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U.S. Defense Official: Russia Has Added Forces in East, South Ukraine; Ukraine: Russian Missiles Hit Lviv, Killing 7 People; Pentagon: Will Train Ukrainians on Howitzers Outside of Ukraine. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired April 18, 2022 - 15:00   ET

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CAMEROTA: And it is the top of the hour on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Alisyn Camerota.

BLACKWELL: I'm Victor Blackwell. It's good to be with you.

Ukrainian defense officials now believe Russia has completed the regrouping of its troops to launch an offensive in the eastern part of the country. According to a U.S. defense official, Russia has added 11 battalion tactical groups to their forces in the Eastern Ukraine and Southern Ukraine since the start of the last couple of days.

Now, the U.S. believes that Russia is learning from their failures in northern Ukraine and will apply those lessons to the next attacks.

In western part of the country, we're now seeing new video of one of those Russian missiles that hit Lviv.

CAMEROTA: These strikes caused the first wartime deaths inside Lviv since the invasion started nearly two months ago. The attack overnight killed at least 7 people. It injured several others, including a child.

Now, in the South, Ukraine is still trying to hold onto that port city of Mariupol amid intense shelling. Ukraine rejected a Russian deadline to surrender.

BLACKWELL: Let's begin our coverage with CNN's Ed Lavandera. He is in the capital city of Kyiv.

So, Lviv on the western part of the country, Russia targeted the city again today. What do we know about those -- those attacks?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Well, four different missile strikes, and as you mentioned, this is a city that has really escape any kind of serious warfare in the last two months. It's been a place that has served as a safe haven for many Ukrainians who have not fled the country but moved to other safer areas. And Lviv was considered one of those areas.

So, these missile strikes causing the first deaths that we have seen in this war there in that city. Seven people killed so far, we've learned, and 11 others injured. Three of the missile strikes hit warehouses there. A fourth missile strike hit a tire repair shop, also damaged residential buildings that were in the surrounding areas. From what we've been able to gather so far, it doesn't appear to be any kind of strategic military target, but once again, part of this campaign that we're seeing over and over again in various parts of Ukraine where rockets and missiles are launched into areas that really just basically seem like residential places trying to inflict panic and fear among civilian populations wherever those missiles and rockets land.

CAMEROTA: Ed, let's talk about what's happening in Mariupol, because a senior defense official says the control of that city now comes down to Ukrainian forces holding out against about a dozen Russian battalion tactical groups. How can Ukrainian fighters do that?

LAVANDERA: Yeah, the news from Mariupol continues to get more grim by the day. There is a steel plant where we're told a deputy city official there says that about a thousands people are holed up in this steel plant holding on for as long as they can. To complicate matters even worse today, Victor and Alisyn, Russians were not allowing -- they closed off the city. No one allowed in or out.

And there's also talk of creating filtration points for the men left in that city. And so, this is all indications we're kind of getting as you read into the news that continues to emerge out of there, it feels like it's just -- the last moments of being able to hold on in that city.

BLACKWELL: Yeah. Awful reports coming out of there.

Ed Lavandera in Kyiv for us, thank you.

Let's go now to Pentagon. Spokesman John Kirby is taking the questions.

JOHN KIRBY, PENTAGON PRESS SECRETARY: -- in the Donbas going forward, that's artillery, rotary, aviation, helicopter support, command and control enablers. And we do believe that they have reinforced the number of battalion tactical groups in the east and the south of Ukraine.

We can't say specifically where all these battalions, these tactical groups are going but we have seen over the last few days they've added now more than 10 to what they already had there in that part of the country.

Separate and distinct from that, Bob, we have continued to see the concentration of their air strikes and artillery in the Donbas and in the south, particularly around and in Mariupol.

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That's where the preponderance of their strike activity has gone, and the fighting in Mariupol as you guys have all seen continues. The Ukrainians are still resisting. The city has not fallen to the Russians, but they continue to pound it from the air and through long range fires.

So, it's been just over the last several days, you can see -- you can continue to see the Russians are doing what we call shaping. They are trying to set the conditions for more aggressive, more overt and larger ground ma maneuvers in the Donbas. But, again, I would remind, this is an area of the country that has seen fighting over the last eight years.

