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Zelenskyy: Russia's Heavy Shelling is "Deliberate Murder", Reports of Heavy Fighting Around Kyiv As Russian Forces Push In; UN: More than 1.7 Million Refugees Have Fled Ukraine Since Russian Invasion; CNN: Ukraine Given Nearly 20,000 Anti-Tank, Anti-Aircraft Missiles; Zelenskyy: Russia Preparing to Bomb Odessa Soon; Blinken: U.S., Allies Discuss Possibly Banning Russian Oil Imports; U.S. Working With Poland On Deal to Provide Jets to Ukraine. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired March 07, 2022 - 09:00   ET

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

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR AND SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Listening to that little girl. Her name is Ilia (ph). And there she is, Berman, in a bomb shelter singing that to all the folks with her.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: In a bomb shelter. Music can sooth. But so much weight on one little girl's shoulders right there. CNN's coverage continues right now.

[09:00:00]

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyyy accusing the Kremlin of deliberate murder and demanding new sanctions, including a boycott of oil, as Ukraine accuses Russia of targeting civilians who are trying to flee the country.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, PRESIDENT OF Ukraine (via translator): It seems it is not enough for the Russian troops. Not enough to ruin the destinies, cripple the lives. They want to kill more. This is murder. Deliberate murder.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Deliberate murder. Thanks so much for joining us this morning. I'm Erica Hill in New York.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: And I'm Jim Sciutto, reporting from Lviv, Ukraine. Right now Russian forces expanding their attacks on cities and civilians across Ukraine, increasingly shelling residential areas, even bombing what were designated as humanitarian corridors.

We want to warn you about video we're about to show you. It's disturbing. It's graphic. It reflects the war we're seeing here now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(FIRING)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stay there.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All right.

SCIUTTO (voice over): A moment of terror there. We're told a Russian military strike hit what was an evacuation crossing point in a Western Kyiv suburb as streams of civilians were coming through. That blast you saw there, sadly, killed a family, including two young children.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: The city's mayor says that eight civilians have been killed across that one district of that one city have many now under attack in this country. It comes as this morning Ukrainian officials have rejected a Russian proposal to open supposed humanitarian corridors in several cities, many of those routes would send evacuees only toward Russia, or its ally, Belarus. Doesn't give those people a choice. Less than three weeks - less than two weeks, in fact, into the invasion, already, more than 1.7 million people have fled this country of 44 million people.

CNN is now learning that U.S. is at least looking at ways to send Polish Soviet era fighter jets to Ukraine and have a high speed multinational effort to send weapons to the resistance. A senior U.S. official tells me that the U.S. and other NATO members have sent Ukraine some 17,000 anti-tank missiles, 2,000 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles. The bulk of those coming after the invasion here started.

We're monitoring a third round of talks as well between Ukraine and Russia. It's expected to begin any moment. Going in, frankly, expectations of progress real low. We are covering every angle of this breaking story, as only CNN can.

Let's begin this morning with CNN Senior International Correspondent Matthew Chance. He is in the capital Kyiv. And Matthew, every day we see the combat get closer to the Capitol. I know you hear the explosions get a bit closer. What do we know about the progress of the Russian advance there?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, Jim, every day, it is inching closer and closer to this - the center of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. And you know, just today, we had news that Russian tanks had broken through a key defensive barrier north of the city in Irpin, which is an area where there's been a lot of fighting, a lot of shelling, a lot of refugees or internally displaced people coming out as well. And they've crossed the river there, which is very, very important, which is about 13 miles away from this location right here. And you can see behind me the barriers that have been set up in the center of the Ukrainian capital to stop any tank advanced. Sandbags there, the concrete blocks, and of course, these big metal, anti-tank, sort of, barriers, so the tanks can't drive over them. And you can see the troops over there, they're stopping cars as they go through.

And it's not clear yet what the next step of the Russians will be. But clearly, they've made a lot of progress in the North of the country, in terms of their military objectives. They're making progress in the West as well. I've been to the South earlier today as well, and you know, there have been incidents there as well increasingly of Russian artillery or rocket fire, some of them against civilian, residential areas, which we've been looking at earlier today.

[09:05:00]

And so you really do get a strong sense now that despite the setbacks that the Russians have suffered, they are making some military progress towards achieving that objective of fully encircling the city of Kyiv, who knows how long that's going to take, but it is moving very rapidly on the ground, Jim.

