Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Newsroom
Parents Try to Keep Life Normal for Daughters in War-Torn Ukraine; Rabbi Assisting Refugees Along Ukraine-Moldova Border; House Passes Ban on Importing Russian Oil, Natural Gas, Coal. Aired 9:30-10a ET
Aired March 10, 2022 - 09:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[09:33:36]
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Even as millions flee Ukraine, for their lives, there are many Ukrainians who are staying put, trying to find a way to build a new life within the war-torn country.
ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Our colleague Anderson Cooper spoke with one family who has been displaced now twice by Russian forces. Their goal right now doing everything they can to keep life as normal as possible for their two young girls.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANA, UKRAINIAN REFUGEE (through translator): When bombing started in Kharkiv, it was 5:00 a.m. and she was asleep. She didn't wake up. All of our basic necessary things were already packed. Do you understand? My husband and I, we just grabbed documents, our photo cards, my child's toy, and the suitcase that was already packed. We sat in the car and drove straightaway. Every day, Timor filled up the car with gasoline so we would be ready. We expected this to happen. We are from Donetsk. We have gone through this before.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR (on-camera): What do you tell a child about what is happening?
ANA (through translator): Adventure, just an adventure.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through text translation): Mom, let's go to the playground.
COOPER (voice-over): The kids think it's an adventure, but for Ana and Timor, it's more like a nightmare. It's the second time they've lost their home. In 2014, when Russia invaded they lived in Donetsk and had to flee to Kharkiv. Now they're displaced again.
[09:35:04]
ANA (through translation): They will never defeat us because this is our land. I just want the whole world to help so our kids don't die. Now we are playing hide and seek so they can learn to hide when it will be needed. Maybe they will come here, too.
COOPER (on-camera): You pretend everything is normal for them.
TIMOR, UKRAINIAN REFUGEE: This place is not safe because the rockets can --
COOPER: The war can come here. When you go to fight, will your family stay here?
TIMOR: Yes.
COOPER: Yes.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HILL: Thanks to Anderson Cooper for that. They're playing hide and seek, Jim, so that they'll know what to do if they need to hide. It just -- it breaks your heart.
Joining us now from near the border with Ukraine, near the Ukraine- Moldova border is Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz. His organization has been able to help 30,000 refugees already.
Rabbi, it's good to have you with us this morning. And I know you've said that you're not sure that we really have a full understanding of what it is like on the ground there. I know you are still in touch with people in Mariupol. Can you just give us a sense of what are you hearing and what are you hearing specifically today about what people are going through?
AVRAHAM BERKOWITZ, CHABAD UKRAINE RELIEF: (INAUDIBLE) on his legs two weeks ago.
HILL: Rabbi, we're having a hard time with your -- with your audio.
SCIUTTO: Yes.
HILL: It's breaking up. I don't know if maybe we could try to reset that? We'll take a quick break as we try to reset that.
SCIUTTO: Yes.
HILL: I mean, Jim, I know you are hearing so many of these stories as well after a month there in Ukraine and have such a unique perspective on it. But it seems we can never, you know, we can never hear enough.
SCIUTTO: No question. So we're going to try to fix those audio problems. We'll take a break and we'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:41:03]
HILL: With us now from Moldova, Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz. We think we fixed the technical issues there.
Rabbi, as I was mentioning before the break, you have helped get some 30,000 I believe is the number from Ukraine to safety. You were also in regular touch with folks on the ground and specifically in the city of Mariupol, which we've been watching so closely. What are they telling you today?
BERKOWITZ: So I want to first say I am one of the many hundreds of coordinators and members of Chabad that are part of this life-saving effort from within Ukraine and every city throughout the world and in every single border of Ukraine, from Romania, Hungary, Poland, and in Moldova, where we are receiving the refugees.
