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Russian Forces Moving in on Kyiv from the East; Crisis Grows in Besieged Ukrainian City of Mariupol; Zelenskyy Denies Ukraine Preparing Chemical Attack; Americans Paying Record High Gasoline Price; Ukraine's First Lady Shows Reality of War on Social Media. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired March 11, 2022 - 04:30   ET

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

[04:30:00]

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ISA SOARES, CNN HOST: If you're just joining us, let me bring you up to date with our breaking news. We've seen deadly explosions in a number of Ukrainian cities the country's emergency services said the Russian airstrikes underneath pro hitch and a preschool and apartment building as well as a shoe factory.

At least one person was killed and the Mayor of Lutsk near the border with Poland reports another death when three missiles hit an airfield. Meanwhile, heavy fighting has been reported in several towns near the Ukrainian Capital.

Russian forces are said to be moving closer to Kyiv from the East as well as the Northwest. Ukrainian forces claim they have destroyed a Russian tank regiment and killed his commander in an ambush North of Kyiv. But it is the port city of Mariupol that may be enduring the worst of the Russian wrath.

Its Mayor is accusing the Kremlin of genocide. He says no aid has been able to reach the city for nearly a week and at some 400, 000 people are being held hostage. The Ukrainian emergency service building in Mariupol was shelled on Thursday as you can see there a day earlier a blast damaged maternity and children's hospital killing three people and setting off global condemnation.

And warning there are images in our next report that may be difficult to watch. They show some of the Ukrainian civilians harmed by the relentless attacks on Mariupol. CNN's Phil Black has a story.

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PHIL BLACK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): When you hear Ukrainian city is under siege, cut off and under bombardment by Russian forces. This is what that means. No one knows how many people have been killed in Mariupol. But it's too many to allow the care and dignity that usually comes with death.

Relatively few images have escaped Mariupol since the siege began. These were captured by AP Photo Journalist - who says he saw around 70 bodies buried in this trench over two days. They arrived wrapped in whatever people could find in use plastic bags even covered.

And this shows why it's likely there are many more married people suffering from above, before and after satellite images reveal extraordinary devastation in commercial and shopping areas residential neighborhoods too.

Russian munitions are steadily wiping out this city. It's already unlivable. There is no food, water or power. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says a child in Mariupol has died of dehydration, probably for the first time since the Nazi invasion.

[04:35:00]

BLACK (voice over): During a meeting in Turkey, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister says he asked his Russian counterpart for a humanitarian corridor to allow people to leave Mariupol.

DMYTRO KULEBA, UKRAINIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: Unfortunately, Minister Lavrov was not in a position to commit him to it, but he will correspond with respective authorities.

BLACK (voice over): That means Sergey Lavrov has to ask his boss, but Russia's top diplomat was comfortable repeating Russia's explanation for bombing a maternity hospital in Mariupol on Wednesday. The Russian version says there were no patients or staff in these buildings, just soldiers.

This was the reality captured in the moments immediately after the blast. And obviously pregnant woman is stretched from the side. Another hurt, bleeding walks out carrying what she can. Russians often honor the bravery and determination shown by their own citizens who were besieged by Nazi forces in the Second World War. Now Russia is inflicting that same suffering on the people of Mariupol, Phil Black CNN, and London.

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SOARES: Well, Russia's Foreign Ministers says that suffering is at the hands of someone else, not Russia.

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SERGEY LAVROV, RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: At the meeting of the UN Security Council our delegation presented facts about this maternity hospital, having long been seized by the Azov battalion and other radicals. And they have driven all the pregnant women and the nurses out of it and set up a base for the ultra-radical Azov battalion of Ukrainian.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SOARES: Well, two weeks after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Foreign Minister Lavrov had a bizarre recollection of the facts.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LAVROV: We do not plan to attack other countries. And we did not attack Ukraine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SOARES: Clearly insinuating that Ukraine is attacking its own people. Well, Russia is issuing more accusations against Ukraine saying the country's preparing a chemical weapons attack. The Defense Ministry says Ukraine has 80 tons of ammonia ready for an attack. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says it's Russia that's preparing the chemical attack.

He puts it plainly. If you want to know Russia's plans look at what Russia accuses others of. Nina Dos Santos joins me now in London for more. Look at the chemical weapons accusation and Nina, some of these claims are so baseless, and they go back a few years now they've been circulating for quite a while. How the U.S. and Ukrainians are how are they countering this narrative for Russia?

NINA DOS SANTOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Let's look first, the history of this is actually not just Ukraine, I remember reporting the Baltic States and there were various of false media, fake news articles linked to Russian websites that there again, talks about things like mustard gas.

