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Mass Graves in Bucha; Bucha's Mayor on Atrocities; Marharyta Rivchachenko is Interviewed about Killings in Bucha; Airstrikes in Odessa; U.S. Facilitates Transfer of Tanks. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired April 04, 2022 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:29]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto.

This morning, Ukrainian's president is accusing Russia of carrying out a genocide in his country. This as Russian forces now refocus their assault in Ukraine's east and its south. Several missiles hiding one district in the port city of Odessa in the south. Overnight, one person was killed, five injured, in early morning missile strikes that also hit the city of Mykolaiv.

But in the Kyiv region, in the north, the aftermath of the Russian assault on the sounding areas there just brutal. We have to warn you, the images we're about to show you from the town of Bucha are extremely disturbing, but we believe it's important to see the stark reality of this war.

And here it is. This is what remained in Bucha after Ukrainian forces retook the area from Russian forces. Bodies, civilians, in the streets. Some of them, it appears, killed execution style.

And our own CNN team went there. This is what they found, mass graves. The mayor claims as many as 300 people have been buried this way, in ditches. Russian officials are denying the allegations of killing civilians. They claim the videos, keep in mind our people went there, they saw them with their own eyes, but Russia claiming those videos are fake.

Vladimir Putin, according to Ukrainian officials, is trying to systematically kill the Ukrainian people.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY, UKRAINE (through translator): Indeed this is genocide. The elimination of the whole nation and the people. We are the citizens of Ukraine. We have more than 100 nationalities. This is about the destruction and extermination of all these nationalities.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Remember, Vladimir Putin has somehow claimed they're all Nazis with no proof.

Also, this news over the weekend, an important step for the Ukrainian military. They're going to be getting tanks like those that you're seeing right there. A senior U.S. official tells me that the U.S. will soon facilitate the transfer of Russian-made T-72 tanks to Ukraine, and that this transfer will happen. It will be coming from NATO allies who use these tanks. It will happen within days, not weeks. That's an important step in military support for the Ukrainian military.

Let's begin, though, in Bucha, just outside of the capital Kyiv.

Moments ago we got some video in of the Ukrainian President Zelenskyy visiting that part of the area surrounding Kyiv. We're working on a translation of his comments right now. That's him there speaking in Bucha.

CNN's senior international correspondent Fred Pleitgen, he saw the horrifying scene for himself. This is his firsthand account of the devastation.

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, Jim.

Well, it's certainly still, you know, a very tough and devastating situation here on the ground in Bucha. What you have behind me is that mass grave, you know, that we've been talking about. The local authorities here tell us they believe there's, you know, 150, maybe more people that are buried in there.

Of course, the mayor has been saying that he believes around 300 people are buried in mass graves here in Bucha. The big problem is they simply don't know because, as the fighting was going on, more and more people were getting buried here and they simply lost track. And it's something, unfortunately, that we see in this entire district of Bucha as more and more bodies are being found.

Here's what we witnessed.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PLEITGEN (voice over): As Russian forces retreat from the area north of Kyiv, in their wake, scenes of utter destruction. Whole blocks of houses, flattened. Ukrainian authorities saying they believe dead bodies are still lying underneath.

But here, the dead also lay in the open. Ukrainian national police showed us this mass grave in Bucha, saying they believed up to 150 civilians might be buried here but no one knows the exact number. People killed while the Russian army occupied this town.

This is what it looks like when the hope is crushed. Vladimir (ph) has been searching for his younger brother, Dmitry (ph). Now he's convinced Dmitry lies here, even though he can't be 100 percent sure.

The neighbor accompanying him with strong words for the Russians. Why do you hate us so much, she asks. Since the 1930s you've been abusing Ukraine. You just want to destroy us.

[09:05:01]

You want us gone. But we will be -- everything will be OK. I believe it.

Video from Bucha shows bodies in the streets after Russian forces left the area. Some images even show bodies with hands tied behind their backs.

