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Dozens Feared Dead in Bombing of Ukraine Army Barracks; Ukraine Claims 14,000 Russian Troops Killed in Fighting; Russia Stalling on Update on Casualties; War Refugees Spread Out across Europe; Missile Leaves Landscape of Destruction in Northern Kyiv; Many Ukrainians Head Home to Help War Effort; U.S. and Chinese Leaders Speak on Ukraine; U.S. Veteran Trains Ukrainian Civilians to Treat War Wounds; Toy Company Raises $145,000+ with Zelenskyy LEGO. Aired 3-4a ET
Aired March 19, 2022 - 03:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.
HALA GORANI, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Hello and welcome to our viewers around the world and also in the United States this hour. I'm Hala Gorani, reporting live from Lviv, Ukraine.
The war in this country is in its fourth week and already the purported body count is startling. Ukraine says 14,000 Russian troops have died in the conflict. Others estimate Russian deaths are fewer but still stand in the thousands.
And Ukraine's president is warning that it will get worse if Moscow's aggression continues. Now obviously there are losses as well on the Ukrainian side. Russian bombers struck army barracks in the southern city of Mykolaiv. Swedish journalists shot video of rescuers pulling one person from the debris. You see it on the screen.
It's feared dozens of Ukrainian soldiers may have been killed in this one attack. In the besieged port city of Mariupol, drone footage shows the utter devastation that Russian forces have unleashed.
What you're seeing used to be a shopping mall. And it is completely gutted and burned out, along with blocks of charred apartment buildings. And new satellite images show some Russian forces taking up defensive positions, digging earthen berms for protection. You see it from the satellite imagery.
Ukraine president is again calling on Moscow to return to diplomacy before it's too late. Listen to Zelenskyy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE (through translator): I want everyone to hear me now, especially I want them to hear me in Moscow. It's time to meet, time to talk, time to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine or else Russia will face such losses that several generations will not be enough for it to rise back up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GORANI: In the U.S., President Biden spoke for two hours with China's President Xi Jinping, warning of unspecified consequences if Beijing assists the Russian side. We'll have more on that angle later.
In Moscow, Vladimir Putin held a huge rally and a concert to celebrate Russia's annexation of Crimea eight years ago. Some of the attended said they felt pressured to go to the event. Putin used the occasion to justify his renewed invasion of Ukraine without mentioning Russia's heavy losses.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VLADIMIR PUTIN, RUSSIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): The best proof is the way our boys are fighting in this operation, shoulder to shoulder, supporting each other and if need be, protecting each other like brothers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GORANI: As he celebrates in Russia, the U.S. Defense Secretary says things are clearly not going according to Putin's plan in Ukraine. He spoke with Don Lemon during a visit Friday.
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GEN. LLOYD AUSTIN, U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: I think, you know, they have not progressed as far as quickly as they would have like to.
They, I think they envisioned that they would move rapidly and very quickly seize the capital city. They've not been able to do that. They've struggled with logistics, so we've seen a number of missteps along the way.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GORANI: Well, Austin said he was hoping China wouldn't offer a military or economic lifeline to Russia, echoing what President Biden has said. And this is reportedly what Moscow had requested from Beijing.
Now the alleged missteps by the Russian military have been costly. The Ukraine military are claiming a major battlefield victory as it pushes back against the invading Russian army. With that angle, here's CNN's Fred Pleitgen.
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FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Another blow to Vladimir Putin's military, Ukrainian forces claiming they ambushed this convoy of Russian airborne troops.
While CNN cannot independently verify the information, Russian state TV, for the first time, acknowledged that a senior airborne commander and several soldiers have been killed.
While still outgunned, the Ukrainians feel they might slowly be turning the tide.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking foreign language).
PLEITGEN (voice-over): "The Armed Forces of Ukraine continue to deliver devastating blows, at groups of enemy troops, who are trying to consolidate and hold the capture defensive lines," a Ukrainian army spokesman says.
