shelling takes a greater toll on the civilian population both physically and emotionally and that is exactly the goal. That is what Putin wants.

CNN's Alex Marquardt visited the residents and ruins of a village south of the capital.

[20:05:07]

MARQUARDT: Pam, every day, seemingly every hour, we're getting new reports of Russian strikes on civilian areas, on schools, on residential buildings, on civilian government offices. Today we went to a small village just south of Kyiv, called Markhalivka, which had been hit by a Russian airstrike and there we met a man digging in the rubble who lost five of his family members. Some of the latest in the civilian Ukrainian death toll that is quickly growing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARQUARDT (voice-over): The small country road is now lined by piles of rubble, burned out cars, collapsed homes, and a deep crater where a Russian missile struck. The attack caught on a village security camera hit the home of Igor Mozharev in the small village of Markhalivka about 15 miles south of Kyiv where he lived with his family.

Now they're gone, killed in an instant. Five family members and a friend, including his 12-year-old daughter who was disabled in an accident with a drunk driver, his wife just 46 years old, and his son- in-law, the father of his grandchildren.

IGOR MOZHAREV, RESIDENT OF MARKHALIVKA (through text translation): There was a massive explosion, and we all got trapped under rubble. My daughter has died in her wheelchair. Me and my grandchildren were rescued from under the rubble.

MARQUARDT: Today, Mozharev, black eye and face bruised, picked through the debris trying to find belongings and documents. There was a brief moment of happiness when he found one of his missing cats. But the reality of how his life is forever changed has not yet sunk in.

MOZHAREV (through text translation): I have no thoughts now. What thoughts can I possibly have? It's terrible. Terrible. I just want peace for Ukraine, just leave Ukraine alone already. God help this to end as soon as possible. I will bury my relatives tomorrow. That's it. I don't know what will happen then.

MARQUARDT (on-camera): There is simply no explanation for all of this destruction, for the deaths that happened right here. There is no military target around for miles. This isn't a strategic village or town that needs taking. So as the Kremlin continues to deny that they are targeting civilians it is indiscriminate attacks like this one that show the reality of what is going on here.

(Voice-over): Olga lives down the street. She points to a mat that was used to carry the children out of the rubble.

OLGA, RESIDENT OF MARKHALIVKA (through text translation): The main thing is for this to hell to end as soon as possible. How is it possible that a brother goes against a brother. This is unthinkable. Everybody used to go to Russia, and back, relatives everywhere. And now -- MARQUARDT: It's too much for Olga and for millions across Ukraine who

are in utter disbelief about what is happening to their home. Praying and pleading for the violence to end.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MARQUARDT: As more and more of these attacks on civilians happen every Ukrainian is asking him or herself, do I stay or do I go? Do I become part of the more than 1.5 million Ukrainians who have now fled the country and become refugees or do I stay? And that's what Olga is doing, who you met right there. She told us this is our land. We will sit in the basement but we are not going anywhere. This is our home. We will rebuild -- Pam.

BROWN: Have to respect people making those decisions. Alex Marquardt, thank you for that powerful reporting.

A senior U.S. official telling CNN today that Russia has fired 600 missiles since invading Ukraine.

Oren Liebermann live at the Pentagon with more. So what are you learning, Oren?

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Pamela, that number has steadily climbed since the beginning of the invasion about a week and a half ago now, now topping more than 600 and includes different kinds of missiles such as like ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. As for the massive combined arms force that was surrounding Ukraine on the north in Belarus and Crimea and on the east there in Russia, more than 95 percent of that force has now been committed to the fight inside Ukraine, a senior Defense official tells us.

So there isn't that much left. And that's why there is this massive force of Russians moving throughout the country in a number of different directions. Even with that force, that senior Defense official says the Russians haven't made much progress over the course of the last 24, 48 hours or so, and things are basically right now, this could change, but right now in a bit of a stalled position there, as ongoing fighting in Kherson and Mykolaiv, the Russians are still trying to encircle some major cities such as Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol and other cities. But the Ukrainians continue to fight back.