This is a terrain that both sides understand and know and the Ukrainians, it's not like they have only left the Donbas and racing to get there in the last few days. They have been there throughout there invasion and throughout the last eight years and they continue to fight very, very strongly for places in the Donbas. And we have seen indications in the last few days that the Ukrainians have not only defended bravely but secure certain villages and towns in the Donbas.

REPORTER: I have a question about Ukraine too, U.S. troops training Ukrainians on the howitzers and radar systems. We've heard that that train could start this week. I'm wondering if there's any details like, you know, how many U.S. troops were involved. Where this is going to happen? Some essential details like that or is this going to be held closely by the Pentagon.

KIRBY: I think we're going to -- so let me back up. It is true that we believe we'll be able to begin a process training Ukrainian armed forces on howitzers. That will be shortly heading over. That training will occur outside of Ukraine. It will be more of train the trainers kind of environment. So, it will be a small number of Ukrainians that will be trained on the howitzers and then they'll be reintroduced back into their country to train their colleagues.

I'm not going to get into the locations. It will be outside of Ukraine. I'm going to refrain right now from talking about who's going to be doing the training and exactly on what timeline. I think as we get closer to things, we may be able to talk a bit more about it, but there is a plan now that we're beginning to execute. We think that training can happen in next several days.

Important to remember, while this particular system is new to the Ukrainians, they don't use American howitzers in artillery, they understand how to use artillery. And it won't -- we don't believe it will take very long, or required detailed training to get them off the speed on American howitzers, an artillery piece. So, I've been told it's not unlike other artillery pieces, the basic outline is not the same.

We have to get them up to speed on the particulars of our howitzers. These are 155 howitzers. The Ukrainians typically use 152. It's a difficult caliber, but it doesn't mean that its' going to be overly laborious to get them up to speed on this. And I think, again, we'll be able to get this training done, at least the first round of it in the next several days.

REPORTER: If I can just follow up. The battlefield is very fluid with Mariupol and what's happening in Donbas. Is it possible at this point in time to talk about how this training and this equipment like the howitzers and the radar could influence the battle or what capabilities would give Ukrainians --

KIRBY: The artillery is a specific item that the Ukrainians asked for because of the fighting that they expect is going to occur in the Donbas. Again, I want to remind, there's been fighting there for eight years. There's fighting there today.

But the terrain lends itself to the use of artillery, to long range files as we call it. And we know the Russians believe the same thing because we're seeing them move artillery into the Donbas as well. So, we want to give them every bit of advantage that we can.

They ask for artillery support and we answered that with this recent drawdown package that was just authorized on the 13th. So, that was Wednesday of last week. It's 18, 40 rounds of artillery that will go with the howitzers. And, look, we'll continue to talk with them. There will be conversation and there may be additional security assistance that comes on top of what we just announced.

You didn't ask this but I thin That authorization from the president was on the 13th.

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The execute order was on the 14th. And on the 15th, two days later, the first shipment started arriving in the theater of stuff from that $800 million drawdown package.

Again, I'm not going to get into the inventory list and exactly what was on that first shipment, but that's unprecedented speed. Forty- eight hours after authorization from the president, first plane was on its way. And there have been subsequent shipments since then, almost half a dozen, as you and I speak here today, have already arrived in the region. So --

REPORTER: I have two questions. First, the Russians announced that they had bombed weapons storage facility where (INAUDIBLE) weapons warehouse. Can you confirm that? KIRBY: No, I know that they struck Lviv, they hit targets in Lviv. And I think they also struck -- and Kyiv over the last couple of days. We don't have a clear sense of battle damage assessment about what they were targeting and what they hit. At this time, we don't have any indication that western aid was targeted and/or hit or destroyed.

But again, we're still working our way through the BDA as you will, battle damage assessment. I don't have more for you than that.

REPORTER: To follow up on Bob's question. You said last week that the Russians still had -- they were not ready to launch their new battle. That they had logistic problems.

Do you assess that they improved their logistic preparation now and they could be able to launch?

KIRBY: Too soon to tell, Sophie. These are -- these appear to be chronic difficulties that the Russian military had in terms of logistic, sustain and control, unit cohesion, operational maneuver, integration of air to ground. All problems that they still suffer from.

So, it remains to be seen whether they have, quote, fix this problems and are now ready to execute in a more efficient way in the Donbas. Our assessment is they are still struggling with a lot of these problems.