The Ukrainians say they are launching counter attacks against Russian troops, this video allegedly showing an anti-tank guided missile taking out a Russian armored vehicle. They also claim they've already killed more than 14,000 Russian troops and shot down more than 110 combat choppers.
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PLEITGEN (voice-over): CNN can't confirm those numbers. But the Russians haven't updated their casualty figures in more than two weeks, instead claiming what they call their, quote, military special operation" is going as planned.
Russia's defense ministry released this video of helicopter gunships allegedly attacking a Ukrainian airfield.
Still, Vladimir Putin, clearly feels the need to rally his nation, making a rare appearance at a massive rally at Moscow's main stadium, where a strange technical glitch cut off his speech but not before he praised Russian troops.
PUTIN (through translator): The best proof is the way our boys are fighting in this operation, shoulder to shoulder, supporting each other and, if need be, protecting each other like brothers, shielding one another with their bodies on the battlefield. We haven't had this unity for a long time.
PLEITGEN (voice-over): But the Russians appear to be so angry at U.S. and allied weapons shipments to Ukraine they've vowed to target any deliveries entering Ukrainian territory.
And they're hitting strategic targets as well, firing several cruise missiles at an airplane repair plant near Lviv while a Russian cruise missile, dropped on a residential building in the capital, Kyiv, after being shot down by Ukrainian air defenses.
Former world heavyweight boxing champ and brother of Kyiv's mayor, Wladimir Klitschko, pleading for more help.
WLADIMIR KLITSCHKO, UKRAINIAN FORMER PROFESSIONAL BOXER: This is genocide of the Ukrainian population. You have to act now. Stop passively observing and stop doing business with Russia. Do it now.
PLEITGEN (voice-over): The Biden administration has said more aid and weapons are on the way, as Ukrainian forces continue to put up a fierce fight, preventing Russia's troops from further significant gains -- Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Lviv, Ukraine.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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GORANI: With us now is Valerie Hopkins, Moscow correspondent for "The New York Times."
I want to start with the huge rally Putin held to celebrate the annexation of Crimea eight years ago. Four weeks into this invasion, with all the reports that perhaps his troops are suffering more losses than expected, he certainly didn't in a lightning strike take over Kyiv, as probably he hoped in the beginning.
What is he trying to achieve now?
VALERIE HOPKINS, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Well, good morning, Hala.
GORANI: Good morning.
HOPKINS: President Putin is really trying to shore up support and to show that the entire country is unified behind him. This was a heavily produced show. An estimated 200,000 people were there, a lot of Putin's favorites performers and poets.
And it was a celebration, of course, of the eighth anniversary of the annexation of Crimea. But it was also attempt for Putin to portray the message that everything is going according to plan.
And the Kremlin has been clear from the beginning. Their messaging continues to be everything is going according to plan; when in reality, conservative U.S. estimates say about 7,000 of their men have died on the battlefield. A fifth general has just been killed. Things are not looking very good for the army.
The thing is, it's really unclear just how many people wanted to be at that rally. Journalists I spoke to on the ground said that many of people are public employees, state employees; they were bused there. Some didn't know they were coming to a rally.
At the same time, the images are people clapping and waving. And right now it's kind of impossible to do any public polling about Russian opinions about the war.
GORANI: Yes, I wonder how many people -- how much the news, that their battlefield setbacks and that this is costing Russian troops and their families dearly, how much of the news is making it to ordinary Russians?
Any way to assess that?
HOPKINS: I'm afraid not very much. I receive all of the official communications from the Russian ministry of defense. First of all, they portray this as a very limited operation and usually speak about the local militias in these two breakaway enclaves rather than the Russian military. They have only acknowledged the losses once, about 498 soldiers killed
about 10 days ago. So most of the Russian public doesn't have the right amount of information. And you can see that even people with family members in Ukraine don't know the full extent of what's going and don't believe their Ukrainian relatives when they tell them.