[20:10:01]

The question of how long of course, that's one of the questions and one of the key questions into how long this could go. As for control of the skies, Russians would have wanted that as quickly as possible but they still don't have air supremacy over Ukrainian air space. The Ukrainians continue to contest that both with aircraft, as well as with missile defenses so the fight for the sky is ongoing and that's one of the key elements we're looking at here as the U.S. works behind the scenes to see if it can get other countries such as Poland to give Ukraine more fighter jets to keep contesting the skies and to make sure the Russians don't have control of it there.

There are a number of different reports that we've seen throughout the course of the weekend. The senior Defense official says he's unable to confirm those such as violations of the ceasefire. He does however say that as of their indications right now, Pamela, there is not an amphibious assault on Odessa nor does there appear to be one imminently.

BROWN: All right, Oren Liebermann, live for us from the Pentagon on this Sunday. Thank you.

And let's continue this conversation with an expert. Joining me now is Holden Triplett, a former senior FBI official based in Russia. He also served as the director for counter intelligence at the National Security Council.

Thank you for coming on. You know, for weeks we have all been asking, is there an exit ramp for Putin? When you see this kind of escalation of attacks on civilian areas, what does that signal to you in terms of Putin wanting a peaceful end to this?

HOLDEN TRIPLETT, FORMER DIRECTOR FOR COUNTERINTELLIGENCE AT THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL: Thanks very much for having me. I don't think he wants a necessarily peaceful end. He wants an end in which he has control. So they're frustrated. Obviously, they thought they would be -- have control much earlier but they would have been a lot closer to taking Kyiv and would have hopefully in their minds decapitated the government and installed a new one.

At this point, they would have hopefully been controlling the security services and would have been able to quell the unrest that's there. Because they've been stalled for a number of reasons, logistics and fierce fighting from the Ukrainians, they are getting frustrated but I think they are intent on grinding this out. There is no exit for them. There is no offramp. The only way this ends for them is in their minds is taking Ukraine.

What that means exactly, how far is a little bit up for debate but it's pretty clear that it's going to get a lot more than just the small republics and a small amount north of Crimea.

BROWN: And earlier today, on that note, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said this is the beginning of a war against Europe, democracy and peaceful co-existence. Do you agree with that?

TRIPLETT: I do. Putin has made it very clear what he believes the threat is, and that's NATO. And so when they are done with Ukraine and have gotten to a place where it is settled and perhaps some sort of frozen conflict, similar to they have in Moldova, with Transnistria, or what they have in Georgia. He will start to focus on NATO and how to destabilize NATO. He'll look to undermine the Article 5, which is the common defense piece of the NATO agreement.

Look to do sort of (INAUDIBLE) slicing, can find a way to get perhaps one of the Baltics to invoke Article 5 for a severe cyberattack but then hopefully not get a response from the rest of the NATO members. And so those members of NATO and Eastern Europe who came in recently in which he has the largest beef with, they'll feel like they aren't being protected and they'll be lost in the middle between Western Europe, the United States and Russia, and will be left with their own devices to deal. And that's a situation he's looking to create.

BROWN: The U.S. is working with Poland right now in the more immediate future on the possibility of Poland sending fighter jets to Ukraine. Congressman Garamendi actually told me earlier tonight that it's the same with Bulgaria and Romania. Do you think that's the right move strategically given Putin's increasing threats against U.S. and NATO intervention?

TRIPLETT: I do. I think the president has been very clear about where we will fight and where we won't fight. And this is really important in terms of escalation when you have two nuclear powers on either sides. We are absolutely in a proxy war but we are not facing off against the Russians. There's been a lot of calls obviously for setting up a no-fly zone. That would put the United States in direct conflict with Russians, which is something we want to avoid if we want to avoid a nuclear war.

So I think that if we want to continue to help Ukraine, this is probably one of the best ways to do it. How can we arm them? How can we, with intelligence, with weapons, with money, with other support, how can we help them fight and fight their battle?

