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Russian Oil Tankers Are Vanishing Off the Map; U.S. Home, Rent and Construction Prices Climbing; Massachusetts Father Helps Daughter, Grandson Leave Ukraine. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired March 30, 2022 - 10:30   ET

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

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[10:30:01]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: The president supports it. Why has it been so hard to get this done in the United States Senate?

SEN. RON WYDEN (D-OR): First of all, it doesn't have to be this way. If people just focus on the bottom line, is that this is the key addition that our country needs to add economic firepower to the fight against Putin. And we're going to pull out all the stops today to finally get it done.

RAJU: Are you close to an agreement with Senator Paul?

WYDEN: This is the Senate, Manu. I think you heard me say that nothing is easy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Now, as part of this bill, it would expand the so-called Magnitsky Act, to impose sanctions on individuals. And what Rand Paul is concerned about is that he believes that language is too broad, he believes it could be abused by the federal government. Democrats are trying to appease and reach a deal on this. And if they do, perhaps it could pass quickly. But if they don't, potentially, this could drag on.

And looming next week, they have to confirm a Supreme Court nominee, which will take most of next week. And then the Senate is on a two- week recess, so the question is will it get done quickly or could it get punted until the end of the month? Guys?

ERICA HILL, CNN NEWSROOM: All right, we'll be watching for that, Manu, I appreciate the update. Thank you.

Right now, Russian tankers are increasingly disappearing from tracking systems. Experts say this so-called dark activity when transponders are turned off for hours actually spiked 600 percent among Russian- affiliated oil tankers in attempts to evade crippling sanctions.

CNN's Matt Egan joining me now to discuss. So, this isn't just oil tankers going dark. What else are we seeing here? This is fascinating.

MATT EGAN, CNN BUSINESS REPORTER: Erica, it is fascinating. We've seen just this really big increase in Russian tankers, oil and others that hold petroleum products, they're going dark. They are essentially falling off the map.

Now, that is a red flag because these vessels are supposed to keep their transponders on. They're not supposed to turn it off for hours at a time except if they were going through pirate-infested waters. But that does not seem to be the case here.

And we actually have a chart that visualizes this, Windward, a firm that uses artificial intelligence to track ships. They told CNN that there has been a sharp increase in the numbers of Russian-affiliated ships going dark each week this year, since the war. You can see it really has increased.

Why is this happening? Usually, countries do this to get around sanctions. Both Venezuela and Iran have done this in the past. The twist here, though, is that Russian energy isn't really sanctioned directly. The United States can't import it, but other countries technically can.

But the war has created this stigma around doing business with Russia of trading companies, of vessels, banks, insurers, they've all backed away. And so an analyst told me that what's probably driving this dark activity is the fact that buyers don't want be outed as doing business with Russia. They don't want to deal with the public relations nightmare, yes.

HILL: Well, I was going to say, I mean, to that point, does that mean this is more of a push from -- I mean, could the companies actually be saying, hey, why don't you go dark so nobody knows that we're doing business with you?

EGAN: That is the implication here, that this is actually being driven by the buyers.

Now, the Treasury Department, they told me in a statement that they are aware of these reports and that officials use a variety of methods to track vessels beyond just the transponders. All of this matters, though, because this uncertainty over Russia energy has driven up prices and created volatility. We've seen these wild swings in the market yesterday. U.S. oil fell below $100 a barrel on hopes of a cease-fire in Ukraine, shot back up, as we speak, $108 a barrel, I mean, $8 move from the lows yesterday, in 24 hours. We can expect these wild swings to continue as long as this uncertainty and the war in Ukraine drags on. HILL: Yes. And, sadly, it doesn't look like there is any end in sight. Matt, I appreciate it, thank you.

EGAN: Thanks.

HILL: A harrowing escape, a Massachusetts father helps to orchestrate a plan to get his daughter and infant grandson out of Ukraine. He'll join us next to talk about that incredible effort and also update us on what's being done to actually get them to permanent safety. They're not home yet.

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[10:35:00]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NEWSROOM: This just into CNN, a White House official says that President Biden will speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, that call scheduled just before, well, about six minutes from now, 10:45 Eastern Time. The White House says they will discuss, quote, continued support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression. We do know the Ukrainian president has been asking for further military assistance as well as further economic sanctions. We will update you when we know what happened during the call. Erica?

HILL: Well, in the meantime, here domestically as the cost of living continues to rise, many Americans are struggling to maintain their living space. This is not just the increase in rent and home prices we've been talking so much about. It's also the cost of maintenance, which is also going up. We're talking about everything, from lawn care to construction services, those increases understandably get passed on to consumers.

CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich spoke with one homeowner who is experiencing that firsthand.

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ALLISON BRAUN, FIRST-TIME HOMEBUYD: This was nothing as I expected, purchasing my first home.