So the rabbi of Mariupol, the Chabad rabbi, was with me all day yesterday. He was able to be out before the war and wasn't able to go back. And he's begging and pleading and trying as much as he can to make sure in any way the world is asking to open up the humanitarian corridor to let hundreds of thousands of citizens out that right now are trapped and have no way to communicate, there's no phone, there's no heat, there's no in electricity. And the situation is dire.
And our community is trapped and they're helping each other. That we know within the network. But right now we're at the same time dealing with tens of thousands of refugees coming across the border. So we have a network of communities, of buses, that are being sponsored and planes, private cars, now planes within Ukraine. To come to the border. Here in Moldova as an example, we have three different centers where we give them food, lodging, and respite, and then we send them to the next location in Europe.
And today the E.U. passed a historic law that's giving every Ukrainian refugee three years of the right to live there and work there without asylum. And as well we're sending people, many plane loads to Israel. And it's extraordinary what the Chabad heroes, the rabbis, their wives, even though they lost everything in this terrible time, they're continuing to rebuild in refugee centers to service the people in need.
SCIUTTO: Rabbi, the vice president earlier today walked right up to the line of calling Russian attacks in Ukraine war crimes. Is the U.S., is NATO doing enough to stop Russian attacks on the civilian population?
BERKOWITZ: As a rabbi and someone who has, we can only speak to the humanitarian needs and the urgent dire needs that everyone should lay down their arms and stop the violence. What we need is to help every single man, woman and child of all backgrounds, of all faiths, to go to safety and obviously find their way. You have to know I'm meeting people at the border in Moldova, a woman came over to -- with her elderly mother, and her little child, and she said to me, Rabbi, take my key to my apartment in Kharkiv.
I can't go back, just help me find a new home. Help us find a place so we can live in safety. You know, the rabbi in Mariupol, he met a bus that came from Mykolaiv. They drove for 22 hours. And the moment he opened his mouth, and he said I'm a rabbi from Mariupol, they started to weep because they knew his community is trapped and they said, Rabbi, what gives you strength?
And he said, you're from Mykolaiv, Mykolaiv, Rabbi Schneerson, the Rebbe, the most influential leader of the last century was born there, 120 years ago.
SCIUTTO: Yes.
BERKOWITZ: He lived through all World War I, World War II, and he rebuilt Jewish life in Ukraine and all over the world. We have to have hope that no matter how difficult it is, those that are causing this destruction that hasn't been seen since World War II should end it now and give peace and security to everyone that needs it.
HILL: There have been a number of comparisons to World War II, whether it'd be 1939 or the attacks that we're seeing.
[09:45:03]
I wonder as you look at -- you talk about the humanitarian needs, we look at these efforts to have humanitarian corridors which have not worked out very well as we know in the last several days, but they seem to be funneling people to the center of the country. Does that concern you at all?
BERKOWITZ: The most important thing is that people should not be under besiege. They don't have electricity, they don't have heat, they don't have access to food and water. So everyone should put -- save Mariupol should be all over the world demanding that the people be allowed to leave. At the same time, if you can go to Dnipro, other cities, everyone is going to be leaving because you don't know which city can be bombed next.
SCIUTTO: Yes.
BERKOWITZ: Now international agencies from the IRC that we're trying to work with, because we have an amazing network in the Jewish communities all through Europe and on the borders, but we're now starting to partner with Save the Children, with the World Food Program, with CARE.org, that's giving us hygiene products and medicine and water, so we are going to work with the global agencies and give them our expertise to implement it on the ground because we must have good coordination.
SCIUTTO: Yes.
BERKOWITZ: Because this is going to be a massive disaster if we can't work together to resettle these -- those that are fleeing.
SCIUTTO: Yes, many millions more expected to flee.
Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz, thanks so much for the work that you're doing. BERKOWITZ: If I can add Chabad.org/Ukraine, if people want to help, it
will go directly to feeding, lodging and evacuating, and saving those inside. Thank you so much.
SCIUTTO: Yes, we were just going to note, if you would like to help Ukrainian refugees in need of shelter, food, water, please go to CNN.com/impact. We have a list of vetted organizations including this one that are working in Ukraine and around it to help.