Also our assessment is that part of the reason we're talk about shaping operations in the Donbas is because the Russians are trying to learn from their mistakes. So, in the last few days we have seen them move in, as I said, command and control enablers, aviation support, largely helicopters. Moving in artillery units ahead of what would be massive ground movement by troops or larger ground movements by troops.

So, it appears if they are trying to learn from those mistakes, but again, it remains to be seen whether they if I canned their problems. We still assess that on many levels and in many ways, they still haven't figured out logistics and sustainment and they still have command and control problems. But again, it remains to be seen -- David.

REPORTER: You say that the Russians a conducting shaping operations. The secretary of the Ukrainians on television in Ukraine this morning saying that the active phase of the offensive has began from Kharkiv down to Donetsk. Do you agree with that?

KIRBY: I'm certainly in no position to dispute what the Ukrainians are seeing on the ground, David. They're there.

I've also said and said repeatedly that there have been active operations going on in the Donbas since the beginning of this invasion. In fact, for the last eight years. We absolutely have seen and we have acknowledged that we have seen offensive and defensive operations by both the Russians and the Ukrainians in the last several weeks. There's no question. I've said a few minutes ago we have seen the Ukrainians move against

Russian positions and we believe they have been able to resecure some of those towns and villages in the Donbas.

So, we're not disputing that there's not combat going on in the Donbas. What we're saying is we're seeing -- we still consider what we're seeing to be a piece of shaping operations, that they are that countries are continue to set the conditions for what they believe will be eventual success on the ground by using -- by putting in more forces, putting in more enablers, putting in more command and control capabilities for operations yet to come.

REPORTER: Do you believe the Russian offensive in the east has begun?

KIRBY: We believe the Russians are shaping and setting the conditions for future offensive operations. We also see, David, that there is active combat going on right now in the Donbas, as there has been for the last several weeks.

Yes?

REPORTER: There's been some reports that Russians and Ukrainians have been using cluster munitions. Is that something you have seen or can confirm?

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KIRBY: We are not in the position to independently verify then use of cluster munitions. I mean, we have seen the video, of course, the same video that I'm sure you've seen and looked at. But without being on the ground, it's difficult for to say definitively and independently that we can confirm that. Certainly not refuting the images or what others are saying about it. OK?

Daniel (ph), I'll come back to you in a second.

Go ahead.

REPORTER: Mike Brest, "The Washington Examiner".

Two questions. First, has any U.S. aid not gotten to where it's supposed to go? And, secondly, can we get an update on Russia's military capability?

KIRBY: That second one is a big one, Mike.

So, on the first one, just to remind, what we're doing is helping coordinate the shipment of not only U.S. security assistance but security assistance provided by many other nation, more than 30. Getting it into Ukrainian hands. Getting it into Ukraine using ground methods. And that's as far as I'm going to go in terms of the details on that and we're confident that material continues to get into Ukraine.

Once it gets into Ukrainian hands, it's up to them to decide where it goes. What unit gets it, where it's stored, if it's stored at all temporarily. That is to the Ukrainians to decide, not the United States. We're not putting strings on this stuff and telling them that they have to move this by a certain date, or get it to a certain unit, that we would not step on their toes in that regard.

Our job, get it into the region, get it into Ukraine and then the Ukrainians use it in the field.

As for Russian military capability, that's a very big question. So, I'll do the best I can. I mean, we still assess that in general, they have the vast majority of their assembled combat power available to them. That they -- from what they have assembled over the over the course of the fall, and in the early winter months or weeks, they still have a lot of the amassed combat power available to them.

They have suffered losses. They have suffered casualties. They have lost platforms and systems whether it's aircraft or tanks or armored personnel careers. You've seen the video yourself. You've seen these destroyed Russian platforms on the side of the road. But they still have quite a bit of capability left to them.

But they are concentrating that in a smaller area in the Donbas but also the south. And so, they are trying, as I answered earlier. They are trying to overcome some of their logistics and sustainment. They won't have to as far to go in the Donbas to resupply, refuel their forces in the Donbas. They have a long border with that part of Ukraine.

And they are certainly adding combat capability in that part of Ukraine. It's smaller piece of ground than what they have been trying to operate in over the last three to four weeks. They still have a lot of combat power to use there.