GORANI: We have heard stories of Ukrainians with Russian relatives, sometimes children talking to their own parents in Russia, who will deny there's a Russian invasion or aggression.
I wonder Putin, is there -- obviously, before the invasion, Western countries tried to avoid it by engaging him in diplomacy.
Is there any window?
At what point does Putin say, OK, this is causing too much of a loss for me, economically isolated, China is not helping me actively. It's better to try to find some sort of off ramp.
Do we know?
HOPKINS: I think everyone is hoping for that. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, both sides were engaged in negotiations.
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HOPKINS: There was some positive rhetoric coming out. But at this point, all of the plans we've seen leaked were the Russian aspirations (ph). Zelenskyy is hoping to meet with Putin and that just might happen sometime next week. But I think things are still going to get worse before they get better.
GORANI: Is Vladimir Putin -- there's been a lot said about whether or not he's even -- his grasp of reality is complete.
Do we know what his state of mind is?
I know it's difficult.
GORANI: The terminology, it's very difficult to do that from Lviv. But I spent most of yesterday speaking to people who just fled Mariupol. You know, 80 percent of the housing stuff is destroyed; 40 percent of it can never be lived in again.
All of the heavy industry, that was two major factories. the lifeblood of the town, even if they take over the territory, it's going to be completely destroyed. And it will be empty of people. And the people that remain will be angry.
It's hard to imagine what Putin thinks he's going to do with any of this territory.
GORANI: And this is territory that Vladimir Putin claims he's liberating. These are Russian speakers that may even have had sympathies toward Russia before. Now they're being bombed into oblivion. I can't imagine many people there are happy about this. HOPKINS: Indeed. I spoke to somebody last night who said, before the
war, he thought up to 80 percent of the local population of Mariupol would have been sympathetic to Russia. They are something like 30 miles from the Russian border; the biggest city they would go to in the greater area is in Russia. They were very close.
And slowly, year by year, after the people saw what happened in Donetsk and Luhansk, after -- especially after the bombardment, most people said they don't want to go there. I spoke to a Russian yesterday who is now in central Ukraine, where the majority language is actually Ukrainian and not Russian.
He said I could have gone to my Russian relatives in Russia. But there I would feel pain and shame. And here in Ukraine, I will only feel the pain, not the shame.
GORANI: Interesting. Valerie Hopkins, thanks so much for your great reporting, in Lviv now; usually posted in Moscow. Thanks for that.
Coming up on CNN, Ukrainian refugees flood across borders in hopes of reaching safety. We'll hear their stories of escape from the fighting that's now raging in their country.
Plus, I'll speak to a representative from Save the Children and get a firsthand look at situation there on the ground for refugees fleeing.
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GORANI: Refugees from Ukraine are spreading out across Europe. Hundreds reached Munich on a train from Budapest Friday. Most were women with kids. Many were elderly. Germany has received 200,000 refugees so far.
According to the U.N., over 3.2 million people have now fled the fighting in Ukraine. At least 2 million have crossed into Poland alone. Many have moved on to other European countries. CNN's Ed Lavandera is right there in Poland for us, near the border with Ukraine.
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ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's been just over three weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine. And there are now more than 3.2 million people, refugees, who have left their home country of Ukraine, in to mostly Europe.
We have new figures that show more than 2 million of those refugees have entered the country of Poland. Staggering numbers that we continue to see unfolding here in Poland. One of the things that really struck us in the last few days, as we
have spoken with so many of the refugees arriving here in the border area of Poland and Ukraine, is that they're coming from the far eastern areas of Ukraine, cities that are seeing the worst of the warfare.
And the refugees describe to us a painful experience. We spoke with one family, two women, who had come with their -- a 6 year-old girl. They said they spent two days traveling from the city of Kharkiv to get to this border town in Poland.
They told the young girl -- they didn't describe it was a war; they said they were going to take a trip to Poland, just like some of her other friends had been doing.
