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Biden Calls Putin a War Criminal; Outrage Grows Over Russian Atrocities. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired April 04, 2022 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:31]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: Hello. I'm Victor Blackwell. Welcome to CNN NEWSROOM.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: And I'm Alisyn Camerota.

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy saw firsthand today the human atrocities done to civilians in Bucha. He says it would be very difficult to negotiate with the Russians after seeing what their soldiers have done.

We have images of the aftermath. And a warning that these images are disturbing. The pictures reveal bodies scattered in Bucha's streets. Bucha's mayor says these civilians, men and women, were killed execution-style, some shot in the back of the head.

He also says that Putin and his defense minister gave the go-ahead for a -- quote -- "safari" in Ukraine.

BLACKWELL: The carnage the people endured there, we see it. It's only being exposed now after Russian troops retreated from the Kyiv region, and the barbarity has sparked worldwide condemnation and calls for consequences for Vladimir Putin.

This morning, President Zelenskyy called it genocide.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): With thousands of people killed and tortured, with their limbs cut off, children killed, women raped, that is genocide.

We want to show the world -- we want you to show the world what happened here, what the Russian military did, what the Russian Federation did in peaceful Ukraine .And it was important for us for you to see that these were civilians.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: CNN's Fred Pleitgen documented the aftermath of that massacre, including a mass grave in Bucha. Here is some of what he saw.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): 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.

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."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: President Biden called for more sanctions and a war crimes trial against Putin, but stopped short of saying that this is genocide.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He is a war criminal. And we have to gather all the detail, so this could be an actual -- have a war crime trial.

This guy is brutal. And what's happening in Bucha is outrageous.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: CNN chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour was just in Kyiv. She's now in Kharkiv.

So, Christiane, tell us more about what journalists and civilians are seeing in these towns around Kyiv.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Well, look, Alisyn, it was obvious that you would never get a picture of what happened there until the Russians retreated or pushed back, and they were pushed back.

And this is now what everybody can see. And we have been reporting and our colleagues have been reporting about the targeting of civilians from the very beginning of the Russian invasion, whether it was against clearly civilian structures and civilians in Mariupol, whether it was elsewhere where we have been reporting.

And now you can see what actually happened under the direct occupation of Russian forces for now 40 days. So, that is -- the evidence is right there. The complications over what kind of crimes, who will adjudicate, when they might be prosecuted, that's for later.

But the evidence right now is being collected, and it is copious. You have got many, many, many independent journalists who are going there, who are recording, who are taping, who are getting eyewitness accounts from the people who actually saw what happened.

And, obviously, you can see the aftermath. So this stuff will be what is taken to a court of law eventually. And we know that, already, there are various human rights groups, including the International Criminal Court, which has got investigators on the ground. And they are and they already have started and they will be getting a lot more access now to the forensic and laborious and time-consuming investigations and meticulous notetaking and fact-finding that will have to be done in order to make this something -- and it will be -- in an International Criminal Court.

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And then they have to prove command responsibility and how and what was ordered in terms of what happened on the ground, or -- and they have to prove that the soldiers, those who committed these crimes, never took due care to spare civilians.

There are many aspects that go into forming this kind of legal prosecution for these kinds of crimes. And I can tell you, I'm here in Kharkiv, the second city in Ukraine, it's only about 40 miles from the Russian border. And you might wonder why I'm sitting in a hotel.

Well, because we're under a strict citywide blackout, nighttime curfew that just went into effect an hour ago. We have got these dark curtains here, no lights allowed to be seen from the outside. And this is a city, which, as we have noticed over the last 36 hours we have been here, fierce artillery duels back and forth, quite regular sounds we can hear.

We visited the sights of artillery attacks. We saw where people had been killed just yesterday afternoon. And we know, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, they believe that, as Russia regroups and refocuses on the east, the Donbass region, they might also try to take this town.

That's what the Ministry of Defense said, this city here, Kharkiv, which is a city of 1.5 million people, about the size of Phoenix, Arizona -- Alisyn.

BLACKWELL: I will take it, Christiane.

You talked about the reallocation, the shifting of resources to the east. There are reports of the accumulation of Russian forces in the Luhansk region, not far from where you are.

AMANPOUR: Yes.

BLACKWELL: Talk more about the level of concern about that buildup, especially in the context of this new video we're seeing from Bucha, and how to prevent the next Bucha. AMANPOUR: Well, exactly.

And any city or town that's been occupied by Russian forces, well, now we know what we might find if -- once they're pushed back. And, so far, they have not occupied any major cities. They had all those outskirts around Kyiv. They were never able to get Kyiv. They are still haven't got Mariupol. But we know such civilian slaughter has unfolded there because of their long-range artillery, because of their airstrikes, because of the relentless shelling.

