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Ukrainian Refugee Crisis; Senate Set to Confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson; Russia Suspended From United Nations Human Rights Council. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired April 07, 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]

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Ana Cabrera picks up our coverage right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

ANA CABRERA, CNN HOST: Hello, and thank you for joining us. I'm Ana Cabrera in New York.

Later this hour, history in the making for the U.S. Supreme Court. The Senate is expected to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, with all Democrats and a few Republican senators supporting her as well. Judge Jackson will become the first African-American woman to serve on the Supreme Court. We will bring you the historic vote live as it happens.

But we begin with Russia's fierce attacks continuing, despite growing international backlash. The United Nations General Assembly just voted to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council. The U.S. initiated that punishment in the wake of the atrocities committed against civilians in the town of Bucha. Hundreds of bodies have been found there after the Russian withdrawal from that city.

But the threat of the Kremlin's cruelty remains there in the form of land mines and other explosives. Bucha has now established a curfew to clear those explosives and to cut down on looting. And while Russia has withdrawn from parts of the north, the east is already seeing intense fighting. Ukraine's foreign minister is warning Russia's attack on the Donbass

region will be reminiscent of World War II in scope and scale, he says. And this comes as the Pentagon is now publicly acknowledging that the U.S. is providing intelligence to Ukrainian forces to conduct operations there.

Here's the Ukrainian foreign minister today ahead of meetings with NATO leaders.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DMYTRO KULEBA, UKRAINIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: I came to Brussels to participate in the NATO ministerial and to hold bilateral meetings with allies. My agenda is very simple. It has only three items on it. It's weapons, weapons, and weapons.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: CNN's Nic Robertson joins us live from NATO headquarters in Brussels.

Nic, let's start with this U.N. vote to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council. How significant is that?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: It is significant, because Russia might have hoped to look to countries like India, who are big countries, big populations, very dependent in the past on Russian military support, for example, to have voted their way.

We know that Russia was putting on -- putting pressure on countries to go their way. It is significant as well because this does sort of put President Putin on a path to becoming an international pariah, an isolation that he doesn't want. We know that sanctions are doing that.

But President Putin takes a lot of prestige in the fact that Russia is a big player on the world stage. And being a member of the U.N. Human Rights Council was part of that. So this is a blow. Will it affect the outcome of the war? That's not clear.

But just go back to taking India as an example, he might have also looked at some of his partners in the Gulf for why they abstained, rather than voting no. But if you take India, for example, Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister there, visited there just last week.At the same time, the British foreign secretary visited India, both obviously making their pitches: Support us. Support us.

And here is India deciding not to go with Russia. So these are going to be significant signals for President Putin. How much he takes those and moderates his behavior, I just sense that's unlikely at the moment. But he will see what's going on.

CABRERA: And, Nic, this is interesting, just in from an interview that the spokesperson for the Kremlin did, admitting to significant losses in Ukraine. It sounds like a little bit of a change of tune.

ROBERTSON: It is.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, is typically very cautious in the language that he uses. You always understand that he is -- that he hasn't been briefed on many things, because he's so sort of middle of the road in his answers and unspecific. So to admit that there were significant losses, to call it a huge tragedy, you know that this is coming from the heart of the Kremlin.

Now, he was asked if this was a humiliation for Russia, being forced to pull out of Kyiv, and he said that would be the wrong understanding. And he went on to say that this was a gesture of goodwill from Russia that it decided to pull back its troops from around Kyiv.

Now, we know that came at a time when there were peace talks going on between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul. And it sort of seemed at that moment as if Russia was making a gesture conducive to sort of helping those peace talks along. I don't think anyone was fooled by it.

[13:05:09]

There was always that sense that they were going to regroup and re- target the east and south of Ukraine. But if you listen to what Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, has said today, he has come out and very strongly and publicly criticized Ukraine, he says, for sort of changing what they said at those talks a week ago in Istanbul.