BROWN: And you just answered one of our viewer's questions asking about whether that would be viewed as a provocation by Putin. Another one that we got from a viewer was, why doesn't the Ukrainian military use artillery fire on the 40-mile stalled Russian convoy? It's been stalled outside of Kyiv for several days now.

TRIPLETT: That's a good question. I mean, I think there is a lot of people asking that why they haven't concentrated on it.

[20:15:03]

Part of it is I think they really are trying to push back the Russians in a number of different places and they're trying to hold them for as long as possible. They're trying to drain them out, drain their will power, and I think we'll see here in the next couple of weeks, the Russians are going to have to reorganize.

They really had planned for an assault that would be done within a couple weeks, and then as I said, they would have installed a puppet government, essentially, something like in Belarus but because that hasn't happened and it doesn't appear that's likely to happen in the very near future, they're probably going to push for some sort of ceasefire at some point which will give them time to resupply and reorganize and then start up again.

So I think that Ukrainians are just trying to at this point hold on as long as possible in order to get more weapons or to get things that allowed them to push back harder on the Russians.

BROWN: OK. Holden Triplett, great to have you on the show. Thank you so much.

TRIPLETT: Thank you very much. BROWN: More than a million people have fled Ukraine since the Russian

invasion began but many more are staying behind. What is it like living in Ukraine right now?

I'll talk to a Ukrainian photographer who was using social media to share how they are surviving as this conflict rages on and she joins me next.

Plus, Vice President Kamala Harris marking one of the pivotal moments in America's civil rights struggle.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:20:33]

BROWN: The hugely popular smart phone app TikTok says it is suspending some its features in Russia in light of the country's fake news law, but in Ukraine TikTok is thriving and one photographer is using the platform to turn the sound of sirens into art.

Valeria Shashenok is using TikTok to document her life in a bunker in northern Ukraine. Her videos have gone viral getting millions of views as she shows the world what it's like to survive Russia's brutal aggression. Valaria joins me now.

Hi, Valeria. Thank you so much for coming on to share your story. First of all, tell us how are you and your family doing right now?

VALERIA SHASHENOK, UKRAINIAN PHOTOGRAPHER DOCUMENTING LIFE IN UKRAINE: To be honest, the situation in my country every day getting worst. I'm really God blessed because now I'm with my family in the most safe place bomb shelter and -- yes.

BROWN: It must just be surreal to wake up and think you're in the middle of a war zone, that you are subject to Russian aggression at any moment. You don't know what's going to happen but you've been able to document it as we've seen in this video on the screen on your TikTok account. You have a quarter million followers now on TikTok, almost 10 million likes. That is a lot of people around the world paying attention to everything you are sharing. How did you decide what part of your life to put on TikTok?

SHASHENOK: You know, I'm a photographer. It is like my first job. I don't know how to say correctly, and I like to make videos and TikTok, it is my social media to show what I see in real life and one day I decided to make a trend like Italian, want to make Italian things make sense, like something like this, and I decided to make what scenes in my bomb shelter to make sense.

And I think that after that, my videos start to be more popular and it is one of the reasons just why I start to make that and I feel it is like my mission to show people how it looks in real life, that it's real life and I'm here.

BROWN: Yes. You are basically a news reporter now. You're a journalist with a huge audience, a huge reach. What do you hope people get from your videos?

SHASHENOK: Many people write to me that, Valeria, thank you, thank you very much, to show us real life, many Russian people writing that, we are (INAUDIBLE). You know, maybe in Russia a lot of fake news and most of the people don't believe that in my country we have a war and again my mission to show whole world that it happened now in real life and you can see now war in TikTok.

BROWN: Finally, I just want to leave it up to you what you want to share with our viewers right now here now on CNN. What message you want to convey?

SHASHENOK: I want to say every day, every person says thanks to everything, to simple things, and to understand that life and freedom in that life, it is the most important what we have.

BROWN: Beautifully said. Valeria, thank you. Please keep us updated on your journey. I'll be following you on TikTok. Thank you so much. You're doing an incredible service to people all around the world bringing your story so that people understand the reality, the brutal reality of what is going on there in Ukraine. Thank you.