And that is the kind of effort the parents have to do to shield their young children from the horrors of this war. What they describe, they had hoped they could wait out the war in the fighting, to be able to stay in their home city. But after weeks and weeks of constant warfare, they couldn't take it any longer.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We hoped that everything would work out. We didn't want to leave our home. But we couldn't wait anymore. Four rockets hit our area.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Every day, every minute, every second, it's just terrible for everyone, for ourselves, for our children, for our families and loved ones. We still have relatives back home. Our grandmother, who is 100 years old, was too feeble to be physically removed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LAVANDERA: So here in the train station, where so many refugees have been arriving in the last few weeks on the border of Poland, we continue to hear these stories. And what's really striking about this situation is that they're coming from the hardest hit areas, where the warfare and the decimation of the cities has been the most extreme.
And these are really treacherous journeys that is taking many of these families longer and longer to get out of and very dangerous situations.
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LAVANDERA: And those are the kind of accounts that we can continue to hear over and over from the refugees that are arriving here in Poland -- Ed Lavandera, CNN, Przemysl, Poland.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GORANI: Activists in Lviv are using powerful symbols to represent the atrocities of war.
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GORANI: Take a look at this sea of empty baby strollers, representing the deaths of Ukrainian children killed since the invasion began. According to the U.N., as of Friday, nearly 110 children have been reported killed. The strollers are meant to drive home the horrific human cost of the war and obviously to remember its youngest victims.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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KATERYNA BANDZHANOVA, UKRAINE RESIDENT (through translator): I feel completely in pain, pain for our children, pain for the future of the country because children are the future of the country. When they kill children, they kill the future of this country, its heart and its soul.
You wake up during the night when you hear the sirens. You hear any little sound. You start to shake because you understand maybe it was another explosion. Maybe I need to take my child and run away again.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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GORANI: Joining me now from Romania is Dan Stewart. He's the head of news for Save the Children.
Thanks for being with us.
What's the situation like in Romania for the kids who are fleeing with their parents?
DAN STEWART, SAVE THE CHILDREN: Well, as you said, more than 3 million refugees have been scattered across the region in just three weeks. And more than half a million of those have set foot in Romania since the start of the conflict.
What we're seeing every day is thousands of mostly mothers and children coming across the border at a number of different points. They are exhausted. They've been through horrendous, traumatic experiences, many of them.
They're also bitterly cold. You know, it's absolutely freezing here. The temperatures plummeted to as low as -10 just a few days ago. So what we're seeing is, yes, mothers and children, who really are just looking for somewhere safe and somewhere to recover.
GORANI: Yes. One of the things you told my producer is that the psychological effect of having to run away, for younger kids, is very severe on them.
How do you deal with that?
How do you talk to a child and try to lessen the just -- the psychological impact of what they're going through? STEWART: Yes. We're incredibly worried about the long-term emotional and psychological impact of the horrendous traumatic experiences that children have been through.
I spoke to one family a couple of days ago, who told me that they had hid in a basement for six days while their town was bombarded. When they emerged, they saw their home was almost completely destroyed and they were forced to flee for the border.
Another family I spoke to told me they had two minutes, literally just two minutes, to pack up and abandon their home, abandon their lives, when one of their friends suddenly had a car that could take them to the border.
And the youngest daughter of that family actually was just 9 years old. And she was there. You could see just how quiet and withdrawn she was. Her mom said that sometimes she just starts crying.
So what's vital is Save the Children and the government here and other governments are there to start providing those emotional support which children need to bounce back and recover.
They are incredibly resilient and, in the right environment, where they can play and just be children again and where their parents can start to process what they've been through, they can start that journey of recovery.
GORANI: And this is obviously the short-term needs of these children. Longer term, kids need to go to school. I mean, we saw with the war in Syria, for instance, some kids out of school for years sometimes. And this does not prepare them for the future.
How do you deal with the longer-term needs of the youngest of the refugees?
STEWART: Well, absolutely in the long term, children -- making sure that all children are able to get into school and continue their education or start their education is vital, not only because of, you know, how important it is that they can learn
in order to be able to thrive in their futures but it also provides that sense of routine and really starts to help children to recover.