It's also, terrain they are comfortable with. They have been fighting over the Donbas area now for eight years. Their commanders, troop, there's a familiarity with the cities and the towns and the terrain that they didn't necessarily have when they were trying to come at Kyiv from the north and Chernihiv from the north and then up, you know, from Crimea into the south.

So, we would expect that they're going to try again to their own familiarity with the terrain and the mistakes they made, they're going to try and overcome that. OK?

REPORTER: Has there any change -- any big fluctuation within the last week or so, or last short of period of time? I know that senior defense official has put the estimation around 80 percent to 85 percent in the past couple of weeks. Is that around the same now?

KIRBY: You mean of the amount of combat power they still have available?

REPORTER: Yeah.

KIRBY: Look, I don't want to get into percentages and specific data here on their combat power from the podium. I would just say we still believe they have the vast majority of their combat power available to them. Even with the losses. They had taken times, months to assemble, combined arms capability outside of Ukraine, aviation, armor, artillery, infantry, special operations, airborne.

They assembled a lot and they still have a majority of that available to them even with the losses they sustained in the last few weeks. Yeah. Go ahead.

REPORTER: Just following up what Mr. Brest was getting at.

Could you update us a bit, if you have any visibility into the mix of troops available? Are they calling on Special Forces that they used in Syria? Are they calling up new recruits? What the mix is there in terms of --

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KIRBY: We don't have a perfect -- we don't have a perfect sense of their manpower. We know they have tried to recruit foreign fighters out of Syria. They claim they were going to get 16,000. We don't have a number to tell you that they got that many, but we know they have tried to recruit foreign fighters out of Syria.

We know -- we seen indications that they have tried to reinforce their troop levels from other parts of Russia as well as countries outside of Russia and outside of Ukraine. We know that they are refitting and resupplying and trying to put back into the fight some battalion tactical groups in the north that they have evacuated now or retreated out of Ukraine into Belarus and into Russia.

We still believe there's a not insignificant number of battalion tactical groups that they are trying to refit to come back in. We know that just in the last few days they have added to their battalion tactical groups in the east and south. We don't know where the units are or when they were reintroduced. We know they have added to their levels in the east and the south.

CAMEROTA: OK. We have been listening to the press secretary for the Pentagon, John Kirby. We'll keep an ear out for anymore news he makes. But he did give us a lot of information I think just in that press conference where we'll just to recap what he just said, which is they assess that Russia still has the vast majority of their combat power available to them, even with the losses that we've been reporting and the losses that we've seen over these past weeks.

BLACKWELL: Yeah, that the Russians are -- what he is calling shaping. Putting the resources, these battalion tactical groups, in place for when this full, larger assault comes on the East and in southern part of the country.

CAMEROTA: Let's bring in CNN Pentagon correspondent Oren Liebermann. Also with us is CNN military analyst, Colonel Cedric Leighton.

OK. So, Oren, the U.S. has -- and John Kirby was talking about it -- sent these four flights with additional security assistance to Ukraine, another I believe is set to arrive in the next 24 hours. It was interesting he talked about how they may not know how to operate all this equipment. So, they will have to be trained outside of Ukraine, the Ukrainian fighters. And it will be a train-the-trainers type situation.

Can you just clarify what he means there?

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Of course. This is something the Pentagon has wrestled with. As the Biden administration has gotten to the point where it is ready to send in bigger and heavier equipment, one of the key challenges how do you make sure you create forces that know how to use this stuff? Know how to use more complex equipment that they might not have used before?

Up until now, largely, it was equipment they already had or small arms ammunition or something they already knew how to use. Now these are U.S. howitzers and other equipment that they haven't used before. So, part of the challenge is not only getting it in and Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby made clear that that would be a priority, getting in the equipment and the arms they would need for the coming fight in southeast Ukraine.

But how to train Ukrainian forces on how to use it. And he said this would start and perhaps around it would even conclude in the coming days. They bring a few forces out of Ukraine. Train a few forces.

He said although they've never used U.S. howitzers, they've used this sort of equipment, this sort of artillery before. So, it's just a familiarity with this specific type or this specific make of this equipment. It shouldn't take all that long. Then that small number of forces will go back in and train other Ukrainian forces.

That's the idea here. It's part of the plan that went with the latest package and latest authorization from the Biden administration. And that in the coming days now as those howitzers begin move in, that becomes the focus, to make sure the Ukrainians know how to use them and can put them to effect as quickly as possible for the coming fight in Donbas.