The Russian defense ministry denies killing civilians and claims images of dead civilians are, quote, fake.

But we met a family just returning to their house in Boroyanka (ph), which they say was occupied by Russian soldiers. They show us the body of a dead man in civilian clothes they had found in the back yard. His hands and feet tied with severe bruises and a shell casing still laying nearby.

Russia's military appears to have suffered heavy losses before being driven out of the area around Kyiv. This column of armor vehicles in Bucha completely destroyed.

PLEITGEN (on camera): The way the Ukrainians tell us is that the Russians were trying to go towards Kyiv and they were then intercepted by Ukrainian drones, artillery and also the javelin anti-tank weapons. It's not clear how many Russians were killed here, but they say many were and others fled the scene.

PLEITGEN (voice over): A national police officer says the Russian troops were simply too arrogant. They thought they could drive on the streets and just go through, he says, that they would be greeted as though it's all right. Maybe they think it is normal to drive around looting, to destroy buildings and to mock people, but our people didn't allow it.

And now it appears all the Russians have withdrawn from here. Ukrainian says it is now in full control of the entire region around Kyiv. But it is only now that the full extent of the civilian suffering is truly coming to light.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PLEITGEN: And, Jim, as you can imagine, the Ukrainian authorities extremely angry about all this. We've heard President Zelenskyy railing against the Russians. And the Ukrainians also launching an investigation into all of this. Obviously, they want to get to the bottom of how many civilians were killed here during the Russian occupation and first and foremost also how these people died.

Jim.

SCIUTTO: Just an alarming report.

And, by the way, that's our Fred Pleitgen and his team on the ground there, seeing these mass graves with their eyes, the bodies, not faked. They're seeing them with their eyes.

Thanks to Fred Pleitgen.

We do just have this in from CNN in Ukraine, what the Ukrainian president said moments ago as he visited Bucha himself. He said, quote, I think they should come here -- he's speaking of foreign leaders -- and see how these games, how this flirting with the Russian Federation ends. Those the words of the Ukrainian president as he visited the scene there in Bucha of what some are alleging are war crimes.

We've also been hearing from the mayor of Bucha about the horror uncovered in his city. CNN anchor Brianna Keilar, she's in Lviv in western Ukraine.

Brianna, you spoke to the mayor today and I imagine feelings are raw. He knows many of these people. He was their leader, their representative, and now seeing what happened there.

What did he have to say?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, you know, the estimates that we're hearing about how many people died in Bucha are varying. But, Jim, he said that there were up to 290 people in that mass grave they believed and many more in the town that were killed.

But it certainly speaks to just the horrors in Bucha and how they are extraordinary in one regard, which is that this may be some of the -- you know, an isolated event and that it is the first moment where we're seeing these kinds of atrocities, but not isolated in the fact that I think President Zelenskyy and many other officials here expecting there are many, many more to come.

Here is what the mayor of Bucha said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR ANATOLY FEDORUK, BUCHA, UKRAINE (through translator): At the moment, there is half the city is destroyed. There is a lot of destroyed buildings, a lot of dead bodies on the streets and the services are working on clearing mines, de-mining the streets, de- mining houses and apartments and restoring the social infrastructure.

The city is busy now transitioning from war -- a war footing to peacetime living and within the confines of the martial law that we have.

We are also working on identifying the bodies of the people who were shot dead in our city. They were indiscriminately killed by the Russian occupiers. A lot of them are elderly people.

We get the impression that the Russian occupiers have got the green light from Putin and Shoigu (ph), the Russian defense minister, to have a safari in Ukraine. And they weren't able to take Kyiv, so they vented their frustration on Bucha and the -- and the surrounding areas.

KEILAR: Mayor, you mentioned that there were elderly among the victims. Are there children?

