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Missile Strikes Slam Lviv; Luhansk Governor Urges Evacuations; Mark Hertling is Interviewed about the War in Ukraine; Kyiv Suburb Hit by Rocket Attack; Volodymyr Omelyan is Interviewed about the War in Ukraine. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired April 18, 2022 - 09:00   ET

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

[08:59:44]

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN ANCHOR: Russia bombs western Ukraine leaving at least seven people dead, and several others are currently injured following missile strikes in Lviv.

Good morning, everybody, I'm Bianna Golodryga in New York.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Jim Sciutto reporting from the city of Lviv in western Ukraine.

Overnight, Russian forces striking at least three military installations and a tire repair shop here in Lviv. Those blasts, they woke us up this morning, shattering windows at homes and a school nearby. Officials say at least one child is among the injured.

Also new this morning, intense fighting in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine. Officials say the city of Kreminna has been lost now to Russian forces. They are urging civilians in the region to evacuate, saying there are now, quote, no safe places left in the region.

Plus, new video out of the southeast port city of Mariupol which has suffered so much in recent weeks. Ukrainian forces have rejected a Russian ultimatum to surrender or, quote, be eliminated. It's haunting.

Right now, Russian officials say they are closing entry and exit points to that city and the men remaining there will be, quote -- listen to this language -- filtered out. That's the state of the war in this country several weeks in.

We are covering the latest across Ukraine this morning. And this morning, as I said, we were woken up by air raid sirens. Russian forces launched cruise missiles on multiple targets here in Lviv. And this is what me and my team witnessed. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: This is the scene of one of the missile strikes this morning. You can see the emergency responders back here. But as we arrived, another air raid signal went off. The soldiers concerned that this will be a secondary strike on the same target. It's one of five missile strikes so far today in Lviv, and they're expecting more.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: They now believe it was a total of four strikes. Ukrainian soldiers ordered us behind a concrete barricade. They were concerned more missiles were on the way and they were nervous about us filming any soldiers or military facilities. One soldier, he cocked his rifle as he shouted at us to move back. That's a sign of the nervousness here. A major concern is that oftentimes you can't see the missile strikes incoming. So, we took shelter.

Those sirens there, a relief. The all-clear signals. This is what was left behind. The strikes this morning damaging cars, taking down trees. We saw a section of a railroad track thrown dozens of yards by the force of the explosion. As we mentioned, the latest casualty toll, seven dead, 11 wounded.

Let's begin this morning with CNN international correspondent Matt Rivers. He is also here with me in Lviv.

Matt, I went to one of the locations of the strike. You went to another one hit here. Tell us what you saw.

MATT RIVERS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, basically, I mean you and I left the hotel and we kind of followed different smoke trails, right?

SCIUTTO: Yes.

RIVERS: And so the smoke that we followed led us to that auto repair shop, Jim, where it sat right along a key railroad track leading from Lviv's train station, ultimately going all the way to Kyiv.

We're not sure exactly why this auto repair shop was targeted. It wasn't right next to any military installations. We saw an impact crater there that was easily five meters across. And it, obviously, destroyed completely the two buildings that made up the pretty sizable auto repair facility.

We know at that facility, according to the owner, who we did manage to speak to, four of the employees at that facility were killed according to the owner, and several other people there were taken to the hospital.

But when you're looking at why certain places were targeted over others, you know, we were looking around there and there was no obvious sign, Jim, that this was some sort of military facility. So it begs the question, well, why was it hit with a Russian strike? And as we have seen time and time and time again throughout this war, civilian facilities, civilian areas have been targeted directly by the Russians before. We don't know that that's what happened here, but the Ukrainians say, overall, at least seven people killed, 11 people injured, three of them critical, including someone who was at that auto repair facility.

And just across the street from that place, Jim, we spoke to a woman who was inside her apartment and she was washing her face in her bathroom she said when the window was blown out. And she said that she was incredibly scared and is now considering moving to Poland. This is the kind of decision that so many people around Ukraine are being forced to make and have been forced to make since this war began.

SCIUTTO: Yes, millions of them. In fact, you know, we use the term terror, terrorizing the people of Ukraine. And it's something that we see every day.

