Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Interview With Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor; Russian Attacks Intensifying. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired March 07, 2022 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:00]

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: "Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain" premieres Sunday night 9:00 p.m. Eastern right here on CNN.

Thanks for joining us on INSIDE POLITICS today. Don't forget, you can also listen to our podcast. Download INSIDE POLITICS wherever you get your podcasts.

Hope to see you back here this time tomorrow.

Ana Cabrera, Anderson Cooper pick up our coverage right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

ANA CABRERA, CNN HOST: Hello,. I'm Ana Cabrera in New York. Anderson Cooper is with us from Lviv, Ukraine.

And people across that country are fighting to flee, to survive and to defend. Russia's attacks on Ukraine are intensifying. The civilian death toll is mounting. One strike hit an evacuation route in a Kyiv suburb.

A warning: This next video is difficult to watch. In a matter of seconds, a family is killed, a mother, her teenage son, her young daughter seen there in the blue jacket, small backpack still strapped to her tiny body. A man helping them flee was also killed. This is what is happening -- Anderson.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Yes.

And, again, these are civilians trying to flee an area, a residential area that has already been attacked by Russian forces. Now they're attacking the evacuation route.

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy is calling the killing of unarmed citizens, in his words, deliberate murder, and is warning more attacks are imminent, he says. Russian tanks are taking up new positions in densely populated areas just outside of Kyiv. These tanks are just a few feet away from apartment buildings.

We also have some video into CNN of a residential building burning in Southern Ukraine near a strategic port city. We're told Russian troops are now encircling key cities along the Black Sea. Zelenskyy says that Russia is preparing to bomb Odessa, Ukraine's third largest city, next.

And CNN is learning more about the weapons that the U.S. and others have sent to Ukraine and what they may be planning to send next.

I want to bring in our live team coverage now.

Alex Marquardt is in Kyiv, in the region of Kyiv.

Alex, what's the latest that's going on in Kyiv today?

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Anderson, all the worst fears in the early days the invasion, that Russia would end up targeting civilians, are coming true.

The fears of people who left Kyiv and other cities in the early days, those fears have come to reality, as Russia steps up their attacks not just on key, but on cities all across the country. And we are starting to really feel the efforts of Russia to cut this city off, to encircle it, to strangle it.

We are seeing heavier and heavier fighting coming from the north and from the west, those Russian forces pushing forward. We see more and more Ukrainian residents coming out of those areas.Some 2,000 have left the neighborhood of Irpin, according to the police.

That is, of course, where we saw shelling by Russian forces that left at least eight people dead, four people at a checkpoint. We have seen those tanks that you were referencing, Anderson, in residential areas in Irpin, very close to residential buildings, and all kinds of civilian areas, buildings and infrastructure that were hit by Russian forces to the north and to the west of the city, including a bakery today, we learned, was hit west of the city in a place called Makariv.

Now, as a result of, people, as I mentioned, are coming flooding out of those areas. We have seen masses of people descend on the central train station in Central Kyiv to try to get out.

Our colleague Clarissa Ward was there earlier today, people fighting to get on the train, to get out of this city, to head west, to try to get out of the country, every Ukrainian now asking themselves, should I stay or should I try to get out and join the now more than 1.7 million Ukrainians who have now left the country?

Anderson, we learned just moments ago that this third round of talks between Ukraine and Russia have wrapped up. We haven't gotten a sense of what happened. But it is clear -- going into these talks, it was clear that the two sides are still talking past each other. Russia making major demands, like Ukraine never join any blocs, as

they said, so not join NATO or the European Union. We know that Ukraine very much wants to join those. At the same time, Ukraine demanding that Russia cease its fire and withdraw its troops. It's going to be some time before that happens.

[13:05:03]

And so going into these talks, the hope would was that they were going to come up with some sort of agreement on humanitarian corridors, on getting civilians out, because we have seen those efforts collapse in cities across the country. And we have seen Russia suggests humanitarian corridors that would lead Ukrainians into Belarus or into Russia.

And, of course, Anderson, that -- those are the last places that Ukrainians want to be.

COOPER: Yes.

MARQUARDT: So we will try to get a better understanding of what happened in these talks today, particularly when it comes to evacuating civilians from some of these hardest-hit areas -- Anderson.

COOPER: Yes, obviously, a critical topic right here now, Alex Marquardt.

We're going to go to Scott McLean now, who's near the Ukraine-Polish border.