[09:10:05]

FEDORUK: Well, as I said, there are different kinds of people and there are many children, many teenagers. It -- these were children -- they posed no threat to the Russian troops, the Russia as a whole and they posed absolutely no danger. And it was impossible not to see that they were children, not to see that a mother is carrying a child. And this cynical -- these cynical atrocities is what the Russian troops are all about. That's what Russia is all about. And we shall never forgive them. They will never be forgiven on this earth or in heaven.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: And the mayor also spoke about the psychological toll, Jim, that so many people there have experienced. The ones that remain during the Russian occupation. We just have to stress that we are just hearing now of these atrocities. But this is what the people living in Bucha have been going through since the Russians invaded.

This is not an isolated event. It may stand out because it is one of these first mass atrocities that we are seeing. But the mayor was saying that he thinks there will be many other places like this, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Yes, we met a family there who lived in their basement for ten days because of the Russian attack. This is not made up. And it's been consistent for days and weeks.

Brianna Keilar, thanks so much.

Joining me now to speak about this is Marharyta Rivchachenko. She's a former journalist, a paramedic with the territorial defense force.

Marharyta, it's good to have you on this morning in a difficult -- just --

MARHARYTA RIVCHACHENKO, JOURNALIST: Thank you. Thank you. (INAUDIBLE) And now I'm in Kyiv and I'm safe. But the Ukrainians in Bucha or Irpin, in Hostimil (ph), in Mariupol, in Kharkov aren't (INAUDIBLE).

SCIUTTO: No question.

RIVCHACHENKO: Most of all (INAUDIBLE).

SCIUTTO: As you look at these images from a place such as Bucha -- and, by the way, it's not confined to there, as you note. Mariupol still under a horrendous assault. But as you look at these pictures from Bucha, and you hear witness accounts, do you believe you've seen evidence there -- we're seeing evidence there -- of war crimes? RIVCHACHENKO: It's so horrible and it's so hard to -- it's hard to

explain how Ukrainians are sad and crying. Every Ukrainian person try to -- try to understand why, why this (INAUDIBLE) has happened in Europe in 21st century. It's unbelievable. It's really a war crime. I can't believe it.

SCIUTTO: Now, what Russian leaders are saying, the foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, Dmitry Peskov, who's, of course, Putin's spokesperson, they say this is fake, these are fake images. I want to give you a chance to respond to that?

RIVCHACHENKO: No. The fake is Russian propaganda. No, in -- it's really Russians crime in Ukraine. We saw that (INAUDIBLE) situation. I lived in beautiful country, in beautiful city. I work like journalism (ph). But after the Russian aggression, I need to become a paramedic just because a lot of person need medicine just because the Russian soldiers (INAUDIBLE) and -- and killed them.

SCIUTTO: After seeing those images for the first time, you wrote on Instagram, let them even dream of horrors. We need to remember and take revenge even stronger than anyone.

What do you mean by taking revenge?

RIVCHACHENKO: I -- that's (INAUDIBLE) the situation in Kyiv and the Kyiv suburbs, it's like (INAUDIBLE). It's like -- it's something like an -- (INAUDIBLE). So we need to remember that and we can't forget it. After war time (ph), after a lot of times, maybe our children meet some Russian children in other country, but we will remember that their parents killed our parents and our persons.

SCIUTTO: You, as someone who -- as a paramedic who deals with the wounded, you know better than me that the pain from this can far outlast the event, that people will be living with what they saw here, the people they lost here for a long time to come.

[09:15:10]

How do those people get help?

RIVCHACHENKO: It's really hard to help them psychologically. Firstly, we tried to get them the first aid, but the PT (ph) trauma will be in -- in -- in many years with them. So, we can't -- we can't help to prove -- to do -- to leave the city just because every Ukrainians has this psychological (ph) trauma.

SCIUTTO: For sure. For many years, sadly.

RIVCHACHENKO: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Marharyta Rivchachenko, I know that you have a lot of hard work to do, helping taking care of the wounded, both emotionally and physically. We wish you the best of luck. We also wish you safety.