It's so unpredictable right now. Things are changing by the hour. What just about everybody I've spoken to has in common is they would love to go home. They haven't left their homes because they want to. They hope to return to Ukraine.
And until we see a complete cessation of hostilities inside Ukraine, until we see safety, you know, that's the only thing in the long run that will help children recover.
GORANI: And how concerned are you about these reports that some people could take advantage of these refugee flows to deal in human trafficking or to abuse children, you know?
I mean this happens in all these war situations where you have these massive flows of humanity.
How much of a concern is that specific danger on small kids?
STEWART: Well, you know, tragically, wherever you have this amount of chaos and this amount of turmoil and, like we said, 3 million people fleeing across borders in three weeks, you know, there will be people who are looking to take advantage of this.
And that means trafficking. It means exploitation and abuse. It's a very real risk. It's something that we're very worried about.
So that it's vital that, across all of the borders with Ukraine, we can work with the authorities to ensure that any children who might be traveling alone or who have been split up from their families in the chaos are looked after and cared for straightaway so that they don't have -- so that, you know, people don't have the opportunity to make those risks a reality.
GORANI: Thank you so much, Dan Stewart, head of news at Save the Children, for joining us from Romania this hour. We really appreciate it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GORANI: If you'd like to help people in Ukraine who are in need of shelter, food or water, go to cnn.com/impact. You'll find several ways to help there.
Missiles are leaving scenes of destruction in parts of the Ukrainian capital. We'll show you what remains in the wake of a downed rocket in Kyiv. We're on the ground there.
Plus the flow of Ukrainians across the country's borders doesn't go just one way. Some feel compelled to return from abroad to do what they can for the war effort. My story is coming up next.
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GORANI: Fighting is ramping up for control of the southern port city of Mykolaiv.
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GORANI (voice-over): Take a look at the aftermath of a Russian strike there on a Ukrainian base on Friday. And one of the surviving soldiers told Swedish journalists from our affiliate that it appears most people inside were killed.
(END VIDEO CLIP) GORANI: This as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has a new message for Moscow, saying it's in Russia's best interest to negotiate for peace.
The U.K. defense ministry just released an intelligence update on Twitter, saying Russia has been forced to change its approach after being, quote "surprised" by the scale and ferocity of Ukrainian resistance, an angle we have been reporting on for weeks now.
A downed Russian cruise missile landed near a school building in northern Kyiv on Friday. As CNN's Sam Kiley shows us, the destruction that resulted from that one missile is staggering.
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SAM KILEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: This is the scene in Vynohradiv, the northern edge of Kyiv, where a cruise missile landed here in the small hours of this morning.
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KILEY: Now officially, according to the authorities, it was shot down. Normally, that would mean that the warhead was destroyed in the air.
But, clearly, that is not the case.
Beyond this truck here, beyond the JCP working, a kindergarten. Mercifully, no children in it because of the level of bombardment of Kyiv, of course, the kindergartens are closed. At this right opposite, another school for older children.
But look at the ferocity of the blast. That is what remains of a vehicle, right at the epicenter of this blast, an absolute scene of devastation.
If we look over this way, you can see an extraordinary level of devastation in this very densely populated residential area.
These are homes, humble homes of ordinary Ukrainians, struggling to get by, working with dignity, hoping one day to join the European community, possibly even NATO and this, from Vladimir Putin's perspective, is the result.
Now if we walk over this way, you can see just how devastating the size of these weapons. It's quite extraordinary. This is the result of one single blast, a blast that has ripped through this community, peppering cars with shrapnel holes.
Every one of those would have torn through dozens of people, every one of those bits of flying hot metal designed to rip into human flesh like a razor, white-hot and burning. And, of course, mercifully, no children playing in the kindergarten -- Sam Kiley, CNN, in Kyiv.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GORANI: Despite such devastation or maybe because of it, Ukraine says more than 320,000 citizens have returned home from abroad to help in the war effort against Russia.