So, Scott, you're in the far west of Ukraine, near the border with Poland. What are you hearing from people as they try to evacuate? Because the mayor of Lviv, Scott, as you know, has now said that Lviv needs -- it has almost reached capacity for their ability to absorb this influx of people fleeing, that they need tents, they need medical supplies, they need supplies to take care and deal with just the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who have been coming through.

SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, exactly.

And Lviv, as we know, is a western train hub. All the trains from Kharkiv, all the trains from Kyiv, many of them end up in Lviv. And from there, people have to get off, wait in line again. The lines are stretching out of the station, and then wait to board a train to Poland, the trains that often come quite sporadically.

So you can understand why the mayor feels that way, that simply their capacity to help has been tapped out. They need a lot more of it.

Let me set the scene for you where I am right now. So, obviously, a lot of people are attempting to drive to the border. We're about five miles from the Polish border right now. We're at one of the first checkpoints that you will encounter on route to the border -- en route to the border. And you can see these cars lined up. And it is an absolute parking

lot. Many of them had been waiting at earlier checkpoints for several hours. Many of them have been traveling for several days just to get here. I just spoke to a man who came from Kharkiv with his family.

It took them four days of driving. He said, straight driving time, it should be about 20 hours. Ukraine's a big country. But it took them four days. I met another woman at a further checkpoint who said that she's been, just in this lineup, trying to get across the border for 27 hours. Now this is the car lineup. Buses are allowed to skip it and drop off people closer to the actual border.

And, there, we saw line stretching for blocks and blocks, just a mass of humanity and a noticeable uptick from previous days of people trying to cross the border. And you can understand why, all of the bombing, all of the shelling. Even people just hearing about those things is sending them flooding to the exits.

I met one woman who was with her two young children from Irpin. She left just two days before the heavy shelling started there. I met another elderly couple. They came from Kharkiv. And they spent eight hours underground in a metro station sheltering with women and children. Only when a bomb went off they decided it was time to get out. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VOLODYMIR CHUMAKOV, REFUGEE (through translator): I never thought this would happen. I thought it would end in a few days. But on the eighth day, there was a terrible explosion at our police station right next to us.

When the underground station was shaking, the women were hysterical. I understood this is not going to pass. This horror cannot be endured. I cannot express it, the fear, the crying children. When I saw a pregnant woman entering the metro, I understood this cannot be forgiven.

There is no excuse for this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCLEAN: And, Anderson, one other quick point.

There were almost no men, of course, in the lineup by the border. But I did run into one who obviously wasn't able to cross, but he was just seeing his wife and daughter off. And I have to give this guy kudos. He's got to be the dad of the year. He works in heating for a living.

And so he has all kinds of insulation materials laying around the House. His daughter was only wearing normal running shoes, normal sneakers. And so he was literally taking the insulation material, wrapping it around her feet, and then duct-taping it, just so that her feet were warm enough, knowing that she would likely have to stand outside for hours on end in order to get across the border and then, from there, who knows where. COOPER: Yes.

Scott McLean, Alex Marquardt, thank you very much.

I want to go back now to Ana.

CABRERA: And, Anderson, we know that the U.S. and allies are trying to figure out how best to help the Ukrainians without putting boots on the ground.

And so there's this massive effort under way to bolster Ukraine's military defenses and to try to chip away at Russia's huge numbers advantage. The U.S. has already supplied Ukrainian forces with thousands of missiles, and now a plan to have key allies provide Ukraine with fighter jets is starting to gain traction.

Meanwhile, you have critical military shipments arriving through a secret airfield near the Ukrainian border.

[13:10:00]

And here to discuss all of this as CNN military analyst retired Air Force Colonel Cedric Leighton.

And, Colonel, we're told right now, as you look at the numbers, the U.S. and NATO allies have been providing about 17,000 anti-tank missiles. That includes the Javelins, plus some 2,000 Stinger anti- aircraft missiles. How significant is this? Is it any match against the Russian military?

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, it is significant, Ana.

And what's so interesting about this, just from a pure numbers perspective, these numbers are actually reaching a matched level to the Russian incursion here. And when you look at the number of tanks that the Russians have, and the number of anti-tank missiles, to include the Javelins that you mentioned, that, one for one, would be quite a match against Russian tanks.

Not all of them, of course, are going to hit their target. But it is a very significant increase in Ukrainian armament, absolutely.

CABRERA: And, in addition, we know the U.S. is trying to work out a deal for Poland to provide fighter jets to Ukraine. These would be Russian-made Soviet era jets that Ukrainian pilots know how to operate and then the U.S. would be backfilling or restocking what Poland is giving up with F-16 fighter jets that would be sent to Poland.