RIVCHACHENKO: Thank you so much. Thank you for supporting Ukrainian people. SCIUTTO: The images, just heartbreaking.

Well, still to come, Russia is turning its immediate aims to the east and the south in Ukraine. The latest strikes and what the U.S. is prioritizing in its next delivery of weapons to Ukraine, next.

Plus, President Zelenskyy, he also spoke at the Grammy awards, delivering a poignant message.

Let's listen as we take a quick break.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINE: Our musicians wear body armor instead of tuxedos. They sing to the wounded in hospitals. Fill the silence with your music! Fill it today. To tell our story.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:21:03]

SCIUTTO: Right now, Ukraine's third largest city under devastating attack. Russia intensifying its assault on the port city of Odessa overnight. Among its the recent targets, a fuel depot hit by those invading Russian forces early on Sunday.

CNN's senior correspondent Ed Lavandera, he is in Odessa this morning.

So, Ed, tell us what you've been witnessing there. I gather it was a difficult, a dangerous night.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Right. We had a rough 24 hours here in the port city of Odessa. Two rounds of air strikes targeting an oil facility and fuel storage facility as well here. But multiple missile strikes sending shock waves through this port city.

You know, Jim, this is an area that has enjoyed some relative quiet for several days, but that changed drastically yesterday. Ukrainian military officials say that in those attacks here in Odessa, only one person was injured. Russian military officials are saying they launched precision missiles from land and sea resources. So, that came as a -- you know, kind of broke the devastating -- in a devastating way the quiet that was enjoyed here.

And then if you move west -- east along the coast, toward Mykolaiv, early this morning here another missile strike that killed one person and injured five.

And then keep moving further east, you get into Mariupol, where the humanitarian crisis there continues to remain a desperately dramatic scene. The International Committee of the Red Cross has now been trying for three days to reach that city to evacuate people. There are still about 100,000 people that need to be evacuated from that city. Anyone who has been able to escape for the last few days has had to do so by driving their own car. But the Red Cross is saying that, once again, despite the alleged opening of humanitarian corridors, that that still has not opened. That the pathway and the roads to get to that city remain too treacherous, too dangerous for those Red Cross officials to reach that scene.

And, remember, these are -- this is a place where officials have been saying that they've run out of adjectives to describe how desperate the situation there is and that one local official said that the residents there have been living like mice.

Jim.

SCIUTTO: Ed Lavandera, to you and your team, please stay safe.

A senior U.S. official tells me that Ukrainian's military will soon receive Soviet-era T-72 tanks, and those coming within days as opposed to weeks. A transfer the U.S. is expected to help facilitate from NATO allies who use Russian-made military hardware.

Joining us now, retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, CNN military analyst, used to command U.S. Army forces in Europe.

General, good to have you.

Tell us about this kind of weapons transfer here because this is a different category of weapons we've seen so far. We've certainly seen shoulder-fired antitank missiles, antitank missiles, missile defense systems. Would a transfer of tanks be significant on the battlefield?

LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: I believe it would, Jim, and for this reason and this reason only, you're going to have probably some major fights not only in the Donbas but in the northeast, southeast and maybe even in the south. You're going to be required to have tank-on tank forces. The tank brings a quality all of its own to the battlefield. And even though, you know, it's the same kind of equipment that Russia has, the tanks they're going to being getting probably -- and I'm making a guess on this -- probably from Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland, who all have those tanks. They've all been what the military calls up-gunned. They've had some additional enhancement to them by those NATO forces. It's a useable tank, no doubt. It's really very user friendly and it's good to have on the battlefield. It doesn't have some of the ranges and fire power that many of the western tanks have. But it will be something that will reenforce the Russian army as they go -- excuse me, the Ukrainian army as they go toe to toe with Russian tank forces.

