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Atrocities in Bucha; Russia Hits Civilian Ship in Port; Ryan Goodman is Interviewed about Russia's Alleged Crimes; Philip Breedlove is Interviewed about the War in Ukraine. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired April 05, 2022 - 09:00   ET

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

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JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: A wartime address to the world. In the next hour, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, will speak to the U.N. Security Council after a massacre is exposed in Bucha.

Good morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto.

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Bianna Golodryga.

Officials say well over 300 Ukrainians were tortured and killed in Bucha. Overnight, a CNN team witnessed bodies being pulled from basements in that town. President Zelenskyy warning civilian casualties could even be worse in other liberated cities.

Right now, shelling continues in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Officials report intense fighting in Luhansk. Rescue teams are now unable to reach some of those areas, forcing civilians to bury their loved ones in their own yards.

SCIUTTO: Scenes are heartbreaking, they're shocking.

And for a fourth straight day, Russian forces are blocking an evacuation convoy meant to rescue civilians from the bombed out city of Mariupol where more than 100,000 civilians desperately waiting to escape as the Russian assault and bombardment continues there.

Let's begin this morning with CNN's Brianna Keilar. She is in Lviv, in western Ukraine.

Brianna, so the next hour, as we mentioned, the Ukrainian president, he will address the U.N. Security Council. We certainly expect him to discuss the atrocities in Bucha, particularly after visiting the area himself in the last 24 hours. Of course, Russia denying, claiming that these are all fake, though the evidence shows otherwise. What more are you learning this morning?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, that's the thing, Jim, we're learning just how verifiable these atrocities are as we also learn just how shameless Russia is in lying about them. There are satellite images as Russia says that this didn't happen essentially under their watch. There are satellite images from March 18th in Bucha, taken by Maxar

Technologies, that show at a time when the town was very much occupied by Russian forces. All of the bodies that are now being seen on that main thorough fare, as well as this mass grave, those were all there at the time.

And now we are seeing reporter after reporter bearing witness to the unimaginable, unimaginable atrocities. And that includes our Fred Pleitgen, who is on the ground in Bucha.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Ukrainian authorities in Bucha lead us into a basement they call a Russian execution chamber. It's a gruesome scene, five bodies, their hands tied behind their backs, shot. The bullet casings collected by Ukrainian police. Pockmarks from bullets in the walls.

The Ukrainians say these men were killed when Russian forces used this compound as a military base while occupying Bucha. An adviser to Ukraine's interior minister not even trying to conceal his anger.

After the liberation of Bucha, five corpses of civilians were found here, he says, with their hands tied behind their backs. They were shot in the head and in the chest. They were tortured before.

Even the body collectors find it hard to keep their composure. Vladislav Minchenko is usually a painter. Now he collects the dead, left behind after Russian forces retreated from Bucha.

This is not what we learned in school, he says. Do you see my hands? Hundreds, hundreds of dead. Hundreds, not dozens.

The Kremlin has denied Russia was behind any atrocities in Bucha.

PLEITGEN (on camera): Now, the Russians say the notion of their troops having killed civilians is al fake news and propaganda, but it does seem clear that they were here. That looks like a sort of foxhole position. And over there they seem to have dug in a tank.

PLEITGEN (voice over): On the outer wall, the letter v, a symbol that Russian forces painted on their vehicles before invading this part of Ukraine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GOLODRYGA: (INAUDIBLE) for me to hear that --

KEILAR: So you're seeing there --

GOLODRYGA: I'm sorry. Go ahead, Brianna. Sorry.

KEILAR: Oh, no, I was just saying, so you're seeing there, I mean it's verifiable. We've learned that, you know, a lot of these -- as the Russian forces went through these towns, they took away the cell phones, they took away the sim cards. And so it's only now, even though these things have been going on for well over a month, it's only now that we're learning of them. But there they are.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, there they are. And what I was saying was, to hear that government official speaking in Russian and saying that these bodies, where they were standing, were located at a children's camp before that just gives you a sense of the inhumanity here.

[09:05:11]

And, Brianna, and I know you spoke more on that with the deputy prime minister of Ukraine this morning.

