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Russian Bombardments Continue; Putin Being Misinformed By Advisers?. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired March 30, 2022 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:01]

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Again, appreciate your time. We will see you tomorrow.

Ana Cabrera, Don Lemon pick up our coverage right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

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

There's what Russia says, there's what Russia does, and then, apparently, there's what Putin's own advisers tell him. A U.S. official tell CNN that those advisers have kept the Russian president in the dark about his military's poor performance in Ukraine. A source says Putin has now discovered the truth, leading to a rift with his top military officials.

This is the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv just hours after Russia said it would scale back its military operations there and in Kyiv. Chernihiv's mayor says instead the Russian bombardment actually escalated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VLADYSLAV ATROSHENKO, MAYOR OF CHERNIHIV, UKRAINE (voice-over): They have increased the intensity of strikes. Yes, today, we have had a colossal mortar attack on the center of Chernihiv.

So, whenever Russia says something, this needs to be checked carefully. Russia is deliberately exterminating civilians.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DON LEMON, CNN HOST: And there's new video now. It's just into CNN. It shows at least two military strikes have heavily damaged a Red Cross warehouse. That is in Mariupol.

Satellite images confirmed earlier reports from Ukrainian forces. The international group Human Rights Watch says Russian forces have deployed banned anti-personnel mines in the eastern Kharkiv region. The mines can kill from 50 feet away. CNN cannot independently verify that claim.

And, right now, at least four million Ukrainians have been forced to flee their country. Half are children. A jaw-dropping 60 percent of Ukraine's children are displaced from their homes.

CABRERA: Let's begin our coverage with CNN White House correspondent Jeremy Diamond and his new reporting that Russian President Vladimir Putin is being misinformed by his advisers.

Jeremy, what is Putin being told or not told, and why?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Ana, the crux of this, according to a U.S. official, is that Vladimir Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about how badly his military has been performing in Ukraine, far underperforming expectations, not only Russian expectations, but even U.S. assessments of the Russian military in the lead-up to this invasion.

Let me read you a quote from this U.S. official, who tells me -- quote -- "We believe that Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about how badly the Russian military is performing and how the Russian economy is being crippled by sanctions."

Now, this new assessment is based on newly declassified intelligence. The official declined to provide more specifics, though, saying that it was only the summary of the intelligence that had been declassified. But this official, interestingly, also said that Putin felt misled by the Russian military, suggesting that he is now aware to some extent of the extent to which he has been misinformed by his military advisers.

And this official saying that this has led to tensions between the Russian president and his Ministry of Defense, all key points here, not only as this -- Russia continues its military campaign in Ukraine, but also as Russian and Ukrainian officials have been sitting down at the negotiating table and as there appear to be some, perhaps some signs of progress between the two sides.

CABRERA: Jeremy, President Biden spoke with Ukraine's President Zelenskyy today. What do we know about that?

DIAMOND: Yes, that's right.

President Biden and Zelenskyy speaking for about an hour this morning, talking not only about the situation the battlefield in Ukraine, but also talking about the status at the negotiating table, with President Zelenskyy apparently updating the U.S. president on the status of Ukraine's negotiations.

President Biden also outlined additional steps that the U.S. is taking to help Ukraine, including $500 million in direct budgetary aid that could help pay for Ukrainian government official salaries. And he also talked about additional security assistance that the U.S. is working to provide. We know, of course, that the U.S. has been one of the largest providers of military aid to Ukraine throughout this conflict.

And, of course, that effort is going to continue -- Ana.

CABRERA: Jeremy Diamond, thank you for that reporting.

LEMON: I want to get now to Southeast Ukraine and CNN's Ivan Watson.

Ivan, hello to you.

What can you tell us about the Red Cross warehouse being struck?

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I mean, we have seen satellite images from the last two weeks showing this clearly marked building with a Red Cross on the roof.

And according to an analysis of the satellite images, it looks like it's been hit at least twice within the last two weeks. Now, Ukrainian fighters in Mariupol still holding out, they claim it is the Russian military that struck that building

[13:05:00]

The International Federation of the Red Cross, their spokesperson has said that they don't know exactly what happened there, that their personnel are not there, that they were able to evacuate -- they were able to distribute all the goods that were in that Red Cross warehouse earlier in the month, and also reiterating that they expect all humanitarian infrastructure and personnel, for combatants on all sides to respect them.