But we know time is of the essence right now, because Ukraine's airfields are dwindling.

LEIGHTON: That's right.

And here's the -- one of the big problems, is that Ukrainian airfields have been attacked in the last day or so by the Russians. They went after one of -- a key airfield at Vinnytsia, which is actually the headquarters of Ukraine's air force command. And they basically cratered the runways.

That makes it impossible for aircraft to land or take off. So that's going to be a challenge. So, if they bring the MiG-29s in from Poland, they're going to have to have airfields that the MiG-29s can operate out of in order for them to be effective against Russian targets.

CABRERA: It does sound like Ukraine is at least at this point holding its own in the air. We're told that the skies above Kyiv are still contested between Russia and Ukraine.

As far as Russia's firepower right now, we understand that Russia has fired a total of 625 missiles since this invasion began. That's according to a senior Pentagon official. And that does not include shells and rockets. Can you help us understand, what is the difference between shelling and bombing rockets and missiles, et cetera?

LEIGHTON: Yes, there's not much of a difference when you're the target, because it explodes, and you're affected by it, sometimes lethally.

But, in basic terms, the bombing usually occurs from the air. Shelling would be artillery shells, ground-based platforms that shell into the area. Rockets are a little bit more sophisticated than that. They are basically small missiles that go into a particular target. Some of those are guided missiles. Some of those are unguided missiles, more primitive.

But the basic effect between artillery bombing and missiles is to soften up the territory that you're trying to get into. So, from the Russian perspective, what they're trying to do is, they're trying to weaken the defenses of the Ukrainians, weaken their resistance, and then move into the territory that then becomes open for them to move into.

CABRERA: But I wonder just how targeted those weapons can be, because we know that there have been hundreds -- at least hundreds of civilians killed. According to the U.N., it's more than 400 so far.

And we're seeing some of the civilians killed trying to flee, evacuees. We have seen schools, shops, churches all targeted or at least hit. But is it clear that Russia is targeting civilians, or could Russia be shelling and bombing indiscriminately resulting in these horrific killings? How targeted and detail-oriented can you utilize those weapons?

LEIGHTON: So, their weapons systems, there are some of the more modern ones that are a bit more precise, that use things like GPS in order to get at their targets.

However, a lot of the weapons that they're using are actually unguided weapons, which means that they're not directly targeted. They're targeted in the general direction that they're firing at, but they're not targeted to a specific coordinate on the map. That's very different from the American way of war, which is very much

reliant on precision -guided munitions. The vast majority of these munitions are not PGMs, or precision-guided munitions, Ana. And that makes the vast difference. They are -- in essence, they're doing kind of both things.

They're shooting indiscriminately, but they also don't care that they're hitting civilian targets, because that's part of their plan. Their plan is to actually terrorize the civilian population, kind of like the big bombing raids during World War II under what we would today call very primitive conditions.

[13:15:05]

That's what the Russians are doing right now with all the weapons at their disposal.

CABRERA: And, real quickly, I do want to just take a better -- a bigger picture look at what's happening, because everywhere in red on this map is where we have Russian forces right now.

We know, in the north, that's an area currently intensifying in terms of the fighting near Kyiv. In fact, in Irpin right here, Scott McLean mentioned we have also learned that there have been tanks spotted. This is just outside the capital.

Colonel, is Kyiv, as a priority for both Ukrainians and Russians, can Ukraine keep holding Russia back here, do you think?

LEIGHTON: Well, it's going to be tough. They can.

And it's going to be difficult to from a resupply standpoint. Resupplying Ukrainian defenders is going to be a really tough act, but it can be done. And, as they say, the defender has an advantage in a place like Kyiv, or any major city, because what they can do is, they can basically use all of the different areas and all the buildings, all of the landmarks, everything like that, as a place from which to shoot from, and then to go back into and hide in.

So they can they can use that to their advantage and they can really stall the Russian advance, given not only their esprit de corps, but their efforts to employ weapons that we give them.

CABRERA: Colonel Cedric Leighton, I really appreciate all of your time and expertise. Thank you for your guidance along the way here.

He's isolated like never before, but he still isn't backing down from his demands. What will it take for Putin to stop this invasion? We will discuss with the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): My family is hiding in the basement now because of you monsters.

(END VIDEO CLIP) (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:21:10]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OLEKSANDR MARKUSHYN, MAYOR OF IRPIN, UKRAINE (through translator): These are not -- these are not an army. These are animals. They are killing civilians. They're shelling our city, our residential buildings and ambulances. They're firing on ambulances.