And then the worry of course, if and when that's completed, what they do, what they unleash on that city there. Matthew Chance in Kyiv, thanks very much.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is warning that he expects imminent bombing against the nation's third largest city that is Odessa in the south on the Black Sea Coast.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZELENSKYY (via translator): They are preparing to bomb Odessa. Russian people always used to come to a Odessa and they only knew warmth and generosity. And what's now? Artillery, bombs against Odessa. This will be a war crime. This will be historical crime.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: CNN International Security Editor Nick Paton Walsh in Odessa. And you have really twin concerns there, you and I have been talking about over recent days. One is the possibility of an amphibious invasion in the South, but now this prospect the president warning of a bombing campaign, which we've seen on so many cities. So how is the city preparing?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR: Well, I think you can still hear the air raid sirens we've heard a couple of times during today, no explosions to accompany them. But it shows you really I think how President Zelenskyy's warning is being taken to heart here.

Something that's been the case for a number of days. It isn't quite clear where the Ukrainian president got that information from. This was eminent. It might just be that there's been a general sense of building concern here that because of the pressure militarily along the Black Sea coast, on which this is the sort of furthest West end port city, that there might be this place being the ultimate goal for Russia, some sort of military operation in the offing here.

An amphibious landing has been discussed repeatedly. That doesn't appear at the stage to be as an imminent like that happening here. Very hard to tell. But we are seeing along the coast, a lot of back and forth. Certainly had a sign on the furthest eastern port city along that Black Sea coast. There's been a lot of civil disobedience, protests after that was the first city Russia took a few days ago.

And we saw yesterday ourselves over the weekend, and heard of this morning, continued clashes around a key city called Mykolaiv, that's right in the center, frankly, of the Black Sea coast area we're talking about.

Now this morning, there were reports of shelling hitting residential buildings. We've seen some images of that. And I spoke to a hospital official who said that it killed one and injured three. That's probably not the full picture. But also too during the day, there was a sort of brief moment of optimism from the Regional Governor Vitaly Kim, who posted on Telegram a message saying that the Russians had been pushed back.

But just in the last few minutes, it appears that the initial success the Ukrainians had seen and we're taking the airport may now not be entirely complete, and there may still be some clashes around there as well.

The point here, Jim, though, is that these pushes into Mykolaiv seemed clumsy, they're repeated. It's unclear if one of them will actually have success finally, and it's also unclear quite what these Russian forces will do if they managed to find themselves in the middle of this populated, busy, very anti-Russian city.

A lot of heavy shelling we saw hitting suburban areas, frankly, residential homes. The signs of cluster munitions and the parts of the munitions that were left behind there. So clear brutality as we see this Russian advance. And the end game plan, that still remains unclear. We just don't really know quite what their strategy is. Are they intending to try and occupy cities after intense bombardment? No, we're more concerned about that been Odessa here, Jim.

SCIUTTO: And no concern or certainly less concern over time about those civilian casualties Nick Paton Walsh, thanks so much.

So far, more than 1.7 million people have fled Ukraine because of the Russian invasion. Imagine that - just 12 days, 1.7 million. The UN calls it the fastest growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.

Behind those numbers are real people, families, mostly women with children, because the men have to lay behind. They've made an agonizing decision to leave their homes for an uncertain future. We spoke with one such family. Listen to their story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) SCIUTTO (voice over): What do you take with you when you're fleeing for your life? Yana (ph), it's her three children, of course - four, six and 11 years old, and just two small backpacks, mostly filled with toys for the kids, some food and a single Snickers bar.

SCIUTTO (on camera): That's important.

SCIUTTO (voice over): They had to leave any bigger bags behind to make room on the evacuation train for other children.

[09:10:00]

SCIUTTO (on camera): It looks like you brought most things for your kids, did you bring anything for yourself?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: [Foreign Language]

SCIUTTO (on camera): Socks, socks. OK.

SCIUTTO (voice over): What she could not take with her is her husband. As Yana explained to us, all males of military age cannot leave Ukraine.

SCIUTTO (on camera): They must miss their father. Are they worried about them?

She says her children don't understand. They think their dad will join them soon, and everything will be alright. Yana is from Bucha, in peaceful times a quiet suburb of Kyiv. Today, the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

Yana told us they survived for eight days in their basement before making it out. At times without water, or electricity.

SCIUTTO (on camera): This is really a waystation for families fleeing the war. Some will go on from here out of the country to Poland or even further away. But others will stay here in Ukraine, put up in the homes of volunteers. Ukrainians, helping other Ukrainians to save their lives.