And once a lot of journalists can get in, we might be able to -- they have only been able to capture and hold a town called Kherson. We don't know what we will find when they are out of that smaller town to the south.

To the east, the Donbass region, as we know, the Russians, since 2014, have been controlling a small part of that area called Luhansk and Donetsk, that part. What they want is the whole area, the whole greater Donbass region. Whether or not they can get it, given the failures that we have seen elsewhere in this country, remains an open question.

But the Ukrainians are very concerned that that is where they're going to be focusing all their regrouped forces and potentially adding more to actually do that. And, again, that also is going to be a place where, eventually, we will know exactly what transpired.

I mean, it is very, very ugly. It's very dark. It's an extraordinary situation. And when you hear the categoric denials and the accusations of fake news from Russia, I mean, it is extraordinary. There are two alternate realities at play. And, in Russia, they believe one, and we here see another -- Victor.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

And, Christiane, you just spelled out the process for us of the investigation into war crimes. So, we see it with our eyes. But, of course, there will be a process. And, sometimes, that process takes a long time.

AMANPOUR: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Is it conceivable that Vladimir Putin will ever be prosecuted for war crimes?

AMANPOUR: It's really hard to tell.

I can only tell you what I have witnessed in my coverage. There was the Balkan wars, the Bosnian war, the siege of Sarajevo, the Srebrenica genocide, the massacres, and it took a while to prosecute. Eventually, they did get the overall leader, Slobodan Milosevic, who was president of Yugoslavia and then Serbia, and he was indicted in the midst of the Kosovo war in the late 1990s.

And, eventually, he was taken to The Hague. He died before the case was terminated. But his henchmen in Bosnia, guys called Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, they also later, having hidden for years and been on the run for years and been protected by their own people for years, were eventually found, turned in, taken to The Hague and convicted.

And they currently are in prison for the rest of their lives. There is no death penalty. The maximum penalty is life in prison. And that is where they sit right now. In addition, in the same time period, you had a massive genocide in Rwanda, in which, in the space of some three months, nearly a million people, between 800,000 and a million people of the Tutsi tribe and some moderate Hutus were slaughtered.

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There, also, prosecutions took place. And the lead murderers, the commanders, and even, even leaders of the mass media there, which were the propagandists, which set the fires of the slaughter, as it was happening, they also were convicted, and they are also in jail.

So, these trials, they might take a long time. Again, it's forensic evidence. The prosecution has to be really careful. Sometimes, they have to bend over backwards to allow the defense to have their say because often the defense doesn't recognize the court and therefore won't even take part.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

Christiane Amanpour offering some really important, crucial reporting and context there.

Christiane, thank you.

CNN's Ed Lavandera is in Odessa. That's in Southern Ukraine.

Ed, there have been some airstrikes where you are and in Mykolaiv. What are you learning about those attacks?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Well, we went through two rounds of airstrikes here in the city of Odessa, which is the key port city in the south, one early morning on Sunday, one late at night on Sunday, hitting a oil refinery and fuel storage facilities.

Officials here in this region say that one person was injured in those attacks. And then, earlier today, we learned that there was strikes just up the road, about a two-hour drive northeast of here in Mykolaiv, where one person was killed and five people were injured.

What is -- what, like, separates these two attacks is that, here in Odessa, it appears that it was specifically targeted, that it was a pinpointed toward a strategic target. Officials in the Mykolaiv area say that the intention of the shelling there was to create harassment and panic among the -- in the public, that it was more of an attack on the population there.

And that is why it is rather nerve-racking for people here along the southern coast as we talk and report about Russian forces regrouping, perhaps trying another strategy, moving in through the east, the southeast of this country, and perhaps pushing down the coastline toward Odessa.

That's why the nature of these attacks and how they're carried out is so nerve-racking for people here.

CAMEROTA: Ed Lavandera, thank you very much for all of your reporting.

So, Ukraine's top prosecutor called the scenes throughout the Kyiv region crucial evidence of brutal war crimes.

Joining us now from Kyiv is Ukrainian Parliament member Sviatoslav Yurash.

Sviat, thank you so much for being with us.

So, this morning, we are all just looking at these horrific images, civilians killed. We're hearing that men, women children being tortured. Do you think that the international community, many leaders now, say -- calling Vladimir Putin -- well, calling these war crimes, do you think that changes anything?

SVIATOSLAV YURASH, UKRAINIAN PARLIAMENT MEMBER: I hope it does.

The West has awesome might that it can use at any moment to stop this madness. The reality is, Putin is bluffing his way through this. He's trying to threaten the biggest powers in the world that dwarf whatever he can field and wherever he can field by destroying every day in Ukraine.

And the West can step in and put the end to this madness. The reality is, the West has used its might in the past. You just think of Kosovo. You just think of Afghanistan. And the point here is that Ukraine is the most blatant and urgent case of a country that disregards national law trying to destroy another country.