SHASHENOK: Thank you.

BROWN: Outside the White House today, new rallies for Ukraine.

[20:25:08]

More weapons for Ukraine, more sanctions on Russia? What does the U.S. need to do now to stop Putin? Congressman and combat veteran Mike Waltz is here to weigh in, up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Here is a brief look at some of today's developments in Ukraine. Russia has fired a total of 600 missiles into Ukraine since the invasion began.

[20:30:01]

That's according to a senior U.S. Defense official. The civilian death toll is rising as those missiles unleash unimaginable human suffering. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is accusing Russia of planning deliberate murder in the shelling of his country. Zelenskyy today saying God will not forgive Russia.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ZELENSKY (through translator): Today is forgiveness Sunday but we cannot forgive the hundreds upon hundreds of victims, nor the thousands upon thousands who have suffered, and God will not forgive, not today, not tomorrow, never. And instead of forgiveness, there will be judgment.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP) BROWN: Joining me now is Republican Congressman Mike Waltz of Florida. He's a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the first combat decorated Green Beret elected to Congress.

Hi, Congressman. Good to see you.

REP. MIKE WALTZ (R-FL): Hi, Pam.

BROWN: It's just so awful to see this video coming in. I'm sure you've seen that horrific new video showing the Russian military strike killing a family including two children at an evacuation point in the city of Irpin. And we're going to hold off on playing it again because it is so disturbing and frankly enraging but what is your reaction to what you're seeing? The attacks of civilians seem to just keep getting worse.

WALTZ: Yes.

BROWN: Does there come a point where it's time to do something more militarily in your view?

WALTZ: Well, Pam, sadly and tragically I think this is, this war is going to get far worse before it gets better. If you look at the history of Russian invasions from Afghanistan to Chechnya to Syria, this is right in line with how they operate. When their precision strikes and their attempt to decapitate the Ukrainian government didn't work, they start resorting to siege warfare, scorched earth, bombing and shelling of civilians in order to break the back of the Ukrainian people.

They did the same thing in Grozny and Chechnya. They did the same thing in Aleppo where they literally sent missiles into hospitals to break the Syrian people. I want to see war crimes declared on Putin's senior generals and on Putin himself. We need to ban Russian oil. That needs to come like yesterday and I think we need to drastically accelerate the amount, the speed with which it's arriving and the sophistication of the weaponry that we're providing the Ukrainians.

BROWN: So you mentioned the Russian oil, there is a bill to ban the import of all Russian oil to the United States. It is gaining bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. The White House says it is seriously considering it. Americans as you well know already dealing with the high prices right now, high gas prices.

WALTZ: That's right.

BROWN: So what more can be done to mitigate the blow to American consumers?

WALTZ: Well, I'm glad that we're finally seeing bipartisanship on, one, on Nord Stream but then two, on banning Russian oil. Sadly it wasn't that way before the invasion when the administration was actually lobbying Democrats on the Hill to not impose these sanctions, which I think would have been -- have much more of a deterrent effect.

But to your point on higher gas prices, which is absolutely driving inflation here at home, the answer is to unleash American energy. We need to reduce -- we need to eliminate the ban on federal lands. We need to begin unleashing American gas. By the way, American gas is far cleaner than Russian gas. Russian gas is some of the dirtiest form in the world from an environmental standpoint as a bridging fuel.

That makes sense but, look, what we don't need to do, Pam, this is where I'm really disturbed. We don't need to turn to Venezuela where the Biden administration has envoys right now to that murderous thug of a regime and have them start pumping oil and have them flushed with cash. And what I'm really worried about is the looming Iran deal, I mean, it is absolutely insane, Pam, that we are sanctioning Russia as they murder Ukrainians and bomb civilians, but yet, Russia is the go- between, between the U.S. side and the Iranian side in this Iran deal.

How can we possibly trust them as an honest broker and what concessions are we making in that -- you know, in order to get one deal in terms of what we should be doing to sanction Russia vis-a-vis Ukraine?