Refugees get food here. There are piles of clothes to choose from donated by other Ukrainians. A few toys for the kids and some space to play. For the youngest children the war seems distant, even unreal.

For Yana, Saturday was her birthday and in all the chaos and uncertainty, there was one happy moment. A chance reunion with a friend from home, and a long hug. A burning question hangs over all of this. What next? And for Yana and her family, will they, can they ever go home?

I have no idea, to be honest, she says. She tries not to think about it. It's just too difficult.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: One story, one vision of one family of millions Erica - millions - that are going through this right now. And then we see them marching along the streets here in Lviv, a familiar profile, because it's the mothers and their children, right. The men of military age have to stay behind. And they're dragging bags. They have to boil their lives down to a couple of backpacks like they did or maybe one roller bag and then leave the country, and they don't know when they're coming back.

And it's a choice between that and the prospect of well, real danger of possible death, which is happening more and more to civilians here. It's just heart wrenching. It's 2022 it's a country of 44 million people and millions of them facing that very choice.

HILL: Yes, they certainly are. And it is so important, though - I mean, such a such a beautiful, heartbreaking story. We hear too, that they had to pare everything down to get rid of their bags to make room for other kids on that train. And Yana brought socks, just socks for herself.

Jim, again, more than just the incredibly important reporting you've been doing. And as we look at where we are now, some 12 days into this, Ukraine's President, as we said earlier, demanding new sanctions against Russia, including boycotting the country's oil.

At Sunday, Secretary Blinken told CNN, the U.S. and its Western allies are looking into possibly banning imports of Russian oil. CNN's White House Correspondent Jeremy Diamond joining us now. It's not just an oil ban being discussed, Jeremy, there are some other options, as I understand it, the White House is weighing. So give us a sense what are they, how quickly could we see some real action here?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Erica, U.S. officials have been working furiously and urgently over the weekend to identify and prepare the next steps in their effort to continue to put more pressure on the Russian President Vladimir Putin and also more support directed at the U.S. as Ukrainian allies.

We know that over the weekend, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy was urging us lawmakers on a call on Saturday to implement a no fly zone. Biden Administration officials have made clear that that is off the table. But some other options that Zelenskyy was also urging for are now on the table.

One of those, of course, as you were just saying, is banning Russian oil imports into the United States. That's something that we've heard a number of Republican and Democratic lawmakers expressed public support for, and the administration is now working through that to see how they can do that, while minimizing the impact on American consumers.

There's also the possibility of declaring that war crimes have taken place. That Russia has committed war crimes in Ukraine. U.S. officials making clear they are gathering evidence on that front.

And then lastly, there's this potential deal for Poland to provide a Ukraine - Poland which of course is a NATO country - for them to provide Soviet era fighter jets to the Ukrainians, and in exchange for the U.S. to potentially backfill Poland's supply of fighter jets with new F-16 The logistics of that are still being worked out, including how those planes would actually get to Ukraine.

[09:15:00]

A source familiar with the matter told me just this morning that that deal is unlikely to go forward today. But U.S. officials have made clear they've given the green light for that. Now the decision is up to Poland. Erica?

HILL: Chairman Diamond, appreciate it. Thank you.

Still to come here this hour, the U.S. working on a deal with Poland to provide fighter jets Ukraine, as you heard. So how would that work? How quickly could it happen?

Plus, you'll hear from a rabbi who just evacuated hundreds of orphans out of Ukraine. He will join us live now from Romania.

And WNBA star Brittney Griner detained in Russia after airport officials claim she had hashish oil in her luggage. We'll take a look at what else may be at play here, and what the U.S. is doing to help.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:20:00]

HILL: The United States is now in talks with Poland to help amplify Ukraine's air defense. The U.S. discussing, possibly, sending fighter jets to Poland. Jets that would replace jets Poland may send to Ukraine.

SCIUTTO: Yes, this was an option that there was opposition to just a few days ago. Now there's movements. CNN's Natasha Bertrand joins us now from Brussels. Natasha, this moved pretty quickly from a no to close to a yes. How exactly would it work? And have they worked out the issue of how those jets in Poland are replaced? What they're replaced with?

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, Jim. So we still don't really have a timeline for when this would actually happen. But Secretary Blinken did confirm yesterday that they're working essentially to backfill the Polish kind of air fleet if they were to decide - if Poland were to decide to send the Soviet era jets to Ukraine.

Of course, it's important that Ukraine have those jets that are actually Russian made, because those are the ones that they know how to fly. But Poland, of course, does not want to be left without. And so the question is, how is the United States and how long is it going to take for the United States to provide American made F-16 jets to Poland so that they can then send their Soviet airplanes to Ukraine.