So this is something that you often see as a narrative. And most alarmingly, we started to hear UK parliamentarian start to warn about this even before the United Kingdom and the United States yesterday, so that they were very, very concerned about false flag operations that could essentially use this pretext this talk of Ukraine having chemical weapons to be used as a pretext for actually engaging in a chemical weapons attack.

The place we've seen this before, is in Syria. And of course, Russia played a big hand backing President Bashar Al Assad, and there is a couple of chemical weapons attack there. They're already signaled in this manner. So this is why the West is extremely concerned about this.

Now, Russia has asked for UN Security Council meeting later on today specifically to talk about what they believe is evidence that there are biological weapons facility supported they say, by the United States, in the territory of Ukraine.

Obviously, that's something that both Ukraine and the U.S. deny. They're saying no, the opposite is what may be happening. And that's what we're worried about.

SOARES: The fear, of course that Putin could deploy chemical weapons is real. What are NATO ally saying?

SANTOS: Well, they're very concerned about it. This is obviously an escalation on the situation that we saw earlier on in the week where Russia was talking about nuclear facilities. So we spent much of last week being concerned about the ratcheting up of the tensions surrounding whether or not Russia believed that NATO might get involved by helping give arms to Ukrainian soldiers' planes to Ukraine.

We saw that a talk of Poland putting its MIG planes that Ukrainian pilots can fly at the disposal of the United States. So then sent to Ukraine, the U.S. decided not to do that, because they thought that they really didn't want to, if you like poke the Russian bear on the subject.

And now an all of that was designed to not escalate this conflict into a third world war and also potentially nuclear war because Sergey Lavrov the Foreign Minister has made it clear that he's always said that another third world war words from the Russian point of view be nuclear. Now we're into another paradigm which is extremely sinister and it is the concept of potential chemical weapons being used here.

[04:40:00]

SOARES: And we have heard from Boris Johnson who was spoken about this.

SANTOS: That's right. I'm glad you reminded me about that he did. He spoke to Sky News just yesterday. And he said it's this it's this technique that we're particularly worried about this sort of potential for talking about deniable attack. Let's see whether our viewers can listen to that.

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BORIS JOHNSON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: This time that you're hearing about chemical weapons, this is straight out of their playbook. They start saying that there are chemical weapons that have been stored by their opponents or by the Americans and so when they themselves deploy chemical weapons as I fear they, they may they have as a sort of a - a fake story, ready to go.

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SANTOS: One key thing though, he isn't mentioning the word red line, which is obviously what happened all those years ago in Syria. So we'll have all eyes out on that UN Security Council and see what comes out of that.

SOARES: Nina - thanks very much. Nina Dos Santos there. Well, we now want to show you really a cat and mouse game of surveillance playing out between NATO and Russia. The alliance is flying surveillance planes over Eastern Ukraine keeping an eye on Russia moves in Ukraine's airspace.

The CNN crew was on board one of the so called our work planes flown by NATO as Natasha Bertrand reports, pardon me the flight spotted Russian made aircraft of Ukraine that didn't come from Russia.

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NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): CNN was granted rare access to a NATO surveillance flight on Thursday that was monitoring Russian air activity inside Ukrainian airspace and making sure that Russian jets did not get too close to NATO airspace.

Now what we're told from the NATO airmen on board today is that they were able to see on their radar, Russian made jets taking off from Belarus and entering Ukrainian airspace. Now it was unclear to them exactly who was flying those jets, whether they were Russian or Belarusian, because both countries fly the same kind of aircraft.

But they agree that this aircraft has been taking off from Belarus in support of Russia's military operations inside Ukraine. And they say that this is just yet another example of how important Belarus has become to supporting Russia's war in Ukraine Natasha Bertrand, Sittard, Netherlands.

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SOARES: Well, the UK is sanctioning more Russians including Chelsea Owner Roman Abramovich, what that means for the multibillion dollar sale of the London club next? Plus, Americans are paying more than ever for gasoline more than ever we asked how motorists there are coping?

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[04:45:00]

SOARES: Well, Americans are seeing record high prices to fuel up their cars. The price for a gallon of gas has risen 78 cents since Russia first invaded Ukraine as you can see that that unprecedented spike will take a significant chunk out of household budgets.

And there is concern that higher prices may hurt the broader economy by forcing families to cut back on spending. CNN's Alison Kosik takes a closer look.

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ALISON KOSIK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): From the grocery store to the gas station we're spending more on just about everything.

WAIN CHIN, NYC TAXI DRIVER: Most of the gas station expensive anywhere you go.

KOSIK (voice over): The national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline jumped by another seven cents to a fresh record of $4.32 a gallon on Thursday according to triple AAA. That's up 59 cents in one week and 78 cents since the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

We've never seen gas prices in the U.S. run up so quickly. Moody's Analytics predicting families will pay up to $1,300 more this year just to fill up the tank.