That aid ranges from picking up guns to delivering supplies and really everything in between. I spoke with several people, who said the decision to come back to a war zone was an easy one.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GORANI (voice-over): We've all seen images of Ukrainians fleeing the war but there is a lesser told story: those Ukrainians who travel in the opposite direction.
LES YAKYMCHUK, RETURNING UKRAINIAN: We're trying to do this also to show people that it is possible not only to leave the country but also to come back to the country and to fight for this country, because it's worth it.
GORANI (voice-over): Les and Olena were students at Ohio University, a Ukrainian couple, who decided to head into the war zone when Russia invaded their country. They took first aid classes in America, collected donations, flew from Columbus to Warsaw and drove to Kyiv, not even telling their parents so they wouldn't worry.
OLENA ZENCHENKO, RETURNING UKRAINIAN: When I was at the door, so I called them and said, don't freak out, please open the door.
GORANI: Oh, my gosh --
ZENCHENKO: They freaked out. This was a really combined feeling.
So my father was crying on me, like, you're an idiot.
Why are you doing it?
But at the same time, he was smiling.
GORANI (voice-over): They now drive the roads they've known since childhood, delivering supplies. Les is conscripted, so he could be drafted at any time.
YAKYMCHUK: It is my choice. It was my choice to stay here because this is my place where I grew up. I was raised, I was born, so it is something more than just like, you know, be safe and study and trying to protect everything I can. Everything that I am. I mean, I am these places. I mean, this coffee shop is downtown of Kyiv.
GORANI (voice-over): There are those who fled in the first days of the war, like Marc Wilkins and his wife, Olga. But after a few days, safely re-settled in Berlin, they say something didn't feel right, so they drove right back to Ukraine.
GORANI: What was that like, what was your frame of mind that day?
MARC WILKINS, FILMMAKER: It felt good. We felt determined, certain and happy to be back, finally to be able to make ourselves useful.
GORANI (voice-over): A British Swiss filmmaker who moved to Ukraine in 2016, he is now using his skills to create profiles of ordinary Ukrainians who have become resistance fighters overnight --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's my city, I need to defend the --
GORANI (voice-over): -- all to raise funds for the war effort.
WILKINS: I'm not a soldier. I don't know how to handle a gun. But I'm a filmmaker, I'm a communicator and this is what I'm doing now.
GORANI: Now the couple has decided to stay in Ukraine, not yet back to their home in Kyiv but in the relative safety of an apartment in Lviv, in the western part of the country.
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GORANI (voice-over): And then there are those like Ilyash Bolyenski (ph), settled in Berlin with his wife and three kids. He knew from day one of the Russian invasion that he would head back to his home city of Mykolaiv.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking foreign language).
GORANI: Bolyenski (ph) starts his day at dawn, distributing basic supplies like medicine, gloves, boots, sleeping bags, walkie-talkies: what troops need to keep up the fight. His hometown is in the crosshairs of the Russian assault between Kherson and Odessa.
Fierce bombardments and shelling have caused devastation throughout the region but the Ukrainians are pushing back.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking foreign language).
GORANI: Three stories, three journeys, all one destination, back home to a country at war.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GORANI: There you have it.
The U.S. and China already have plenty of issues to talk about. Now Ukraine has bolted to the top. We'll have details on the Biden-Xi video call -- just ahead.
Plus, new signs that Western sanctions could be starting to bite in Russia. Consumer frustration is on display in this unconfirmed video. The story ahead.
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PAULA NEWTON, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: Welcome back. I'm Paula Newton in Atlanta with our continuing breaking news coverage. The White House says it still has concerns about China helping Russia
after Friday's video call. Now the U.S. and Chinese president spoke for nearly two hours Friday, Joe Biden making clear, if China gives support to Russia, there will be a price to pay.
The White House adding it's President Xi Jinping decision as to how history will view his actions. David Culver has the details.