And we'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:51:21]
SCIUTTO: Overnight the House passed a ban on importing Russian oil, natural gas and coal into the U.S. The bill which now heads to the Senate also takes steps to revisit Russia's role in the World Trade Organization.
Joining me now to discuss all these measures, Julia Friedlander. She's former senior U.S. Treasury adviser for Europe and Russia.
Julia, it's good to have you here. It's hard to think of a precedent, if there is one, for removing a country so swiftly from so many elements of the world economy and I wonder, big picture, what is the aim here in your view? Is the aim really to collapse the Russian economy?
JULIA FRIEDLANDER, FORMER SENIOR U.S. TREASURY ADVISER TO EUROPE AND RUSSIA: Thank you so much for having me. And yes, that appears to be the case. What the U.S. and its partners now are trying to do is essentially bankrupt Russia in time to disincentivize or make an incursion to Ukraine increasingly untenable and that means degrade their economy, so they cannot fund a war, degrade their military material and ultimately show the Russian people as well that there are consequences for Russia's actions.
As you say, this is unprecedented in scope in terms of what we have been able to do on a Western economy. Again, this is a G20 economy, the 11th largest country in the world.
SCIUTTO: Yes.
FRIEDLANDER: We have to realize that this is a big deal.
SCIUTTO: No question. Number three producer of oil as well. The U.S., the West, has tried sanctions before to change a country's behavior. Iran, its nuclear program, North Korea, its nuclear and weapons program. And Russia, its previous invasion of Ukraine. And in all those cases it punished those countries, those economies but did not deter the behavior.
You've made the point that this is a test for the whole idea of sanctions as to whether it does actually change the facts on the ground. What's the evidence here at this point that it's going to be different this time?
FRIEDLANDER: Well, I don't know, we're going to have to see. And, you know, I think it's a gamble. Right? In the case of Iran, we were trying to coax the regime back to the negotiating table over a deal over nuclear power. In Venezuela, we were trying to pressure Maduro into ceding power to the rightful president of Juan Guaido. In this case, we're actually using financial means and the Western financial system to try to end a war as it's already started.
So again this is a gamble that I think I've never seen in the history of sanctions, but I think given the severity of the situation, the U.S. and its allies are willing to put that -- the U.S. financial system and the global financial system in some aspects on the line in the attempt to stop Russia from doing what it's doing.
SCIUTTO: Yes. So far the effects outside of Russia have been largely on the oil markets and that is felt by American consumers and others, particularly at the gas pump. What are the risks to the global economy? Could this be enough of a jolt, right, that it risks the growth or even leads to a global recession? Is that possible?
FRIEDLANDER: It's possible. Again, because for the unprecedented nature of what we're doing, we're not able to game out all the economic consequences in real time. When it comes to the oil market, we already started with tight supply and now we're taking Russia off the market. Now the measures that the Biden administration has taken as well as congressional legislation yesterday to ban Russian oil, gas, and coal is largely symbolic and the reason is because Russia has embargoed itself. As a result of its actions, no one is shipping to Russia.
SCIUTTO: Yes.
FRIEDLANDER: It was ensuring anything that comes out of Russia, so again, those are global supplies that are not going to get on the market.
[09:55:06]
Increasingly, also, we're looking at grain. And that is a security issue, right, because Russia and Ukraine together produce a large chunk of the global grain supply and that is for countries in the world that rely on stable prices and on low prices. North Africa, Middle East, Indonesia, these are all places where bread prices rise, people go on the streets.
SCIUTTO: Yes, yes. Big concerns, no question.
Julia Friedlander, thanks so much.
FRIEDLANDER: Thank you.
SCIUTTO: In just a few minutes, we're going to speak to a member of the Ukrainian parliament as Ukrainian officials plead for more U.S. and NATO military support, including air support, to help defend their country. That's coming up. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