Matt Rivers, thanks so much.

This morning, in the east, the head of the Luhansk military administration is urging civilians there to evacuate. This official says there are, quote, no safe places left in the region. No safe places.

[09:05:00]

CNN's senior international correspondent Ben Wedeman, he's in Kramatorsk, in eastern Ukraine, the site of that horrible attack on a train station, you'll remember, some weeks ago.

Ben, we are hearing Kreminna has now fallen to Russian forces. And this is something we should be aware of. Despite Russia's setbacks in the north around Kyiv, they're making progress in the east.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we understand that at 5:00 a.m. local time, that's just 11 hours ago, Russian forces were able to take control of the town of Kreminna, which is just to the east of here. This was after intense street fighting. The local authorities were saying it is now impossible for civilians to evacuate because of the fighting. Nonetheless, one car with five people in it tried to escape. They came under fire. Four people were killed, one woman was injured, but apparently because of the intensity of the fighting, she, the latest we heard, is still stuck in that car because no one can reach her.

And what we're hearing is that along the entire front line here in the Donbas region, Luhansk and Donetsk, there has been intense artillery fire on the front lines. Here in Kramatorsk overnight there was a cruise missile strike. We went there. No one was injured in this case. There was a lot of sort of damage to the surrounding buildings. But a very large crater. We believe it is a caliber cruise -- Russian cruise missile.

And, of course, now we're also keeping a close eye on the situation in the port city of Mariupol. There yesterday at 1:00 p.m. local time, the Russians had given a deadline for Ukrainian forces to surrender. They refused. The Russians are saying that they are going to seal off this city and take all men and they will be forced either to join the army or clear up rubble. And those who are considered suspicious will end up in what's called filtration camps. About 31,000 people from that city are already in these filtration camps where, obviously, they're going to be screened for anybody with any affiliation with the military, the police or the local administration.

Jim.

SCIUTTO: Yes, that word "filtration" sounds so technical. It's, in fact, a term that's harrowing in those parts of the counted. What happens to the people who have filtered? Many have disappeared.

Ben Wedeman, good to have you there.

GOLODRYGA: Well, in an exclusive interview on CNN, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stressed the importance of defending territory in eastern Ukraine, saying Ukrainian forces will stand their ground in the Donbas region and that the battle there could influence the course of the whole war.

Take a listen.

(BC)

PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINE (through translator): Because I don't trust the Russian military and Russian leadership. That is why we understand that the fact that we fought them off and they left and they were running away from Kyiv, from the north, from Chernihiv, and from that direction, it doesn't mean if they're able to capture Donbas they won't come further towards Kyiv.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Joining us now to discuss, retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling. He, of course, commanded the U.S. Army forces in Europe.

General, always good to have you on.

First, I wonder if you could help explain to folks at home the current status of this war, because Ukrainians held out around the capital Kyiv. Russians were forced to withdraw, but they withdrew the bulk of those forces to the east to focus their attention there and they've been making progress. They've been picking up cities. Mariupol looks on the verge perhaps of collapse, though people are still fighting.

Is Russia gaining ground in the east? Is it going too far to say they're beginning to win in the east?

LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: It is going too far to say they're beginning to win, Jim. They are certainly making progress in some areas.

As long as you mentioned Mariupol, we can start there. I'm looking at this from the standpoint of a commander on both sides. Mariupol is considered in military terminology a decisive point. If you zoom in on the map that you have right now, you know, we see it as a city as part of Ukraine. But if you really zoom into that city, what you find is it has roads -- there you go -- it has roads going in every single direction. That road to the east goes to Rasafandan (ph) inside of Russia (ph). The roads to the north and northeast go to Luhansk and Donetsk. The roads to the northwest go to Zaporizhzhia. And the roads to the south go down to the port city of Baranyanks (ph). This is considered a critical logistics hub. It not only has roads, but it also has railroads and it has ports.

As I mentioned to you before, Jim, this is -- the next phase of the war is going to be a fight for logistics on both sides.

[09:10:07]

So, Mariupol is a critically important city in the eastern region because that's the one they've all been fighting -- both sides have been fighting on, one to control the roads, the other to prevent the control of the roads.