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Allison Braun bought her first home in February after losing bidding wars and paying $75,000 over budget, she settled on a fixer- upper, expecting to save some money.

[10:40:01]

BRAUN: It was really surprising getting in here and fixing things up. Overwhelming is another way I would explain it.

YURKEVICH: Rents are up a record 17 percent in the last year, with homes up nearly 20 percent, and so are construction costs. Braun, who works for the real estate company, Redfin, is redoing nearly every space in her home. The kitchen needed new counters.

BRAUN: And we were really surprised by the cost, especially the labor to put them in. We wanted to figure out a way of how we can do our countertops on our own and save cost and labor, so the concrete countertops were born.

YURKEVICH: She saved $3,300 by doing them with her partner. She tried the same with her floors but underestimated how much she would need and the rapidly rising costs of lumber.

BRAUN: We didn't estimate enough wood for the first floor, and we went back to buy more wood for the flooring. And it ended up that after a month's time, the flooring went up about 25 cents per square foot.

YURKEVICH: But it's not just homeowners getting stuck with higher costs. Construction materials are 24 percent in the last year.

Bill McGrath's company is installing elevators in this new residential housing complex in New Jersey. So far, they've put in two.

What are the materials in this elevator that you have seen an increase on?

BILL MCGRATH, PRESIDENT AND CEO, SOUTH JERSEY ELEVATOR: Well, right here, you have the electronics, which this is stainless steel. You have the plastics, the electronic boards behind it. That's costing more. The ceilings, wood, you're standing on lumber, there's steel underneath.

YURKEVICH: And is all of it going up?

MCGRATH: Yes.

YURKEVICH: Supply chain slowdowns and demand have pushed construction costs up, forcing projects to come in over budget and over deadline.

How much more is this elevator going to cost than the one we just saw?

MCGRATH: We're at right one here, it's going to cost 17 percent more material costs than the other two what we completed.

YURKEVICH: And he says his 18-person company is spending more on gas to bring materials in, up 24 percent in the last month. All of these rising costs will get passed down.

Where is the end?

MCGRATH: I guess the people that will be living here.

YURKEVICH: For Braun, the higher cost means accepting things like painting the outside of the house gets put on hold.

BRAUN: We would love to hire someone to do that. That's been put on the backburner now and we're just going to just have to learn to love the green.

(END VIDEOTAPE) YURKEVICH (on camera): Now, Americans are feeling inflation in almost every single way and they're concerned. And I think, Erica, a lot of people are wondering when is this going to end. We spoke to Bill McGrath, the elevator installer, who said that he thinks it's going to get worse before it gets better.

But that's where the Federal Reserve steps in, right? They're raising interest rates over the course of this year to try to cool down prices, stop people from spending. But when you raise interest rates, mortgage rates also go up. So, that could stop a lot of people from being able to buy the homes that they've always wanted.

HILL: It's amazing. I spoke with a contractor. He actually can't quote prices to people right now because they change during the day.

YURKEVICH: Every day.

HILL: It's crazy. Vanessa, great story, thank you, I appreciate it.

SCIUTTO: Still ahead this hour, just how far a father would go to help rescue his daughter and her baby child. An incredible story, a harrowing one, of escape from war-torn Ukraine. You're going to want to hear this. Father and daughter join. That's coming up.

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[10:45:00]

HILL: The U.N. now says more than 4 million refugees have fled Ukraine since the start of Russia's invasion. An American man recently returned to the region to help his daughter and infant grandson make their way out of war-torn Ukraine, the Massachusetts man arranging a plan for his family to travel through the wilderness to get to Slovakia.

SCIUTTO: Yes, you've got to hear the details of this story. His daughter, Aislinn, could not leave Ukraine through a designated border crossing with her son because she gave birth at home during the pandemic and had not yet obtained a birth certificate. That caused potential problems at the border.

So, Joining us now is that father, William Hubbard, and his daughter, Aislinn. Guys, it is great to have you on here. We are glad you're safe.

And, Aislinn, I have to begin with you, because -- please explain to folks about this trek you had to take by yourself with your baby, in the dark, up over the mountains. I mean, how did you manage it?

AISLINN HUBBARD, ESCAPED FROM UKRAINE WITH SON: Well, actually, I was with my boyfriend during this hike, because he had to help me get out that way. Yes, it was an eight-hour hike. It was very difficult, up a very steep mountain. We had to find an area that was discreet, and we were lucky that we didn't encounter any military along the way. We were able to get out. HILL: So, you know, as Jim mentioned, one of the initial issues, as we understand it, is that when you first tried to leave, officials stopped you, actually took your son for a little bit because you didn't have the documentation. He doesn't have a birth certificate. He doesn't have a passport. They wanted to make sure he was your son. Without a passport, without birth records that are stuck in a war-torn country, how much does that add to the difficulty?