KEILAR: Yes, that's right. And one of the things I asked her about was beyond Bucha, are there other Buchas? Because, in particular, President Zelenskyy had mentioned the town of Borodyanka, which is a little further away from Kyiv. And here's what she said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

IRYNA VERESHCHUK, DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER OF UKRAINE (through translator): Indeed, he mentioned Borodyanka because Borodyanka was also fully occupied for a while, and we had no access. We could not see what was happening there. Therefore, we are inviting journalists, criminal experts, and anybody with relevant experience to come and witness what we will discover in Borodyanka because we know that the animals in military uniform, there's no other way to call them, were torturing women and children.

KEILAR: They were torturing women and children. What have you learned?

VERESHCHUK: Yes, because there are -- there are witness accounts. And we know that women were raped and civilians were killed just for walking in the street or hiding in the basement. Thousands of such people have been tortured and killed and we have thousands of witness accounts and we need the -- we -- I agree with President Zelenskyy when he says that this was conscious genocide of Ukrainian people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: And she says that President Zelenskyy is going to be pointing to everything that we are now seeing on the ground, that he saw on the ground yesterday when he was in Bucha, when he addresses the U.N.

But something else, guys, that really struck me about what she said, I was saying, you know, what is the message of Ukraine to the west, what is the message to Europe, and she was talking so much about in embargo of Russian oil and gas and she said that the dependence on Russian oil and gas stinks with the blood of Ukrainian children.

I mean what she was trying to communicate was this idea that as Europeans might be using gas or they might be using natural gas in the course of their day to sort of think of it as money from that going to pay for the weapons and logistics that have killed Ukrainian women and children. And she basically said blood is on their hands if they do not press forward trying to stop Russia from doing this.

SCIUTTO: Yes, and that's a step that so far, at least on a broad scale, Europe has not taken to boycott that oil, that natural gas.

Brianna Keilar, in Lviv, thanks so much.

SCIUTTO: So, Mariupol, another city that has suffered enormously in this invasion. This morning, Russian forces attacked a civilian ship in the port there. Ukraine's interior ministry says it is now on fire, sinking into the Sea of Azov.

GOLODRYGA: And at the same time, Russian troops are again blocking an evacuation convoy to the besieged city.

CNN's senior correspondent Ed Lavandera is in Odessa, Ukraine.

Ed, what more can you tell us this morning?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, guys.

Well, that ship, which is under a Dominican Republic flag, it's a civilian ship in the port there, come under attack, under shelling. Maritime border guards there have been trying to rescue and save the crew there, but they have been halted by constant attack there on that ship. So, all of this continues to unfold there in that -- in that port city as they're desperately trying to save the crew members of that ship, a very difficult situation.

And the efforts to continue to evacuate about 100,000 people still trapped inside Mariupol continues. It is a desperate situation. The International Committee for the Red Cross has been trying since Saturday to reach this city. Members of its crew were detained by Russian authorities yesterday. They have since been released. But this continues to be a desperate saga to reach these people.

The only way civilians are able to escape to a nearby town where they can then be bused to better safety is through their own civilian cars. And that alone is a treacherous, dangerous journey as well. So -- and, you know, can't highlight this enough, just what a humanitarian disaster this is.

And this is the city and this is the situation that so many Ukrainian officials are pointing to right now as we have seen the pictures emerge from the suburbs around Kyiv. Remember, there are Ukrainian officials here saying that they expect this situation and these images to become even worse, and they're pointing to Mariupol. These is -- this is a place where the international community, international journalists have not been able to reach, to be able to document the horrors that have unfolded here because aid groups are still desperately, after days and days of trying, trying to get humanitarian corridors properly opened to reach this city, still haven't been able to do so because Russian forces are blocking that.

[09:10:13]

Jim and Bianna.

SCIUTTO: Ed Lavandera. And as we see there, the destruction in Mariupol, it's all civilian targets. It's stores. It's apartment buildings, right. And that's part of this story.

Ed Lavandera in Odessa, thanks so much.

We're going to speak to Ryan Goodman now. He's a former special counsel to the general counsel at the Department of Defense, also a law professor at New York University School of Law.

Ryan, good to have you this morning.

Couple different categories as you know far better than us of war crimes. One is deliberately targeting civilians, and that's what we seem to have a lot of evidence of in Bucha. But then you have the other larger question of a full scale invasion of another country for the purpose of conquest.