Now, the airspace over Ukraine is still contested, which has struck a lot of officials by surprise - took a lot of officials by surprise. And Ukraine has been begging for these planes because they say that it could give them some kind of an edge over the Russians, because they right now have a shortage of aircraft

So they believe that this could be a real game changer for them. So Zelenskyy, in a call with U.S. lawmakers, just last weekend, said that he was really hoping that Poland and other Eastern European countries that have these planes will be backfilled so that they can have those planes be sent to Ukraine for use, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Natasha Bertrand in Brussels, thanks so much. Joining us now to discuss retired U.S. Army Major Mike Lyons. Good to have you on, sir. I want to ask you about Western military support - U.S. and NATO military support for Ukraine, because things that were off the table just a couple of weeks ago, right, when you had NATO partner like Germany did not want to send surface to air missiles, that's changed. They're sending a whole heck of a lot.

These jets were off the table, and now it seems like - just a couple of days ago - now it seems like something's moving forward there. Given that progress do you think that other measures that are considered off the table now, namely, a no fly zone that as this amps up those could find their way under consideration again?

MAJOR MIKE LYONS, US ARMY (RET.): Jim, I don't think so. I think the no fly zone is a hard line that crosses the line between a declaration of war. The fact that we've been sending this lethal aid over is somewhat of an escalation in procedure already, and it's poured in. And I think we got to continue to do that.

Now, I do think this is a good idea in concept of trying to get Poland to give these fighters to Ukraine, but I think it's going to be difficult in execution. And as this time has gone by, the first, the fact that the Ukraine military is still flying is a small miracle at this point, given the intel and the capability that Russia has.

But at the end of the day to get pilots there, you're going to have to repaint some of the aircraft. It can't look like a NATO country supporting this. I think that really risks escalations. But, well, I think it's a good idea in concept. I think it's going to be very difficult to execute over time.

HILL: Correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the other issues in Ukraine as well is that Russia has been targeting, of course, airports, and that is making it increasingly difficult even for what Ukraine currently has.

LYONS: Right. And slip them across the border and possibly in Eastern Ukraine, and airfields that they don't know where they're possibly creating, again, is going to be a real challenging mission for the Ukraine military, that's clearly has its hands filled. So every day that goes by right now, it gives them an opportunity to improve their defenses of Kyiv and some of the cities that they're trying to fight against.

We also saw yesterday, Ukraine soldiers helping civilians. They're just doing an incredible job on the ground of being war fighters and making sure that the humanitarian aid gets going. So I think it might be a bridge before, maybe they will get a few planes over. But I just - I think in concept, a good idea, but an execution is going to be challenging.

SCIUTTO: I get, as do many, how and why a no fly zone is dangerous, who put U.S. NATO warplanes in a position shooting down Russian warplanes, and then suddenly, you're at war, right, potentially nuclear war.

But here's a question Russia is escalating throughout. It is escalating its attacks on cities. And if we look at Putin's playbook from Syria, and going back to Chechnya, that is to raze cities not caring at all about the civilian population. In fact, intending to terrorize and kill the civilian population.

What is NATO's escalation plan in terms of support for the Ukrainian military if we find ourselves spectators to this over the coming days and weeks?

LYONS: I think we're going to become spectators to it and we're going to do all we can to pour this equipment in. And the issue is what's going to happen on the ground?

[09:25:00]

What's going to happen with the Russian military as we see soldiers abandoning their vehicles, and they're just not having this will to fight. So the weapon systems that they're employing right now are all strategic. They're coming from the air cruise missiles, airplanes as well. We just don't really have a choice.

I would say, if he decides to launch a nuclear strike on something that possibly might introduce some increased response by NATO. But at this point, we really risk an escalation on our side that that would draw the entire NATO forces into this.

Now again, what NATO should be doing right now is shoring up that Eastern flank. We need to be getting troops to the Baltics, we need to be getting troops into Poland. Let's get some airwings more into Poland. I know we're sending troops there this summer. But the bottom line is, that's now going to become a very hard line between East and West. And if NATO wants to ensure the security of those countries, we need to be moving troops in those locations.

HILL: Major Mike Lyons, great to have you with us with your perspective, your expertise this morning. Thank you.

LYONS: Thanks.

HILL: So the coming here, the American basketball star detained in Russia. How Vladimir Putin's conflict with the West is complicating efforts to bring her home.

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