BROWN: There is a lot you said right there. I am going -- to pinpoint one thing you said talking about the ban in Russian oil. You said more should have been done sooner. It could have been had a deterrent effect. But do you really think anything, do you think, that would have really deterred Putin from his clear obsession of invading Ukraine?

WALTZ: Yes.

BROWN: I mean --

WALTZ: And that's a fair question. Right?

[20:35:02]

But I do think -- when I was out there last year, Republican and Democrat members of Congress were saying sanctions should be in place then and that we should have been providing the Ukrainians the Stingers, the anti-ship missiles, the Harpoon anti-ship missiles, and the other arms that they were asking for back then. And I do think it would have confused Putin's calculus. It may have delayed his calculus.

A fair question whether it would have actually deterred him, but I can tell you what, if the Ukrainians had Stinger missiles on rooftops on day one of the invasion versus day seven, I think they'd be in a far better place right now.

BROWN: I want to ask you about President Zelenskyy. He has said that he wants to stay in Kyiv despite rescue offers from the U.S. Why do you think it's so important for Zelenskyy to get to western Ukraine, get out of where he is now and to stay alive?

WALTZ: Well, you know, mission accomplished. And I give him enormous credit. I think he's turning out to be a 21st century Churchill. He has rallied the world. He has rallied Europe. He has rallied his own people. But he has now turned into a symbol. And if you look at history, George Washington kept our revolution alive by staying alive. And I worry every time he's showing up on a TV screen, every time he's coming on the internet, the Russian intelligence services are doing everything they can to geolocate him and kill him, and I do think his death will be a real blow to the morale of the Ukrainian people.

At this point, I would like to see him go to ground and at this point, his mission is to live and to continue to serve as a symbol of resistance.

BROWN: Based on our research, your home state of Florida holds roughly $300 million in investments in Russian companies. Does Florida need to cut its ties with Russia and Russian businesses immediately?

WALTZ: Yes, so I would certainly support that, not only with Russian businesses but Florida has been active in divesting in its state pension fund from Chinese businesses. Particularly the Chinese stock market which hosts many Chinese defense industry companies on that market. We do not need to be funding these murderous dictators that mean us harm and then mean to replace the United States who is leading the world's democracies with their version of totalitarian regimes.

And the sad thing, Pam, is it is our money through our state pensions, through Wall Street, through our sports industries and certainly through our oil and gas purchases that are funding both the Chinese and the Russians, and I think we need to take a much tougher stand when it comes to our wallets.

BROWN: I want to ask you a viewer question before we let you go. You had mentioned that you believe that some of Putin's top generals should be charged with war crimes. There are calls mounting for Putin to be tried for war crimes after attacking Ukraine without provocation, attacking hospitals, allegedly using these cluster munitions.

This viewer asked, could he actually face accountability for his actions? That's a big question on people's minds right now.

WALTZ: You know, there was a very interesting report and I'm going to ask for briefings on it in Congress this week that anti-war elements within Russia's FSB, which is the successor to the KGB, it was those anti-war elements that have been tipping off Zelenskyy's security team and that could be a real indicator of some dissent within Putin's national security apparatus.

So I think we should add to that by making the leaders of those agencies and the generals, put them on notice and let them know that there will be war crimes and they need to begin saying no particularly if Putin goes an extra step in terms of attacking a NATO country or, which is in their doctrine, to use a tactical nuclear weapon or those just short of tactical nuclear weapons, which are the thermobaric, you know, so-called vacuum bombs.

We need to put doubt in his inner circle's mind. We're going after the oligarchs' money but let's also sow seeds of doubt in his generals, and start charging them appropriately.

BROWN: Congressman Mike Waltz, thank you for your time tonight and offering your perspective on this unfolding war in Ukraine.

WALTZ: OK. Thanks so much.

BROWN: Our coverage of Ukraine continues but tonight, we're also marking the 57th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday March in Selma. A look at how Vice President Harris helped with commemorations today. Up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:44:22]

BROWN: Fifty-seven years ago almost to the day 600 demonstrators in Alabama tried to march from Selma to Montgomery as part of the push to give African-Americans the right to vote. They were met with brutal violence in an attack that would become known as Bloody Sunday. Well, today history was made again on that bridge in Selma.