What you're seeing now, is there sufficient evidence in an international court of law to pursue charges in both those categories against Russian officials, generals, et cetera, and where exactly would be the best forum to do that?

RYAN GOODMAN, FORMER SPECIAL COUNCIL TO GENERAL COUNSEL, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE: This is a great question. So, in the -- let me take the second one first, which is the want -- like a wanton invasion of another country for conquest. That's a crime of aggression. It's what the Nuremberg Tribunal after World War II considered to be the supreme crime. And I think the evidence in that is absolutely clear. That's how we have, for example, a general assembly resolution passed with overwhelming support of the international community calling Russia's acts a crime of aggression. And that is also in some sense very easily provable because it's from the very top, and that means Vladimir Putin and his senior command would be held criminally liable.

The issue there is actually just finding the forum and ever apprehending the culprits. So, the International Criminal Court does not have jurisdiction over the crime of aggression in Ukraine. And, therefore, there is movement afoot to try to create a tribunal, an international tribunal, which is being done before, or to prosecute it at the national level. So that could be Ukraine authorities are investigating crime of aggression. So are Lithuania and Poland.

And then the second part that you had asked about is the -- kind of the war crimes that we're seeing on our screens of civilians being killed, tortured, wanton destruction of cities, those war crimes are -- obvious war crimes. The issue there is, who will investigate? The International Criminal Court does have jurisdiction and is investigating right now as we speak. And the issue, once again, will be, like, who can be prosecuted. So it will be about proving who is responsible for those actions. I think that's going to be the key part. And then also, once again, apprehending a culprit.

GOLODRYGA: Well, Ryan, on that note of culpability, first, it's one thing to just have Russia flat out lie and deny any involvement, right? But we have seen them, in the past, and it appears we've seen them right now, use outside forces, whether it's Chechen troops, whether it's mercenaries from Syria, and many reasons to give them plausible deniability.

Would that work for them in this case?

GOODMAN: It won't work for them. It's been tried before by governments to use these kind of paramilitary groups.

One interesting part is that for the crime of aggression, sending in mercenaries is a part of the crime. So, in some sense, using some of these organizations and the Wagner Group and others is actually a predicate for the crime of aggression. So it gets them into worst trouble in that regard.

And then international law has standards and tests for determining whether or not the paramilitary group is associated with the state. I think there will be plenty of evidence to show that. So, they won't be able to escape that kind of liability. If anything, those are proxies that are just operating for the commanders.

SCIUTTO: You bring up Nuremberg as a potential model for this, and that, of course, makes me think of the famous line just following orders here. In terms of legal standards for war crimes, does that hold? In other words, can you go up the whole chain of command? I mean there are prisoners of war, commanders, officers from Russian military currently in Ukrainian hands.

Whether you get Putin or not, can you prosecute at that level? Is there any defense, right, in saying I was just following orders from on high?

GOODMAN: So, there won't be a defense. And that's what Nuremberg kind of established, which is that if it's a manifestly illegal order, then it can't count as a justification or a defense. And as you point out, this is where I think there's a real prospect of some war crimes trials because we do have, you know, many of these people in custody.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

GOLODRYGA: Ryan Goodman, fascinating conversation, thank you so much.

GOODMAN: Thank you.

GOLODRYGA: Well, new this morning, officials in the Luhansk region say a Russian strike hit a tank of nitric acid.

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And now they're telling people to hide indoors from the toxic cloud of smoke. We'll speak to a former NATO supreme allied commander about the Russian tactics.

Plus, my conversation with the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations as she visited refugees in Moldova.

SCIUTTO: An important conversation there. Also, the European Commission has just proposed a fifth round of

sanctions that includes at least some of this prospect, which we mentioned earlier, the energy sector. How much would it have an impact on Putin? We're going to speak to a former Russian lawmaker who is now in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv helping Ukrainians fight.

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SCIUTTO: Stay indoors. That's what officials are telling people in the eastern Ukrainian town of Rubizhn (ph) after a Russian strike hit a tank of nitric acid. The attack created a cloud of toxic smoke over the area.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, we should note, it is unclear how much acid was in the tank, but officials say the substance is quite toxic. But they add rain will get rid of the cloud.

Joining us now is retired Air Force General Philip Breedlove. He once served as NATO's supreme allied commander of Europe.