Let's take a look at the wider picture of what's been happening in Mariupol. For the past month, the Russian military has encircled it and besieged it, Don. I have interviewed dozens of civilians who have evacuated from Mariupol in the last couple of weeks. All of them describe enduring days and nights of near constant Russian artillery bombardment and almost hourly airstrikes from Russian warplanes.

Probably half of the people I have talked to say their own homes were either damaged or completely destroyed by this indiscriminate shelling and bombing from the sky. We know that the maternity ward of a hospital was hit there, that a theater that hundreds of people were sheltering in was hit there, and that aerial photography shows much of that city has been destroyed by this modern-day siege with estimates of maybe 40 or 50 percent of homes there being completely destroyed.

All of that runs in the face of ongoing Russian denials that they have been targeting civilian infrastructure in Ukraine since Russia invaded this country. In the meantime, the evacuation of places like Mariupol is still hampered by periodic obstacles to civilian humanitarian convoys trying to get out through Russian front lines.

And, in the meantime, of course, the southeast isn't the only place where there's fighting. There's been an uptick in shelling, we're hearing, from the front lines around the capital, Kyiv, and also that northern Ukrainian besieged city of Chernihiv, all the more striking when you hear that the Russian government has said, announced publicly that it is going to de-escalate its operations around those two northern cities.

U.S. officials have said, hey, do not consider this a withdrawal, but more like a move of Russian forces, perhaps from one front line to another. And Russia has made clear that it wants to concentrate its military efforts in the Donbass region. That's the southeast, where I am right now.

And that raises concerns in cities like the one I'm in right now, Zaporizhzhia, spared the ground war thus far. But you have hundreds of thousands of people living here very concerned that the situation here could change in the near future. After all, Russian tanks are located only 20, 30 miles away from where I'm standing now -- Don.

LEMON: The Russian army doing one thing, saying another, and destroying lives in the process. Thank you, Ivan Watson. I appreciate that.

CABRERA: You have that human humanitarian tragedy here, and that is continuing to grow, something that is just heart-wrenching.

British officials reported today some Russian forces have now returned to Belarus.

CNN's Barbara Starr is at the Pentagon covering this angle for us.

What more can you tell us, Barbara?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Ana, all this talk of the Russians withdrawing, scaling back their operations, look, the Pentagon is having none of it.

They simply do not believe anything the Russians are saying about it right now. The Pentagon view is that this is a redeployment, not a withdrawal, and the evidence, of course, being that that air war by Russia continues across the country, air raid sirens heard all across Ukraine today.

Now, those forces that may be moving back up into Belarus to the north, the sense is, just as Ivan was saying, they may be moving back up there to refit, to resupply, and then turn around and move back down into Southeastern Ukraine, into this Donbass region that has been a Russian priority now for so long.

This is where there are some Ukraine forces. The Russians hope to cut them off, so those Ukraine forces can't move west and help their colleagues in their fight. They want to get -- the Russians want to get into Donbass, is the U.S. view, cut off the Ukrainians and then try and take control of that region.

So any notion that this is scaling back is not something the Pentagon is willing to endorse. CABRERA: And here we are, Barbara, with this war now pass the one- month mark. U.S. intelligence had initially expected Kyiv to fall in a matter of days. It still stands, and the forces there are still fighting with a lot of strain.

Did the U.S. overestimate Russia's combat readiness?

[13:10:00]

STARR: Well, that's a key question right now.

Is this kind of an intelligence failure, but perhaps an intelligence failure that works to Ukraine's advantage in these horrifying circumstances? The Russians far from 10-feet-tall, far from achieving any of their objectives of taking Kyiv, of taking any major population centers. As we have heard, Putin may not be being told the truth by his own generals.

So, perhaps overestimating Russian military capability, but, more critically, underestimating the ability of Ukraine forces and the people of Ukraine to rally and for all of them to fight back against this invasion, Ana.

CABRERA: Barbara Starr, thank you.

STARR: Sure.