So the point here is that the West should try finally to stop that should -- that should not happen again happening again.

CAMEROTA: I know you have been traveling around the Kyiv region. Do you think that horrors like this will be discovered elsewhere in other towns outside of Bucha?

YURASH: I am mobilized soldier in Ukrainian 133rd Battalion. And we liberated a town near Bucha and seen plenty of destruction.

If you travel on the road, the biggest highway from Kyiv to my hometown, Lviv, in the west, you could have seen all the dead civilians lying about and cars burned down. And that's the reality of Russians trying to cut that road and to stop the supplies coming into Kyiv.

We didn't allow that to happen, thankfully, with Ukrainian efforts to push the Russians away. And, again, I keep repeating this to Western media. This is not Russia regrouping. Russians have been crushed near Kyiv. They have been pushed back time and time and time again. And they're ready to flee. And when you see all the machinery they dropped behind and all the

things they have lost around, the reality is, it's the first of many victories that Ukraine will have in this war.

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CAMEROTA: But I want to ask you about that, Sviat, because you in fact posted a picture on Twitter of yourself where you said, "The battle of Kyiv is over."

And you're sort of standing triumphantly in the middle of a street there, suggesting that the Russian troops are gone for good. But how do you know that they're not just in Belarus resupplying and that they're coming back?

YURASH: It's by no means a street. It's a marsh near Kyiv.

The reality is, we don't know. Russians can try and attack any part of Ukraine in moments. That's the reality of the situation in which you are finding a country which is using cruise missiles from day one and has attacked every part of Ukraine on day one of this war.

So the reality is, we don't know. But the battle -- they need the battle of Kyiv. Kyiv has become a fortress in the time that it was battling against the Russians, first throwing them out of the city, and then pushing them back all the way to the border.

So, the point is that, at the moment, we basically are preparing for anything and everything. But we see -- what we see from the movements of Russian army, we see that they are trying to focus on the east of the country, and we certainly will make an effort there.

CAMEROTA: So, that's your -- what you are seeing is, it backs up the thinking that they have moved out of Kyiv, maybe permanently, and are going to focus on the Donbass?

YURASH: You know best. You have The satellite technologies which are tracking Russian moments every day, every minute, every hour. So you are seeing everything that's happening.

So, again, we are relying on the national community supporting us in this battle and providing know-how to -- again, to understand what is next step in the Russian horror it is creating in Ukraine.

CAMEROTA: You and President Zelenskyy and so many others in Ukraine have been asking the international community for air cover and to help close the skies.

But that wouldn't have prevented the atrocities that we're seeing in Bucha. So, now what are you asking the international community for?

YURASH: The international community can do any number of things.

The air cover was just a humanitarian step. And, believe me, when we will take back Mariupol fully, you will see they are much, much worse, and much of that was wrought by artillery and airpower. And, again, there are a number of people that have died in air raids all over Ukraine, and cruise missiles the Russians have been using time and time again to showcase the fact that they can strike any part of Ukraine at will.

So the point here is that that no-fly zone over Ukraine is a step, humanitarian step, to stop Russians causing mayhem everywhere at the same time, and please least focusing the most humanitarian and military efforts on the front lines, and keeping them stable and keeping them and pushing the Russians away on those front lines.

But, again, if there's no air cover, they can strike at any part of Ukraine and cause any number of horrors to be seen all around the world.

CAMEROTA: Understood.

Sviatoslav Yurash, thank you very much. Stay safe.

YURASH: Thank you very much.

BLACKWELL: A senior U.S. defense official says roughly two-thirds of Russian troops that were centered around Kyiv have left the area. It's just part of the Kremlin shift in strategy to focus on the eastern part of the country.

CAMEROTA: And President Biden is calling for a war crimes trial after these shocking images out of Bucha. How would that work? Who could actually hold Putin accountable?

That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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CAMEROTA: We have some new drone video right now. It's just incredible. This is just into CNN.

It shows the devastation caused by Russian forces in the town of Stoyanka. This is just outside the capital city of Kyiv. And you can just see -- well, in the other -- in the shot before, you just saw all of these buildings destroyed. Here, you see, it looks like, where missiles have landed. You also see huge piles of rubble.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

CAMEROTA: The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations says she will ask that Russia be removed from the U.N. Human Rights Council after the horrifying images that we're seeing today show a mass grave and bodies of civilians shot dead execution-style in the streets of Bucha, Ukraine,.

BLACKWELL: The ambassador calls Moscow's participation in the council a farce.

And President Biden is calling for Vladimir Putin to face trial for war crimes.

Let's talk about this now with Susan Glasser, CNN global affairs analyst and staff writer for "The New Yorker," and retired Army Colonel and CNN military analyst Cedric Leighton.