This is just a monstrosity. These are animals. They're not people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: "They are animals, not people" -- that is how the mayor of Irpin, Ukraine, is describing Russian troops after they killed eight civilians, including two children, as they were trying to evacuate this weekend.

Now, across Ukraine, civilians are being killed by Russian forces. They're being struck outside markets, bombed inside their homes. The apartment building burning here was shelled just today. And what is so disturbing, criminal even, is that the attacks don't appear to be mistakes, but strategy.

Western intelligence officials say Russia is only upping the pace and strength of strikes on key population centers in an effort to quite literally bombard cities into submission. This man has already lost five family members, including his 12-year-old daughter and his wife.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): 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.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: One person is responsible for all of this carnage, all of this tragedy.

As Vladimir Putin escalates his campaign to brutalize the people of Ukraine, his country is becoming increasingly cut off from the world. And he is becoming even more isolated among world leaders.

Let's bring in former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor.

Ambassador, we know Putin has spoken to only a handful of leaders outside his country in recent days, France's Macron, Israel's Bennett, Turkeys Erdogan, and India's Modi. Do you think any of them have enough pull with Putin?

WILLIAM TAYLOR, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO UKRAINE: Ana, I don't think they have enough pull.

I think they can all reinforce the message that you have just outlined. That is, President Putin is isolated. He probably needs to know that his army is stalled. At least, that's the impression that the rest of the world has when they observe the strong Ukrainian fight, the strong Ukrainians as they're pushing back on all of this weaponry and all of this force.

Ukrainians are pushing back. And chances are very good that President Putin doesn't know that. So these leaders might be able to give him some sense of reality on the ground.

CABRERA: Ahead of talks today between Ukraine and Russia, the Kremlin spokesperson laid out some demands from Russia, like Ukraine must choose neutrality. In other words, stay out of NATO. Acknowledge Crimea as Russian territory, and recognize the self-declared Luhansk and Donetsk people's republics.

These strike me as essentially the same demands Putin was making before the invasion. So what does that tell you, if that's where he's still at in terms of negotiating and these ongoing talks?

TAYLOR: Ana, it's a very good question.

So our sense is that Mr. Putin all along, for whatever reason, whatever tactics, wants Ukraine, wants to dominate Ukraine. And the things that you just mentioned, staying out of NATO, giving up its sovereignty, going to neutrality, all of those things are designed, apparently -- no one knows really what's in his mind, but, apparently, to dominate Ukraine.

Now, if there were some way to get a cease-fire, if there were an agreement, that all of the killings you just described and your reporters just described -- it's heartbreaking -- if that killing can stop, then there's conversation to be had. Then there are negotiations to be had.

[13:25:09]

It's up to the Ukrainians whether they want to recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea -- they never have -- or whether or not they want to recognize Donetsk and Luhansk as people's republics. They never have. But it's up to them.

But the main thing is to stop the killing. The main thing is to have a cease-fire and have a conversation. And, as you say, their negotiators are there on the Belarusian-Ukrainian border. They have been talking for the past couple of hours. They have got some ideas on how to make this go forward. But it has to happen with a cease-fire.

CABRERA: And it doesn't even seem like, at this point, Russia has been being true to the previously negotiated humanitarian corridors, as we have been reporting, the civilians that have been targeted as they have been fleeing through some of those evacuation channels.

Before I let you go, I do want to ask you about Zelenskyy, because you were there when he took office as a political newcomer. What do you make of his transformation in the past couple of weeks, becoming this inspiring global figure?

TAYLOR: Ana, it is a transformation.

He was always charismatic. He was always charming. He was always able to get people to work with him and do things for him and like him. But now, you're right, it is a transformation into a leader, into a real leader, a national leader.

Ana, I saw a poll; 92 percent of Ukrainians are now totally supportive of President Zelenskyy. And it's not just within the nation. That's the most important. It's most important that he lead his nation, but he's also gotten the support of the rest of the world. And he has motivated the United States Senate and House. He's motivated the European Parliament.

He's been able to lead the world in this struggle for his own sovereignty, but he's also leading it for freedom in Europe.

CABRERA: And I think he has touched a lot of hearts and minds. A lot of people are listening to what he has to say.

Former Ambassador William Taylor, really appreciate your time and expertise. Thank you.

TAYLOR: Thank you.

CABRERA: The fight in the Ukrainian people is fierce, case in point, a street sign directed at any Russian invaders in the city of Odessa.

The translation here: "Go straight, F off. Left, F off again. Right, F off to Russia."

While President Zelenskyy is warning Russia is preparing to bomb this southern port, we go live there next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)