When you go to the north, as Ben Wedeman just talked about, Kramatorsk is an important city, too. The Russians have been fighting for that in the eastern Donbas, trying to surround the forces that are -- the Ukrainian forces that are fighting in Donetsk and Luhansk. But, having said that, they have again -- the Russians have again extended their lines of communication, their supply lines from the north. And there are reports overnight that Ukrainian forces have counterattacked in the city of Izium, which we've talked about so many times before, and out of the east from Kharkiv.

So, the fight in the north of this region continues unabated. It's critically important. The Ukrainians are attempting to surround the Russian forces who are attempting to surround them in Donetsk. But the Ukrainians are doing it by attacking the very unstable supply lines of the Russians. If you go to the west, where you are, the attacks that came in this morning, again, follow the roads out of the city of Lviv. It goes not only to Poland, but south to Slovakia.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

GOLODRYGA: Yes.

HERTLING: The Russians believe that the railroads coming in from those two cities, and you just mentioned that the strike was near a railroad, of course it was because they're attempting to interdict the supply lines of NATO coming in with the much-needed equipment the Ukrainians have (ph).

So, again, this is not only a fight of force against force, counterattack against counterattack, but this is going to continue to be a fight in the next few weeks against logistics training (ph) because both sides realize if they can cut the other side's logistics, they can potentially win.

GOLODRYGA: And as both sides prepare for tougher combat in the weeks ahead, are you satisfied with the scale of weapons now being shipped from the U.S. and western allies and the speed with which they can get to the Ukrainians? HERTLING: It's going to be the tough part, Bianna. That is going to be

the thousand-dollar question, can they get the equipment that had been promised to the front-line troops? Remember, we talked about the size of Ukraine. From the Polish border to the eastern front is about 700 miles. So you're -- even though it looks like a small map, that's a huge piece of territory. You not only have to get it from point to point, but you have to spread it across the front line of the battlefield. And that eastern area, where the main fighting is going to occur from north to south, is about 250 miles. So, you know, you're talking about the physics and the math of combat in this case.

SCIUTTO: Yes, no question.

HERTLING: Can Russia resupply their forces? They have shown failure in their resupply. Can NATO and Ukraine get resupplies that long distance in order to blunt the Russian offense? I believe they can.

SCIUTTO: Yes, it's remarkable, the difference there, right, Russia having trouble still to this date and Ukrainians and U.S. and NATO still able to keep those supply lines open.

Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, thanks so much.

HERTLING: Thank you, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Still to come this hour, Russian missiles strike another suburb of the capital Kyiv. What we are hearing from the mayor of Kyiv. And questions about the long road to recovery if and when this war ends.

GOLODRYGA: Plus, while the Ukrainian president pleads with western allies to embargo Russian oil, we speak with a guest on the power of Russian energy and why an embargo could work to stop the war.

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[09:18:12]

SCIUTTO: Despite shifting the bulk of its military forces to the south and the east, Russia continues to strike pockets of the Kyiv region. On Sunday, Russian rockets struck the town of Brovary. Officials say the attacks damaged infrastructure, potentially impacting power and water supply, something that Russia has attacked consistently around many cities in this country.

CNN's Phil Black joins us now from Kyiv.

Phil, Russian forces striking targets around the capital there over the past three days. Tell us what you're seeing and what do Ukrainian officials believe this is about? Is it just keeping up pressure on the capital?

PHIL BLACK, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jim, so this most recent strike, as you touched on, to the east of the capital, in an area that had already suffered enormously in the fighting when the Russian forces were still in this area and where officials say they are still suffering because of what those Russian forces have left behind. They say it has been extensively mined.

But, yes, that was the third strike in as many days. And so much as this represents a trend, what they -- these targets appear to have in common is that they're all infrastructure or support sites and they're all largely on the outskirts of the capital.

Now, it was only last week that Russia warned, and it did so again shortly after one of these recent strikes that it would continue to strike Kyiv if it believed that Ukraine was planning attacks on the territory of the Russian federation. But one of these sites that was attacked recently, according to Russia, was a facility that builds and maintains missiles, surface-to-air missiles, but also anti-ship missiles. And so that raised the possible theory that that attack could have been retaliation for the sinking of the Moskva, the Russian missile cruiser, the flagship of the Black Sea fleet that went down last week because Ukraine says it fired two anti-ship missiles at it.