BLACKWELL: And understandable that Kirby did not say exactly where this training would happen or specifically who would do it for the obvious security reasons.

Oren Liebermann for us at the Pentagon, thank you.

Let's go now to Colonel Cedric Leighton.

CAMEROTA: So, Colonel, let's talk about -- if you want to talk about anything that Kirby just mentioned there, was there anybody that jumped out at you first?

CEDRIC LEIGHTON, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, Alisyn, yeah, there are a few things and, you know, Oren hit on one of them, the train the trainer part where they're going to be training somewhere outside of Ukraine. These Ukrainians who will then train their own forces, that's going to be a significant thing.

But I think what also is important to note is that there are supposedly about ten extra battalion tactical groups that we're adding this to the mix here. If we remember, Alisyn and Victor, about the number of forces that we had here before, we think about a thousand or so troops per battalion tactical groups. That's an extra 10,000. They had about 190,000 going into this on the 24th of February. They lost maybe 24 percent of that.

So, they're adding to -- they haven't quite replenished everything that they lost. But they are adding to the mix they had.

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And that is one thing that they thought was very interesting from what Admiral Kirby said this afternoon.

BLACKWELL: Does the arrival of these -- our reporting is it's 11 battalion tactical groups. Does that give us any timing on when this full assault could start in the shaping? Do these groups come in right at the end, right at the beginning? What should we expect when this assault could start?

So, normally, Victor, what -- let's go to the Donbas map to give an idea because this is the theater of operations. So, if those 11 groups come in, what they would be doing is they would be there probably at the beginning of this. They are fresh troops, supposedly or reconstituted from some of the remnants of units that were affected by significant losses around Kyiv.

So, what they would do is they would be coming down perhaps this way into the area.

We already know that at Kreminna, they are coming through here. We already know they are doing this. They will probably go along and access like this, probably toward Kramatorsk. That could mean they are joining up with separatist forces that are here.

So, these guys Mr. Probably be fairly fresh to fight or will have recuperated enough from what they had been doing earlier in the invasion, if they are receipt veterans of the invasion. Then they will come -- bring these forces together, bring them together and then move them down this way to capture a portion of the Donbas that the Ukrainians currently occupy.

CAMEROTA: Colonel, while you're in that region, let's talk about what's happening in Mariupol. It's just in sea of red, meaning surrounded by Russian forces. Ukrainian fighters, we're told, are fighting valiantly there. But how are they going to get the weapons and equipment that they need to stave off the Russians when they are that far east there?

LEIGHTON: Well, Alisyn, unfortunately, I'm going to have to say that they're not going to be getting any weapons like that. The only forces that are going to be getting weapons are those that are in places like here, that are facing the Russians in this area. The people, the soldiers and marines in Mariupol -- they are in essence out of luck because the Russians have blockaded the sea access routes to Mariupol. So, it's no longer a functioning port from a military perspective. And in addition to that, all of this territory here is Russian or

separatist forces occupied. So, because of that, they are truly surrounded in several different aspects here from the land and the sea. If they were going to do something from the air, that would be a stretch very far for the Ukrainians to do because they really don't have the assets to do air drops, to resupply forces in very tight area within Mariupol itself.

BLACKWELL: Colonel, let me ask you about the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, and you talked about the Russians kind of cutting off the sea access there. There's a senior U.S. defense official who says the Russians have the capabilities to launch an amphibious assault on Mariupol.

Do the Ukrainians have the resources there to launch a type of attack on those sea assets that they launched on to Moskva a week? I mean, could they take out those ships.

LEIGHTON: So, they would have to work very carefully to do something like that, Victor, and the short answer is probably not and the reason I say that, you know, when they went after the Moskva, the Moskva was about here, near Snake Island. So, they had access to places where they could fire from fairly easily and do what they needed to do to sink that ship.

There's no place within easy range that would make that possible. That's why it would be very difficult for them to do something against the sea at this point.

BLACKWELL: All right. Colonel Cedric Leighton, thank you.

President Zelenskyy officially submitted key document moving Ukraine closer to EU membership. Ahead, what that could mean for their fight against Russia.

BLACKWELL: And Pittsburgh's public schools are on a modified lockdown today. Police are searching for the suspects behind the house party mass shooting there over the weekend. We have the latest for you, next.

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