CNN's Nadya Romero is there.

NADIA ROMERO, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Pamela, this is such a historic moment watching our nation's first black vice president march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge with so many others commemorating the 57th anniversary since Bloody Sunday that happened back in 1965 when the late great Congressman John Lewis and so many other civil rights foot soldiers marched for their right to vote and they were met by local and state law enforcement on the other side of the bridge waiting for them with billy clubs and dogs.

[20:45:13]

And Congressman John Lewis said that he felt like he was being beaten to an inch of his life. And that fight still continues. Vice President Kamala Harris addressing the crowd before she marched saying two things in her speech. The first being about Ukraine saying that we all have to preserve and protect democracy and Ukraine all across the world. And she also says that our rights here in the U.S., our rights to vote, are under attack.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMILA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Across the country, states passed anti-voting laws, laws that ban drop boxes and restrict early voting, laws that make it illegal to give food and water to voters who are standing and waiting in line. Laws that put simply make it much more difficult for people to vote with an expectation that then we will not vote. Undemocratic laws, un-American laws.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

ROMERO: And you heard Vice President Kamala Harris there blaming Republicans in Congress and Republican-led state legislatures for what she says is an attack on our voting rights and she is urging for everyone to remember that this isn't just a day but a movement to continue to fight for the right to vote -- Pamela.

BROWN: Nadia Romero, thank you so much.

And our coverage on the war on Ukraine continues next as a religious leader joins the call for peace.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

POPE FRANCIS, CATHOLIC CHURCH LEADER (through translator): Rivers, blood and tears are flowing in Ukraine. This is not just a military operation but a war which sows death, destruction and misery.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:51:24]

BROWN: The escalating attacks have unleashed a flood of refugees from Ukraine. But fleeing the country and the danger doesn't mean people are escaping hardship.

CNN's Scott McLean is in Lviv near the border of Poland.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So more than 1.5 million refugees have gone to neighboring countries and other countries in Europe and elsewhere and more than half of them end up in Poland. Poland and Ukraine have deep connections. The language is similar. Many people have relatives there. And so it seems like a natural place for most people to go, and also, the easiest to get to but even still, it is not that simple. At least not lately.

At the train station today in Lviv, there were lineups literally out the door to go to Poland on a train. People were waiting several hours and remember that these lineups are almost entirely women and children, and when you look down the lines and you look at the faces, you realize that the only men you see are actually teenage boys who are now taking on many of the responsibilities of their fathers.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: That is heartbreaking. Scott McLean, reporting from Lviv, thank you.

And many of the scenes from Ukraine have been heartbreaking, as I said. The death, the damage, the refugees, here is a look at some of the unforgettable moments from this weekend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WATSON: The United Nations says more than 1.3 million Ukrainians have crossed the country's borders in the last week and a half. Every person you talk to here as a story of loss and fear and no answer for their children of what the next day may bring. CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: A woman

approaches completely overcome.

WARD: She said, I'm afraid.

WRAD: (voice-over): For what, she cries? For what?

MARQUARDT: I'm standing now in the rubble of this man's home. Igor lost five family members and a friend.

ZELENSKY (through translator): It's your humanitarian duty to protect us, to protect civilians. And you can do it. If you don't do it, if you don't at least give us airplanes so we can defend ourselves, the only thing we can think is that you also want us to be killed slowly.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Organizations around the world are on the ground in Ukraine trying to help those who need food, shelter, water and other aid. For more information about how you can help, go to CNN.com/impact.

Well, a Kyiv military couple decided after 20 years together that it was time to tie the knot today.

[20:55:00]

The couple never bothered to get married but decided to make it official after Russia's bombs began to fall. They are members of Ukraine's Territorial Defense Unit and became husband and wife in front of their fellow fighters at their military check point.

Wow. We wish them the very best.

Thank you so much for spending part of your Sunday evening with us. I'm Pamela Brown. I'll see you again next weekend. A special "AC 360" is next.

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