CHIN: No I will leave right now I'm not making enough. You know, just we're surviving. KOSIK (voice over): Higher energy prices are likely to exacerbate already high inflation raising costs for delivery prices of food, clothing and cars. And because Russia is also a major exporter of crucial metals like aluminum, palladium and nickel that could feed into current supply chain disruptions causing even more sticker shock when buying a new or used car.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everything is just gone skyrocket.

KOSI (voice over): Many are calling on the White House to allow more drilling for oil in the U.S. as a way to drive down prices at the pump. But several industry analysts tell CNN that is unrealistic for a number of reasons. The type of oil the U.S. produces is not the kind used to make gasoline and the global supply of oil determines gas prices, not just oil that's drilled in the U.S.

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SOARES: Now that's Alison Kosik reporting. Well, the UK Government has sanction Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, the Owner of British Football Club Chelsea FC. Well, just last week, Abramovich if you remember, had announced plans to sell the club now his assets are frozen and transactions are prohibited. CNN World Sports Amanda Davies looks at what this means one of the world's biggest football clubs.

AMANDA DAVIES, CNN WORLD SPORT: Roman Abramovich has always publicly at least tried to distance himself and this football club from the politics. But they're now firmly at the center of it with the UK Government sanctions imposed to expressly stop Abramovich benefiting from the Chelsea ownership with the Foreign and Culture Secretary Liz Truss, calling the Russian complicit in Putin's aggression.

In the context of the horrors of what we're seeing play out in Ukraine, the day to day running of a football club pales into insignificance, but this is the European champions and it's become one of the biggest clubs in the world during the Russians' tenure.

The initial restrictions imposed make things difficult for them in terms of conducting transfers, travel cost restrictions and limiting the sale of tickets. It's certainly been strange here with the closing of the Club Shop and the hotel on site not being able to take reservations or even sell coffee or water.

The club is hoping there'll be able to negotiate some new terms which will mean there'll be able to operate in as normal away as possible. There's hope the sale of the club will be able to continue if they can prove proceeds won't be lining the Russians pocket. But this is uncharted territory for the club for the Premier League and for the UK Government.

The man whose arrival heralded the most successful period of Chelsea's history is that to depart, leaving them with their most uncertain future, Amanda Davies, CNN, Stamford Bridge, London.

SOARES: Ukraine's First Lady is turning to social media to show the realities of war. We'll look at how she's garnering international awareness with the country and her life before her current role. That's after the break.

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[04:50:00]

SOARES: Well, we've had a lot lately about Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. But Ukraine's First Lady is also using social media to fight back against the Russian invasion by showing the world the real as well as horrifying scenes in the country. CNN's Sunlen Serfaty has a story for you.

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SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Ukraine's First Lady Olena Zelenska not mincing words, saying Russia is conducting the mass murder of Ukrainians given what she calls her own testimony from Ukraine in a lengthy open letter posted in several languages.

When Russia says that it is not waging war against civilians I call out the names of these murdered children first. Zelenska says addressing some of the youngest victims of the war by name. Since the start of the invasion, the 44 year old has weaponized her social media sharing gritty real time pictures and videos to reflect the reality of the war.

This is how Ukraine looks right now she wrote last week the whole world look. Zelenska's path to her perch in this global crisis started out reluctantly. I was not too happy when I realized that those were the plans. She has her husband running for President famously first learning of his run on social media.

[04:55:00]

SERFATY (voice over): When I asked why didn't you tell me? He answered I forgot. In the three years since she has settled into her role as the First Lady taking on women's rights and children's issues in featured in a glossy spread on the cover of Vogue Ukraine.

Zelenska first met the future president in college, their relationship growing into love years later. Like her husband, she too worked in entertainment as a script writer writing comedy behind the scenes at the same studio as her husband. I am a nonpublic person she has said of herself. I prefer staying backstage. My husband is always on the forefront while I feel more comfortable in the shade. Their two young children Sasha and Cyril she is fiercely protective of. The family of four now likes so many at the epicenter of war.

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT: The enemy has marked me as target number one. My family is target number two.

SERFATY (voice over): The First Lady vowing to remain calm and confident as her own children and so many others are looking to her for strength in this moment. Sunlen Serfaty CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE) SOARES: Right, the power couple now clearly trying to defend their country. And that does it here on CNN Newsroom. Thank you very much for your company. I'm Isa Soares in London are breaking news coverage of the war in Ukraine continues on New Day with Brianna Keilar and Alex Marquardt in Lviv, Ukraine. You are watching CNN.

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