[09:25:02]

SCIUTTO: You are aware of some NATO leaders being reluctant to send aircraft, Russian-made aircraft, to Ukraine, fearing that that would be seen by Russia as direct U.S.-NATO military involvement in the war. Are tanks in a similar or different category?

HERTLING: No, I think they're in the same category, it's just that they're easier to deliver and they're more useful. You know, there's been this hue and cry for more airplanes. Give us more airplanes. SCIUTTO: Yes.

HERTLING: And I heard former President Poroshenko say this morning, give us 100 of them. Well, I mean, 100 airplanes out of the blue, if you will, just aren't sitting around to transfer. In some of these Russian tanks, these are excess pieces of equipment that provide security for the forces in NATO. So, when you're talking about the transfer of different types of weapons systems, Jim, and I tried to point this out in a tweet over the weekend, you do not just have to consider the piece of equipment itself, you have to also consider the support infrastructure, the fueling required, the mechanics, the supporters, the trainers, as well as the operators.

So, when you're talking about lots of airplanes, it requires, you know, the technology and the technical support to those airplanes that are being delivered. Some of the more modern aircraft that Ukraine is requesting, it's not that the Ukrainians couldn't fight in them, it's just, do they have the individuals that have been trained to care for them, to refuel them, to put bombs on board. It takes different types of weapons systems. So, all of those things have to be part of the consideration of the transfer of weapons systems. With the T-72, you know, they have to -- the Ukrainian army already has T-72s. It's relatively easy. They know the tank.

SCIUTTO: Yes. And that's a big part of it. And I've been told, by the way, as far as aircraft are concerned, that the existing aircraft the Ukrainians have, they're not flying actually that many sorties per day.

I want to ask you, based on what we're seeing now out of Bucha, both the images but also eyewitness accounts from people who live there and our own teams on the ground. This is not new, sadly. Russia has a similar doctrine of brutality that we saw play out in Chechnya, we saw it in Syria, too.

How is Russia held accountable this time given that the U.N. Security Council will be frozen because Russia has a veto there. What can the U.S. do, NATO do, what can the world do to impose some consequences?

HERTLING: Well, the U.N. Security Council is very different than The Hague, Jim, you know that.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HERTLING: So they're going to take dedicated information, not only just generalized information as we've been seeing with the bombing of cities which might have an excuse of, oh, gee, our bomb didn't hit the target we were looking at or gee whiz we were striking targets where there were military forces inside of a hospital, which are just ludicrous excuses. Now you're going to see firsthand accounts. You're going to see those who have been tortured. You're going to see relatives of those who have been killed. You're going to hear from people who were there when it happened. The kind of atrocities that occurred in the Balkans during that war, in Sebranicha (ph), you're going to talk about Putin being a Milosevic-type character, where not only did he order the things that are happening, but he condoned them by his top military leaders.

And, by the way, the top military leaders didn't do the things required in the IRR. The -- you know, there's a very clear definition of war crimes. It's anyone who orders, deliberately commits or aids and abets others are responsible for those war crimes. So you're talking about commanders from the generals down to the captains on the scene who know these kinds of illegal killings, torture, pillage, rape, looting are all going on. And they will be held accountable by the International Criminal Court if the data and the information can be provided from firsthand accounts.

SCIUTTO: There's talk of a 21st century Nuremberg trial.

Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, thanks so much.

HERTLING: Thank you, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Still ahead this hour, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's nomination to the Supreme Court will head to a committee vote soon. We speak with Democratic Congressman Sheila Jackson Lee about this moment in history and her view.

And we are moments away from the opening bell on Wall Street. Right now futures mixed as Wall Street hopes to recover from -- recover this week from the worst first quarter in two years. During the first three months of the year, the major indices posted their largest quarterly decline since the crash before the pandemic in 2020. March a little better but Russia's war in Ukraine, as well as big swings in oil prices and Treasury bonds hints at more instability ahead.

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