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DAVID CULVER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping meeting virtually Friday morning to discuss Russia's war in Ukraine.
According to Chinese state media CCTV, Xi told Biden China and the U.S. have a responsibility to work for peace, saying, quote, "The world is neither peaceful nor tranquil. The Ukraine crisis is something we don't want to see."
These two governments have grown used to combating one another and have traded barbs as Russia's Vladimir Putin has reigned misery on the people of Ukraine.
ANTONY BLINKEN, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: China's already on the wrong side of history when it comes to Ukraine and the aggression being committed by Russia. The fact that it has not stood strongly against it.
ZHAO LIJIAN, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, FOREIGN MINISTRY INFORMATION DEPARTMENT OF CHINA (through translator): The remarks by the U.S. are slandering and smearing against China. Such remarks are not helpful for solving the problem.
CULVER (voice-over): The world's two biggest single economies may have the power to stop the suffering but Biden needs Xi to set parameters for Putin; tricky, since Xi once called Putin his best friend.
The two leaders have met more than 30 times and their countries have grown closer while becoming increasingly isolated from the West. Here the pair are seen happily sampling a traditional Chinese pancake.
A few months later, they remade the dish with vodka and caviar. And just a month ago, China praised its no limits partnership with Russia at the Olympics U.S. officials boycotted.
The U.S. worries that any economic or military support China sends to Russia has the potential to change the balance on the battlefield and could take the sting out of the Western sanctions currently crippling Russia's economy.
The White House said Friday's discussion included the two leaders agreed to maintain open lines of communication. China may see this as an opportunity to burnish its credentials as a major global player capable of stepping in and solving the geopolitical crisis.
YUN SUN, DIRECTOR, CHINA PROGRAM, THE STIMSON CENTER: So neither leaning toward Russia nor leaning toward Ukraine and instead try to present yourself as a neutral third party.
CULVER (voice-over): As China's economy takes hits from a new wave of COVID-19 the worst since Wuhan 2020, economic blowback from the war in Ukraine is the last thing Beijing can afford. American officials have warned that China will pay a price if it does circumvent sanctions to do business with Russia or helps Putin militarily.
JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: China has to make a decision for themselves about where they want to stand and how they want the history books to look at them and view their actions. And that is a decision for President Xi and the Chinese to make.
CULVER (voice-over): President Biden right now hoping to get Xi to take on the role of peacemaker.
CULVER: Interesting to compare that with views from both sides: the U.S. side stressing this was mostly about Ukraine, with Biden warning Xi of the consequences should China help Russia.
But state media here in China playing up that Xi pressed Biden on Taiwan, which China considers as part of its sovereignty. Xi warning Biden that if the Taiwan issue is not handled properly, it won't be good for U.S.-China relations -- David Culver, CNN, Shanghai.
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NEWTON: Now I spoke earlier with Gary Locke, the former U.S. ambassador to China. He said Beijing is likely to keep its own economic interests foremost in mind as it considers whether to help Russia.
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GARY LOCKE, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO CHINA: The trade between Russia and China is really one-tenth of the total trade between China and the E.U. and China and the U.S.
So while Russia can easily -- very much depends on trade with China, China cares more about its trade with the rest of the world and the millions and millions, if not hundreds of millions of jobs in China, associated with those exports in the two-way trade between the rest of the world and China.
So I think China is very much concerned, after seeing how swiftly and decisively and extensively those sanctions were against Russia, that I think they're going to have a pause about trying to help Russia, either militarily or economically.
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NEWTON: So another reason for a pause could be what's actually happening in Russia right now. The Kremlin admitted on Friday that panic buying was beginning, with people storming shops for food and other essentials. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NEWTON (voice-over): Just look at the video. This social media video claims to show that. CNN can't independently confirm whether that indeed does show people trying to buy supplies and where it was shot. Kremlin dismissed the panic buying as what they call "emotional hype." But some Western countries beg to disagree.