So, you get that sense that Russia did try to put something on the line in pulling out. So, when Peskov says that was a goodwill gesture, Russia now feels that that's been thrown back in their face by Ukraine. The world is outraged at what they have discovered Russia has done in that area around Kyiv.

But I do think we're getting a sense from the Kremlin that this hasn't gone their way, a wrong reading that it's a humiliation, but it's not a wrong reading at all to understand that what Russia wanted to gain out of this movement, at least at the negotiating table, they haven't got. They have lost. They're bitter about it.

And they have to account to their people. Let's see how the Russians tried to sell this huge tragedy, terrible loss, to their people, rather than the international community here.

CABRERA: Nic Robertson, thank you so much for your reporting and your analysis.

Joining us now is Angela Stent, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of "Putin's World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest."

Angela, thanks so much for joining us. You wrote this book on Putin. So, as we discussed, the U.N. vote today to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council, and as the Kremlin is now just admitting that Russia has suffered significant losses of its troops in Ukraine, how do you think Putin is taking this all in? ANGELA STENT, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR EURASIAN, RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN

STUDIES, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY: Well, I think Putin has been very angry that Russia didn't accomplish the goals it wanted, which was to take over Ukraine in 72 hours when it invaded on February 24.

So, he recognizes his armed forces have not performed the way that he thought they would and that the Ukrainians -- great miscalculation -- Ukrainians have fought back heroically, and their resistance is very fierce. So that was another major miscalculation.

So, what they're trying to do now is to regroup and focus on taking more land in the Donbass region in Southeastern Ukraine. And Putin is looking to May 9, Victory Day. There will be a parade on Red Square. And he would like to be able to say: We won. We accomplished -- mission accomplished, at least taking back the Donbass.

He may say that anyway, even if they haven't, but that's what they're focusing on now. And they're bringing more troops in from Syria, more mercenaries from the Wagner Group, more Russian troops that were in Georgia. So they're reinforcing the numbers of soldiers they have.

But they do have to admit to these losses because the body bags are coming back on Russian parents are starting to ask questions: What happened to my son?

CABRERA: Do you think Putin knows how brutal and inhumane the Russian troops have been to the Ukrainian people?

STENT: Well, I'm sure he does, because this is his playbook from the second Chechen war. When he became prime minister, he launched a war in Chechnya which was as brutal and went on, by the way, for years before the Russians prevailed there.

So I'm sure that he knows what's going on. And it's what Russian troops have supported also in Syria. So, this is this is not unusual for the way the Russian armed forces behave.

CABRERA: Yes, I guess the reason I ask is because of some of the reporting we have had about how isolated Putin is, that he hasn't always been told the truth by those around him. They have been yes- men. They don't want him to know necessarily any of the negative things that are happening out on the battlefield.

In the meantime, though, Angela, the U.S. does continue to increase sanctions, in response to the brutality, and other Western nations as well. But President Zelenskyy has said the sanctions still don't go far enough. And he's arguing, essentially, that the punishment doesn't fit the crime, given the level of inhumanity and the atrocities we have seen in Ukraine.

What do you think? What's going to stop Putin?

STENT: Well, unfortunately, I don't think very much is going to stop Putin at all.

I mean, President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians are calling for total energy sanctions. In other words, the Europeans should stop purchasing Russian hydrocarbons. And that would certainly have another major impact on the Russian economy.

I don't think any of these things at the moment are going to stop Putin. He has to be able to present this as a win. His own future is on the line now, and he knows that. So, we -- there should be more sanctions. And that will again affect the Russian economy. It'll affect the Russian people.

But I'm not sure that anything will deter him from the current course that Russia is on.

CABRERA: I mean, at this point, it looks like the ruble has somewhat whether the initial storm of the sanctions that were imposed originally and even the ones that have continued to come.

[13:10:08]

And I wonder, back home, as Putin controls the spread of information amongst his people, and if the ruble is doing better, if that's a measurement of success in the people's eyes, if that is helping to sort of prop up this war for him amongst the people back at home.