Susan, let me start with you.

We have watched, the world has watched Russian forces attack civilian targets for six weeks or so now. But it's been about 24 hours since we have seen the atrocities in Bucha. Is this a tipping point? Are we seeing any indications that those who were on the sidelines, those who were not condemning, those who were not enacting or imposing some economic costs against Russia for what they're doing are now moving because of the images we're seeing?

SUSAN GLASSER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Yes, absolutely.

I mean, this is going to inflame and has already inflamed Western publics even more. In Europe, I noted you saw the German president today regretting his former support for a pipeline, a gas pipeline, Nord Stream 2, with Russia, saying that he thought, incorrectly, that Vladimir Putin would not bring this horror upon himself and the world, but he was wrong.

You're seeing new sanctions. I think your support even in France and Germany, which had resisted it, to ban all energy imports from Russia is gaining steam. They're throwing out diplomats from France and Germany. That was just announced right now.

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So you will see escalation in response to it. But, unfortunately, we're in this horrible cycle still of reacting to these Russian atrocities, rather than being able to get out front and to stop them before they occur.

CAMEROTA: Colonel, if you could show us where Bucha is on the map, number one.

And, number two, why are the Russian soldiers resorting to this level of barbarism? Is this being ordered? Are they ordered to do this?

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Yes, the short answer to that, Alisyn is, yes, they are.

And, in some cases, not only are they being ordered to do this, but they're carrying these things out on their own. There's a tradition in the Russian military of pillaging areas that they have occupied. And you see it not only in recent conflicts such as this one in Georgia and other areas in Chechnya, but also as far back as World War II and World War I, and even further back, centuries ago.

So Bucha is right about here. And I will zoom in to Bucha right now, so you can get a feel for it right near Kyiv. Kyiv is the large metropolitan area right here. Irpin is right here. And right there is Bucha, so just outside of Irpin. This is where the atrocity occurred. And this is basically ground zero when it comes to all these human rights investigations and war crimes investigations.

BLACKWELL: Susan, you said that the world is stuck in this cycle of reacting to whatever's done in Ukraine.

The president says more sanctions are coming. He also says that sanctions do not deter, that they are to impose a cost for what Russia does. Is there a plausible diplomatic, economic step that is still available to the president, to the West that would put the world a step ahead of, instead of a step behind?

GLASSER: You know, look, Vladimir Putin, having unleashed this war, is showing no signs of not only remorse for it, but he appears to be regrouping in the hope to prosecute it more successfully, as opposed to regrouping in the hope of just backing away and making it not happen.

And so I think it's important, of course, for steps to be taken that can be taken, and there certainly is more the West can do to punish Vladimir Putin in ways that may ultimately have negative consequences for Putin. And that includes definitely banning energy imports from Russia, because that remains Russia's claim in the world economy.

The problem is that you have China and India and various other countries in the world who are not a part of the coalition against Russia. And as long as there's a market for Russia's energy, then Russia can keep its war machine going, and it can keep its killing going.

CAMEROTA: Well, let's talk about that, Colonel, because one theory is that Vladimir Putin is preparing for a protracted war. And another is that Putin will declare victory on May 9.

This is from a European defense official who told CNN this weekend: "Putin will have a victory parade on the 9th of May, regardless of the status of the war or peace talks. On the other hand to victory parade with what troops and vehicles?"

So May 9 is an important holiday in Russia. It marks the Nazi surrender in World War II. And so, if he declares victory on that day, I don't know what that means for the next day, and what it means for troop movements. But which one do you put stock in?

LEIGHTON: Yes, Alisyn.

So, if he goes with May 9 as his deadline, then he's going to have a lot of questions to answer, I think, because, as we have been reporting, there's a lot of stuff that's going on here, where you now see large Ukrainian emplacements right in and around Kyiv. All of that used to be red, red being the color that we use for Russia.

And if that still is Ukrainian territory by May 9, there is basically a significant defeat that the Russians have to somehow consider in their propaganda war when it comes to this.

As far as the other parts of this, now, what Putin could do in this time, I believe that he is going to certainly move to the east. So this area is the Donbass region right here. And what he will want to do is probably link up his southern forces and his eastern forces right here. If he does this at the town of Dnipro, if he does that, then he will, in effect, have captured the eastern area of the country, which is one of the war aims and where they say they are repurposing -- moving their forces toward that area for part of their effort.

If he does this, he could potentially claim victory on May 9, if he does it by that time .He could also do something here in the south. But if he doesn't do this, then May 9 would become a meaningless moment in time as far as this war is concerned. Certainly, it will still be used to commemorate what happened at the end of World War II.

But it won't be something that he can use to say that he's done this, especially if the Ukrainians resist him. And I know that they are concerned about Dnipro as well. And I think they were going to make that work.