Great to have you on.

First, let's talk about this nitric acid. How dangerous of a threat is this for the community?

GEN. PHILIP BREEDLOVE, U.S. AIR FORCE (RET.): Well, clearly it's a big danger and they're going to have to take some pretty tough measures to avoid it for a short time and hopefully the weatherman will cooperate and give them a good, strong rain to clear it out.

SCIUTTO: It's another example just of the danger of waging a war, including on civilian targets. We've seen the dangers around nuclear power plants.

I do want to ask you about what comes next in this war. Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor, he warned yesterday of a long, drawn- out conflict as Russia concentrates the forces for now on the east and the south to try to make some gains there, where they couldn't make them in the north.

How long, in your view, how bloody as Russia concentrates its forces down there, which Ukrainians are moving as well, where they're moving as well?

BREEDLOVE: Well, to try to put numbers on it would be tough. But I do agree that we are in for an ugly slog ahead. What we've seen, of course, is the defeat of the forces in the north. And because of that defeat, Russia has turned to the most horrid of tactics, even worse than we saw in Mariupol now we are witnessing in the north.

And as they now take those forces that have been beat up and reconstitute them and find a way to introduce them in the east, we're in for a tough fight ahead. And I am worried, frankly, about what lies ahead for Odessa, which I believe is firmly in Russia's sights. GOLODRYGA: Well, on that note, you know, there has been a bipartisan

appeal for the United States to do more in terms of arming the Ukrainians, specifically with anti-ship missiles. Is that something that you would support and believe that the Ukrainians need right now in fighting back Russians in port cities like Odessa?

BREEDLOVE: Absolutely. In fact, we've been talking about getting coastal defense cruise missiles to the Ukrainians since before the battles began. And we've been talking about getting the medium and high altitude air defenses since very early in the conflict. And we're -- we have not delivered yet.

And so while we have done some good work, and we want to be thankful for that, there are important things that the Ukrainians have needed since before the conflict that we are yet to deliver. And so it's very important for our nation to bear down now and make sure that these fighting forces get everything that they need.

SCIUTTO: What is the trip wire, in your view? You know the argument against a no-fly zone was that it would put U.S. NATO forces into direct potential conflict with Russian forces. Now, U.S. NATO jets nose to nose with Russian jets. Missile systems perhaps shooting down Russian jets. That was taken off the table.

The MiGs were seen as too much of an aggressive step, that Russia might read as direct NATO involvement in the war. But NATO and the U.S. has made the decision to send tanks -- and, by the way, those javelin missiles and stinger missiles are killing a lot of Russian forces, right, blowing up a lot of Russian armor as anti-tank -- sorry, anti-ship missiles would.

Is there a line, in your view, that goes too far?

BREEDLOVE: Well, as far as enabling the Ukrainian military, I don't think there is a line that goes too far. The javelins have been doing wonderful. U.S. stingers didn't arrive until several weeks after the war started. And we could have done better with them if we'd have gotten them in there earlier. And, frankly, a no-fly zone, if it had been established before the conflict started, might have deterred Mr. Putin from coming into Ukraine. Instead, we gave Mr. Putin the initiative and allowed him to start the war and then it became much more risky to institute a traditional military no-fly zone.

But now what we see is the depth of the depravity of Russia's attack on the Ukrainian people. And it's time for us to step up our support.

SCIUTTO: Yes, there are clearly no apparent red lines for Russia at this point in terms of the behavior of their forces on the ground.

General Philip Breedlove, always good to have you on. Thanks so much.

BREEDLOVE: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Just ahead, a group of Russians caught on a fishing boat trying to enter the U.S. through Florida.

[09:25:03]

We're going to have a live report, next.

GOLODRYGA: And we are just moments away from the opening bell on Wall Street, where futures are slipping. Oil prices are ticking higher as investors keep a close eye on the war in Ukraine and the plan for more sanctions on Russia.

The European Commission is to propose sweeping new sanctions to EU nations, including a ban on imports of coal, rubber, chemicals and other products from Russia worth more than $9 billion. This on the heels of Biden's plan this week for more sanctions. Obviously missing from that list, at least for now, oil and natural gas. We're going it keep a watch on it for all of you.

Stay with us.

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