STENT: So, he's presenting all of these sanctions to his own people as saying, the West is imposing sanctions on us because they hate us, because they -- Putin has been saying this for years. The West is trying to destroy us, and they just put sanctions on us, so that will suffer.

And then he goes back to telling the people look, in World War II, we tightened our belts, and we prevailed, and we will do this again.

And this is what he's been telling the Russian people, blaming the West for this for imposing sanctions for no reason. And I think a lot of Russians, because they don't have access to real information, but only to the kind of fake news about this, they believe this.

And so they're blaming the West for this and not blaming their own government for the fact that sanctions were opposed.

CABRERA: Angela Stent, thank you so much. I appreciate your insights and your perspective.

STENT: Thank you.

CABRERA: We're on top of all the breaking news out of Ukraine, and this: We are on the brink of a historic moment for Capitol Hill and for this country.

Minutes from now, the Senate is expected to vote and confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. She will be the first black woman justice on the High Court and will fulfill one of President Biden's campaign promises.

We will bring this to you live.

You're in the CNN NEWSROOM. Don't go anywhere.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:16:05]

CABRERA: NATO officials say Russian forces are getting fresh supplies to launch a major offensive, as Moscow tightens its focus on Eastern and Southern Ukraine.

CNN's Ben Wedeman is in Mykolaiv there in southern Ukraine.

Ben, what is the latest on the ground there?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, here in Mykolaiv, what we have seen today and what we have seen for quite a few days is that there are regular missile strikes, multiple missile strikes on this city.

Earlier this week, there was a missile strike on a market that left nine people dead, 41 wounded. And we went there and we counted the individual impact points within about a 100-yard radius. There were 23. And, of course, every one of those impact points represents hundreds of pieces of shrapnel flying in every direction.

So, there is a fear here that perhaps Russian forces, which have been pushed to the outskirts of this city, could come back. And that fear was very obvious. We were in a parking lot where there were two buses being prepared to take people outside of the country. One was going to Poland. One was going to Moldova. The men, of course, between the ages of 18 and 60 have to stay behind, so it's mostly women and children.

And the women were very worried that they don't know when they will see their husbands, boyfriends, brothers again -- Ana.

CABRERA: And here we are on day 43 of this Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Ben Wedeman, thank you for the update. Please stay safe yourself.

And now to Capitol Hill, history happening this hour. In just moments, a woman, a black woman is expected to be confirmed to the nation's top court for the first time in its 233-year history. The Senate is about to vote on the president's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. And she has all the support of 50 members of the Senate's Democratic Caucus, as well as three Republicans.

Let's bring in CNN chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju, CNN senior political analyst and co-host of the "Politically Sound" podcast, Nia-Malika Henderson, and CNN's legal analyst and Supreme Court biographer Joan Biskupic.

Thank you all for being here.

Manu, set the stage for us today.

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, just in a matter of minutes, this is going to kick off.

Later this hour, all the senators will be in the chamber. They will be seated at their desk. There will be named, called out alphabetic -- by alphabetical order. Each one will say aye or no about whether they will support Ketanji Brown Jackson to serve on the United States Supreme Court.

And sitting at the desk of voting is something that doesn't happen very often, but in a very significant and historic votes, it does happen. And the vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris, in her role as the president of the Senate, is expected to be there presiding over this vote.

And we know how the vote will come down. She does have the votes to get confirmed, get confirmed on a narrow majority; 53-47 is the expected outcome here, because all 50 Senate Democrats have been clear they're voting to support her nomination to the highest court in the land.

And those three Republican senators have broken ranks, Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Romney was the only one of those three who did not support her nomination to the lower court, the D.C. Circuit, the post in which she currently serves, but was impressed by her performance, impressed by his back-and-forth with her, that he is now supporting her for this position.

The other Republican who voted for the lower court, Lindsey Graham, is opposed to her nomination now. So, we do expect this to move along closely along party lines. She will have the votes, but it still, Ana, will be one of the closest confirmation votes in U.S. history, a sign of how partisan and polarized this confirmation process has become.