[09:20:03]

Russia still hasn't acknowledged the missiles, has only talked about a fire on board. So that is one potential theory.

But other than theories, a few words of possible motivation from the Russian military in these few basic facts in common. It is still too early to say whether or not this does represent a new, prolonged campaign of harassment against the capital or whether these are simply individual instances against specific targets that happen to be in close proximity to Kyiv, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Phil Black, in Kyiv, thanks so much.

Well, Russian attacks have caused massive destruction across Ukraine, leaving incredible challenges when the war finally ends, hopefully, when Ukrainians then return to rebuild.

Joining me now is Volodymyr Omelyan. He's the former Ukrainian minister of infrastructure.

Vladimir, thank you for joining us this morning.

VOLODYMYR OMELYAN, MEMBER OF UKRAINE'S TERRITORIAL DEFENSE FORCES: Good morning, Jim. The pleasure is mine.

SCIUTTO: There's a quality of this war that we've seen from the beginning in that Russia has deliberately struck, not just military targets and military forces but civil targets, apartment buildings, roads and so on, as well as the civilians themselves.

In your view, is part of the Russian military plan not just to take land and cities, but to destroy them, to cripple this country?

OMELYAN: Jim, I believe that definitely Putin's dream was to restore or to renew Soviet or Russian empire and definitely to defeat NATO and west. But his nightmare was the success of Ukraine. Because even Russian soldiers are taking Ukraine and occupying our villages, or cities, they are shocked that Ukrainians live more wealthy than Russians. And definitely Ukraine should become west for the eastern countries, for Russia specifically. And if we do so, maybe it will be the last thing in Russian test as empire that Ukraine has chosen democracy, Ukraine is supported by west and here is the result, Ukraine is a great country.

SCIUTTO: You have said, and by the way, we should note we're speaking about the future here because, as you know, the war rages on. But at some point when the fighting stops, you've said that rebuilding Ukraine will require rebuilding from ground zero, in effect, in many places starting over.

How long will this country and the people of this country need to wait to see that?

OMELYAN: Definitely wearing armors and having machine guns in our hands is very -- very difficult to dream, but we should dream about that.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

OMELYAN: What will come next? In my belief, it should be split in two phases. Phase one to make a temporary housing and temporary working places for Ukrainians, which were displaced because of war. And, secondly, that together with the west, we should rebuild our cities and villages which are totally destroyed, speaking mainly about Mariupol, Kharkiv and many other cities.

And it's a big challenge, which could last for another five or ten years. But it's also a great opportunity for many big countries to come to Ukrainian market and together with Ukrainians making better Europe (ph).

I think it's quite possible, especially if we always remember that Russians should pay for them.

SCIUTTO: I was going to ask you about that, who pays. You have heard from western leaders promises for, after the war, to help with Ukraine's reconstruction. But you have made the argument that all or the bulk of it should come from Russia. How would that -- how would that be and what dollar figures are we talking about?

OMELYAN: You know, Biden, at the beginning of his start as a president, promised $1 trillion for U.S. infrastructure. And I think it's fair that those monies should be spent for U.S. And another trillion from Russian operations should be spent for Ukraine. We can do that together with U.S. companies and EU companies to rebuild Ukraine and make it like a brand-new Ukraine. Because it's also big open question, what can Ukraine should become after this great rebuild? Is it the same old Soviet-type Ukraine or brand new one with new industries, especially defense industry. We have a great experience right now thanks to the war. And with IT and AI industry, agriculture, but brand new one as well.

SCIUTTO: Well, it is refreshing to imagine that future. And I suppose we just have to hope we can get to that point more quickly.

[09:25:00]

Volodymyr Omelyan, thanks so much for joining us.

OMELYAN: Thank you. Thank you. (INAUDIBLE).

SCIUTTO: Bianna.

GOLODRYGA: It's fascinating to hear him talk about rebuilding the country and using it as inspiration just two months into this devastating war.

Well, still ahead, a massive manhunt is underway for multiple gunmen in Pittsburgh. It's just one of several shootings in a weekend of violence across the country.

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