The U.S. State Department says the Russian currency became virtually worthless and the economy is practically in ruins. France says Western sanctions are starting to have a real impact. Russia could face a further squeeze this week. The U.S. House committee passed five new bills aiming to tighten screws on Moscow and relieve Ukraine's debt.
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NEWTON: Every day civilians in Ukraine learning the unimaginable: how to treat war wounds. We have that story ahead.
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NEWTON: Now as the war spreads throughout Ukraine, some people are getting ready for those worst-case scenarios. CNN's Scott McLean talks to a group of civilians in Lviv, learning how to treat war wounds from an American veteran.
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SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is the kind of lesson that few people want to have to teach and fewer want to have to use in real life. It's basic first aid for a community coming to grips with the reality of war.
MARIAN PAKHOLOK, CIVIL ENGINEER (through translation): I'm afraid because we are not prepared. I am not a professional soldier but I understand it is better to meet the enemy being prepared and with the right skills.
MCLEAN (voice-over): Dr. Robert Lim is an American war veteran working with the global surgical and medical support group. It's bringing medics, doctors and surgeons to Ukraine to train civilians. It seems fun now but these scenarios may soon become reality.
The civilian training, held in a local gym, attracts engineers, teachers, dancers, all kinds of professions and age groups, including high school students suddenly forced by the war to put their own plans on hold.
VIKTORIA HLADKA, HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT: I don't understand and know when I will in future study, because now it's hard time and I don't know what can be tomorrow.
MCLEAN (voice-over): Lim is teaching people battlefield survival skills and how to apply a tourniquet or how to keep an injured person breathing. With 23 years of experience as an army surgeon, he is also training doctors to prepare for the type of wounds rarely seen in civilians during peacetime.
DR. ROBERT LIM, VETERAN U.S. ARMY SURGEON: If you're in New York City or London or another big city, most of the injuries are blunt. So as a car accident or a fall or something like that, was most of the injuries in the battlefield are going to be penetrating wounds that might injure an artery or major vessel.
MCLEAN (voice-over): All with a small fraction of the resources they're used to.
LIM: Do what you can with what you've got.
MCLEAN (voice-over): In many parts of Ukraine, medical supplies and facilities are getting harder to come by. And in the worst hit areas, many hospitals are now operating in basements with only flashlights to avoid attracting Russian bomb.
Dr. Tania Boychuk is a dermatologist from Western Ukraine, one of dozens of medical professionals sharpening their skills for battle.
TANIA BOYCHUK, DERMATOLOGIST (through translation): In normal life, dermatologists do not provide first aid, do not stop bleeding, do not do tourniquets and punctures.
MCLEAN (voice-over): With her day job on hold, she's planning to join the military and she won't wait for the fighting to come to her.
BOYCHUK (through translation): I plan to go to the war front. My close friends are where now and I want to be there, too.
MCLEAN (voice-over): Scott McLean, CNN, Lviv, Ukraine.
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NEWTON: And you are going to hear from Scott just at the top of the hour, with an update live from Lviv.
Now a small toy company in Chicago is using little figurines to raise big money for Ukraine. Citizen Brick made unofficial LEGO action figures of the Ukrainian president, $100 a piece, and a Ukrainian flag and Molotov cocktail, $20 each. The simple fundraising idea quickly sold out, raising over $145,000.
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NEWTON: Now the cash is going to a medical supply charity in the wartorn country. The company's owner says they're reserving some figures for very special clients in Ukraine. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JOE TRUPIA, OWNER, CITIZEN BRICK: There's a couple of kids who contacted me and said we're big LEGO fans. And we have had to scramble and seek shelter and we had to leave everything behind.
And to the one, they all say, when we win this war and everything settles down and goes back to normal, can you send us some?
I said, yes, I'll keep them for you.
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NEWTON: OK.
I'm Paula Newton. Thank you for your company. Kim Brunhuber picks it up from here with more of our continuing coverage and breaking news in just a moment.