CABRERA: You mentioned how Romney didn't vote for her earlier in her confirmation to her current post, but he wrote his time as he announced his support that she more than meets the standards of excellence and integrity, and called her a person of honor, a well- qualified jurist.

[13:20:08]

Nia-Malika, again, this is such a historic day. I want to get your thoughts on the significance of this moment.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, listen, for most of this country's history, black women were barred from positions of power. And it wasn't because they weren't smart enough. It wasn't because they were unqualified.

It was simply because they were black women. And you had people like Thurgood Marshall, people like Constance Baker Motley, who is a hero to Ketanji Brown Jackson, see the courts as a vehicle for expanding equality, expanding democracy.

And so you have today Ketanji Brown Jackson, who will certainly become an inspiration and a role model to boys and girls and people all across this country of all different races and all different backgrounds when she ascends to the highest court in the land.

She has talked about the importance of a court and a judiciary that looks like America. A court that looks like America, she has said, is a more credible court. People who are in the judiciary system, in the justice system can look in -- look at the judicial system and see themselves, and, in that way, it becomes a more elevated body, a more credible body.

So we will see this moment happen today when the Senate votes to confirm her. We have never seen this in this country's history. Now, I will say, we sort of think about diversity as happening in a way that hasn't been more recent, right?

I think about growing up as a kid. And when I was a kid, it was hard to find little black dolls. It was hard to find stories featuring black characters. And so now you have a situation where of this woman will be an inspiration and a sort of window and a mirror to so many young people around this country who can see themselves and see the ways their life can end up too.

They too can end up on the Supreme Court, just like Ketanji Brown Jackson.

CABRERA: And, Joan, Judge Jackson's confirmation is not going to change the ideological balance of the court. But how could it change the court in other ways?

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN SUPREME COURT ANALYST: Thanks, Ana.

And you're right. Superficially, we will still be at six conservatives in three liberals. But with a group of the size of just nine justices, you just can't discount how much of a change you will have inside the court around the private conference table with just one changed justice.

Here are some examples just based on her experience. She brings very distinct trial court experience. She brings unique experience as the first assistant federal public defender appointed to the court. She's 32 years younger than Stephen Breyer, so she will give a shot of youthfulness to the bench.

And Chief Justice John Roberts has talked about how, with every new justice, there's a fresh perspective that comes into the room, and it causes the justices to sort of just rethink some things. And I think you definitely will have that.

And then also, in terms of her special perspective as the first black woman on this court, remembering something that Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman in 1981, said about Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American justice who was appointed in 1967. She said that he used to tell stories around the private conference table that brought a real understanding to what he had been through, what many, many African-Americans had been through.

And it was a perspective that she appreciated. And I think you will you will get that at a minimum. But I think you will get much more just by virtue of being a shot of new blood.

CABRERA: OK, everybody, please stand by. We will continue this conversation when the vote happens, again, expected to happen in the bottom of this hour.

In the meantime, we have new reporting on Ukrainian refugees, and we're tracking a new war tactic, how Russia is using the people who are fleeing the violence as weapons.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:29:07]

CABRERA: No country has taken in more Ukrainian refugees than Poland. The U.N. says more than half of the 4.3 million people who have fled Ukraine crossed Polish borders, but experts say these victims are still being used as weapons by Vladimir Putin.

CNN's Kyung Lah is in Warsaw.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Poland is already waging a war with Russia. It's just not the kind you imagine.

Nearly 2.5 million Ukrainian refugees have crossed into the safety of Poland, as war ravages their country, packing Poland's arenas, lining up for government benefits, and sending their children to public schools.

These innocent faces are part of Vladimir Putin's war of mass migration.

LT. COL. ALEXANDER VINDMAN (RET.), FORMER DIRECTOR FOR EUROPEAN AFFAIRS, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL: It's a kind of a callousness that we just don't understand here.

LAH: Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman is known as a crucial witness in former President Trump's first impeachment proceedings.