LEMON: I want to bring in our international diplomatic editor, and that is Nic Robertson. He is in Brussels for us today. He has covered Russia for more than three decades.

And you only left Moscow earlier this month, Nic. I saw your reporting there and then you had to leave. This U.S. official says that Putin didn't even know his military was -- quote -- "using and losing conscripts" in Ukraine.

It's unbelievable to think information like that wouldn't be -- would be kept from any president. Based on your knowledge of the Kremlin, are you surprised by that?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: I am, because, although Putin has a really, really tight and small inner circle, the defense minister, Sergey Shoygu, is one of his oldest, trusted associates and is in that inner circle.

So the fact that the defense minister was lying to him or the defense minister was being lied to by his subordinates, that's a possibility. There is, I think, a surfeit of lies in Russia. We know that. The president lies to the people about what's happening.

The Ministry of Defense today is lying to the Russian people about their offensive, saying that they were never going to attack Kyiv, that there was just -- they put up a lot of forces there to tie down Ukrainian forces, so they can have an easier fight in the east of the country. There's a surfeit of lies. But I think at the center of this is the fact that President Putin has

been in power for 20 years, more than 20 years now, 22, that he is now president until 2036. He has that tight inner circle. He's cut himself off from critical analysis. There aren't people around him who are prepared to tell him the truth and he has essentially gone into this blind.

His military -- that his military was deceiving him is somewhat surprising, and we can expect an outfall from this, but not immediately. This is certainly, certainly part of President Putin's problems, that he does not have people around him who will tell him the truth.

LEMON: Interesting, Nic Robertson in Brussels.

Nic, thank you very much -- Ana.

CABRERA: It may be one of the only signs of cooperation between the United States and Russia right now, an American astronaut and two of his Russian counterparts returning to Earth today from the International Space Station. Details ahead.

Plus, a pair of big developments out of Hollywood. The Academy says it is outraged by Will Smith's behavior at the Oscars. What we're learning about when the Academy could take action.

And why Bruce Willis is stepping away from his acting career.

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[13:17:48]

CABRERA: Ukrainian forces have pushed Russian troops out of Irpin.

A warning that the video you're about to see is graphic. It is disturbing. But it's proof of the horror of this war, as the extent of Irpin's devastation is just now coming into full view. The city is being described as an apocalyptic wasteland. You can see bodies lining the streets, as another found in a bullet-ridden car.

The mayor says half of the city's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed. And he adds, the shelling is still constant, water and electricity scarce, as mine clearance teams now recover unexploded bombs throughout this city. The mayor estimates about 3,500 people are still living here, about one-third of them children.

Joining us now, CNN military analyst Major General Paul Eaton and CNN national security analyst Andrea Kendall-Taylor. She's a former deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia and is now a senior fellow and director at the Center For a New American Security.

It's great to have both of you with us. Thank you for taking time with me.

General, I want to start with what we're witnessing in Ukraine right now. Russia, of course, pledged to reduce the tax in some cities, but local leaders in those cities say attacks are instead ramping up. What's your read on all of this?

MAJ. GEN. PAUL EATON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, Ana, it appears to be a classic disengagement, retreat, withdrawal. You can pick the military term here that is operative.

But we have a -- we have two units in contact. One is moving forward. One has stalemate and is actually pulling back a little bit. The Russians have proven incompetent in integrating maneuver warfare with indirect fires, either air or ground systems delivery.

So what we're witnessing is use of indirect fires, some air-delivered fires, but not dedicated against Ukrainian forces in the advance, rather, to create terror in the civilian population that's suffering this right now.

[13:20:00]

So we have a Russian force that has said that it's pulling back. And there any number of reasons that an attacking force stops and then initiates some kind of retrograde.

(CROSSTALK)

CABRERA: Yes, can you just tick through those reasons, as you see it?

EATON: You bet.

So, if you have come to a stalemate, sometimes, you can use the word culminate in the attack, that you have gone as far as you can go. And that can be from a function of logistics failures, that you're running out of fuel, you're running out of ammunition, you're running out of food, water, you're running out of that which you need to prosecute an attack.