[10:50:03]

Where do you stand right now in terms of getting back to the States?

WILLIAM HUBBARD, HELPED DAUGHTER AND GRANDSON LEAVE UKRAINE: Well, the plan right now is for Aislinn and her family to go to Prague and stay there and obtain the documentation needed for Seraphin (ph), and because it's going to take a while for them just to kind of work through what they want to do with the rest of their lives now that their whole life has been disrupted. They just want to take a little breather. And Prague is a good location because we have family members not too far from there.

SCIUTTO: Aislinn, you went to Ukraine to study at a famous ballet school there. You find yourself in the middle of a war, a shocking war, a deadly war. Were you scared during your trip out? What was the toughest part?

A. HUBBARD: Well, I would say that the toughest part was the hike out through the mountains. It was very steep.

SCIUTTO: And how long did that take you?

A. HUBBARD: Probably about eight hours, I would say, hiking.

HILL: You mentioned --

W. HUBBARD: Yes. So, it's quite a rugged area. It's (INAUDIBLE). It's in the foothills of the Carpathian elks.

A. HUBBARD: We went through two national parks.

HILL: Yes. I mean --

W. HUBBARD: At one point, Aislinn had slid down the hill with the baby.

A. HUBBARD: Yes, at one point, when we had finally reached the Slovakian side and we were going down the mountain, I stepped and the ground gave out from underneath me, and I fell 20 feet in a mudslide and I had to climb myself up out of a valley on roots of trees with the baby on front and backpack on my back. It was really difficult and it was scary too.

HILL: Yes. I can't imagine scary, difficult. Thankfully both of you and the baby were able to get up okay.

You mentioned your boyfriend was with you on that trek. As you're deciding what you're going to do as a family, as your dad just said, your boyfriend, men 18 to 60, aren't supposed to leave Ukraine. Does he want to go back? Does he want to be back there as one of the fighters or what is he thinking about at this point?

A. HUBBARD: Well, we've all been given humanitarian protection in Europe, so we were going to stay together as a family.

W. HUBBARD: Because what happened by him crossing over the border within that age group, he'll have criminal charges against him in Ukraine. And so there's really no reason for him to go back at this point. This wouldn't have been necessary if the Ukrainians and the State Department would have assisted us in getting the appropriate paperwork in a timely manner, but they gave us no other alternative but to take the bull by the horns and hatch a plan that would work for us and would get my daughter, my grandson and Aislinn's boyfriend to safety in Slovakia.

SCIUTTO: William, I know you practiced this, that Aislinn did a couple of dry runs, that you were tracking her via your iPhone, I think, as it was going. But as a dad, it had to be hard, I imagine to -- I mean, you didn't have a lot of good choices here, but it had to be hard those eight hours waiting to know that she was safe.

W. HUBBARD: Oh, it was incredible, because I'm sitting there looking at Find My Friend and watching this little dot move. And then it would stop for a while. And I'm thinking to myself, what happened, did someone get hurt? Did the soldiers hit them because we had no communication? All I was doing was following a little dot on a map.

But we had a plan that we weren't going to communicate with each other during the trek, and still they made it on the other side of the border. And once Aislinn got to the other side of the border, she sent me a text, and that was my go signal to grab all of their stuff and move to the border and run the gauntlet with the border police.

HILL: Wow. I mean, it sounds like something out of a movie. When you had a minute, though, Aislinn, once you got through that initial part, when you had a minute to sit down and talk to your dad and to give him a hug for the first time, what did you say to him?

A. HUBBARD: I said thank you for helping us. None of this would have been possible without him. I would have ended up losing all of my items. I have four cats. They would have taken my cats to cross the border. So, I have my cats with me as well.

[10:55:01]

W. HUBBARD: Yes. It was incredible because we had five duffel bags, two cat carriers with two pets in each one of them, a small bed in my backpack and I had to move it about a mile and a quarter to get to the border and under (INAUDIBLE) to get to the border. And, finally, we were able to -- everybody got out and into Slovakia.

And the interesting thing was that the first thing Aislinn said to me by text message was, we're in Slovakia. Slovakians are so nice. And that was also my experience when I crossed the border from Ukraine. SCIUTTO: Yes. We've seen that some of those neighboring countries just opening up their arms, right, to people fleeing the war there.

Well, William Hubbard, Aislinn Hubbard, and we're glad you're safe, Aislinn, and your little boy, and we wish you the best going forward.

A. HUBBARD: Thank you.

H. HUBBARD: Thank you so much.

SCIUTTO: And thanks to all of you for joining us today. I'm Jim Sciutto.

HILL: And I'm Erica Hill.

Stay tuned. At This Hour with Kate Bolduan starts after a quick break.

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