That's one reason. Another is a decision in the chain of command to pull the force back that is no longer able to advance to rearm, refit, and to reassign a new mission. It can be also just new mission. And part of the inference here is that these forces may be moving to the east or southeast to deliver another operational construct or strategic construct to the president of Russia.

CABRERA: So, Andrea, if there is a shift happening on the battlefield, do you feel there's been a shift at all in Putin's overall objective?

ANDREA KENDALL-TAYLOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: So I think it's probably too soon to conclude that.

And I do think that this is very much about creating options for President Putin. The fact that they are pulling back forces from Kyiv does -- it really is a tacit acknowledgment that they have lost around Kyiv, and that they cannot sustain the three lines of attack that they have so far done.

And so they're looking to consolidate in the east. But I would say this conflict has never been about the Donbass, and I don't think it's about the Donbass now. I think here we have the Kremlin is creating a number of options for President Putin. They're creating this groundwork or a narrative of victory that they could use as a face- saving way out of the conflict at a later date.

But I just don't think we're there yet. And so I don't -- I think it's too soon. It is possible that those forces that are redeployed to the Donbass can be used to engage a large portion of Ukrainian forces that are in that region. I believe there's up to a third of Ukrainian forces that are there.

If they do succeed in encircling Ukrainian forces there, then Russia can kind of move on if those forces are pinned down and attack again, including Kyiv. So, again, it's -- this to me is about options for President Putin.

CABRERA: And, General, we have the reporting that some troops are regrouping, resupplying in Belarus.

I wonder, what resources are they potentially gaining? Or, in other words, how much stronger could they realistically come back into Ukraine?

EATON: The most serious problem that the Russians have right now is the individual Russian soldier. They integrated conscripts with older professional soldiers. That generally goes very badly for the conscript.

The Russian army has a -- has its own term for brutal hazing between the older soldier and a younger soldier. So what you have got going back to Belarus is young conscripts that have come or will come this April to the end of their conscript period, and their heart is not in it.

That is the bottom-line problem for the Russian army right now. They want out. Ukrainians want them out and would love to help them out. So going to Belarus, I'm betting that the chain of command is going to have a serious problem to try to rearm, refit and reinsert the units that they're going to have to reconstitute.

CABRERA: And then, Andrea, there's the issue of misinformation. A U.S. official tells CNN the U.S. believes Putin is being misinformed by his own advisers about just how badly the Russian military is performing and the effect of sanctions as well on Russia's economy because they're too afraid to tell him the truth.

But now we're told he is aware of this misinformation. If Putin is aware of it, what does he do about it? Does it change the calculus at all?

KENDALL-TAYLOR: Well, I think he shouldn't be surprised. And I, unfortunately, don't think there's a whole lot he can do about it in the near term.

This is very much a product of the system that President Putin built over his 22 years in power. He has concentrated power in his own hands. He's narrowed his circle of advisers and he's surrounded himself by these yes-men.

And it's also a product of the repression in Russia, which means that this is a problem that could actually increase over time for President Putin. And the logic there is, the more repressive there is, the more fearful people are to let their true preferences or ideas be known to the leader.

[13:25:06]

There's a political science term for that called the dictator's dilemma. We have already seen the horrible consequences of this dynamic play out. So, for Putin, it shouldn't be surprising. it's what facilitated his decision to wage this conflict in the first place. He had overly optimistic assessments about how easy it would be.

It's also responsible for the problems we're seeing on the battlefield. Because there were faulty assumptions, incomplete information, that created a lot of the problems with logistics and other things that we have seen playing out.

So the big question now is, how does this shape his calculus moving forward? And my sense is, because he's going to have a hard time correcting for this entirely, I do think it diminishes his desire to engage in genuine negotiations. If he doesn't really understand the extent of Russian's problems on the battlefield, if he's not really feeling domestic pressure because he doesn't understand the implications of sanctions at home, then I don't think he will yet be ready to negotiate seriously.

CABRERA: Well, I really appreciate both of your insights. Thank you so much for joining us, Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Major General Paul Eaton. Thank you.

Tensions on Earth not translating in space for two Russian cosmonauts and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei. It was a record-breaking stint in space for the American, who just hitched a ride on a Russian spacecraft.

More on this incredible journey next.

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