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Hundreds Sheltering in Mariupol Steelworks; U.S. Planning Another Massive Military Aid Package; Morgues Around Kyiv Overwhelmed After Russian Retreat; European Council President Arrives in Kyiv; Lavrov: Another Stage of This Operation is Beginning. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired April 20, 2022 - 04:00   ET

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

[04:00:00]

MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and a warm welcome to our viewers joining us in the United States and all around the world. I'm Max Foster in London. We're following breaking news coverage of Russia's war on Ukraine. Just ahead --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): Forever the Russian army will be written in history as the most barbaric and inhumane army in the world.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're not willing to accept what some critics say is the inevitability of it, fine.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Ukrainians continue to fight over Mariupol.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Another $800 million in security, military assistance for Ukraine.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We do need to be prepared. Unfortunately, because Putin has lost his mind completely.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

FOSTER: It's Wednesday, April 20th. 9 a.m. here in London. 11 a.m. in Mariupol, Ukraine. Where a Deputy Prime Minister says Kyiv has reached a preliminary agreement with Russia to evacuate women, children and the elderly. That corridor is set to open about three hours from now. The Russian Defense Ministry has also offered an apparent cease-fire for the last remaining Ukrainian troops in Mariupol. But they've said the proposal is nothing more than a demand for their surrender and they won't give up.

Russia's state media released drone footage of the city's steelworks where Ukrainian fighters and hundreds of civilians are taking shelter. A Marine commander says food and water are running out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAJ. SERHII VOLYNA, UKRAINIAN 36TH SEPARATE MARINE BRIGADE (through translator): This is our statement to the world. It may be our last statement. We might have only a few days or even hours left. The enemy's units are ten times larger than ours. They have supremacy in the air, artillery and units that are dislocated on the ground, equipment and tanks. We appeal to the world leaders to help us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: That same marine commander says the steelworks is crowded with about 500 wounded service members left to rot without medical care and the rest of the city is in ruins. Ukraine security service claims it intercepted communications from the Russian commander threatening to level everything to the ground in the area.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE, INTERCEPTED RUSSIAN COMMUNICATION (through translated text): Will there be some kind of explosion?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translated text): They said to level everything to the ground.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translated text): Oh.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translated text): They are being bombed and bombed, they are knocking them out ...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: Well, that's a similar story north in Mariupol, in Luhansk, part of eastern Ukraine's Donbas. The regional governor says the Russian forces are attacking from all directions with intense artillery and air bombardments. New video shows some of the damage in eastern Ukraine. You can see multiple buildings torn apart by military strikes. These scenes playing out less than 40 kilometers from a town of Kreminna where the regional governor says Russian forces are now in control.

A warning now, this next video is graphic and it may be hard to watch. This is the northeastern city of Kharkiv. Local officials say a barrage of Russian shelling left at least three people dead and 16 people injured on Tuesday. The city's mayor says civilian areas have been under nonstop bombardments since Sunday. Ukraine's president says those attacks on civilians will forever taint Russia's history.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): Forever the Russian army will be written in history as the most barbaric and inhumane army in the world. The targeted killing of civilians and destruction of residential buildings with all kinds of weapons, including those that are forbidden by international conventions. This is just a trademark of the Russian army and this will truly mark the Russian Federation as the source of evil. (END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: Well, Kramatorsk is amongst the cities in eastern Ukraine coming under fire. CNN's Ben Wedeman shows us the aftermath of one deadly strike.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Just a few minutes after 3:00 in the afternoon in Kramatorsk, a missile hit this construction warehouse causing all of this damage and at least one person was killed. The body's under this yellow and blue tarp. And according to police on the scene, at least three people were injured.

[04:05:00]

But an hour before this strike there was another missile strike in another part of town but as far as we know there were no injuries in that case. Now as Russian forces mass nearby and its actually taken one town about an hour's drive from here, this may be a taste of things to come.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: U.S. President Joe Biden says he's unsure whether he'll visit Kyiv any time soon. Instead, he'll be sending more weapons to help the Ukrainian forces there. Sources in the White House say there will likely be another weapons package valued at $800 million.

Meanwhile, we're learning the U.S. has very few ways to track the weapons it has sent after it enters Ukraine. But as CNN's Oren Liebermann reports, it isn't slowing the hustle to get more weapons into the hands of Ukrainian troops.

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OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Max, it used to take weeks or even months to ship weapons to another country. Especially through presidential drawdown authority. Which is when the U.S. ships its own military stocks to another country.

Now during this ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, a senior defense official says they're working around the clock 24/7 to try to get these shipments reviewed, approved and sent as quickly as possible. And that includes what it can generally be a lengthy process.

It starts with bilateral conversations between the U.S. and another country. Of course, Ukraine in this case. Then the U.S. checks its own stocks to see what's available, what can be sent. It then gets a recommendation from the chairman of the joint chiefs, as well as an analysis on what affect it would have on military readiness. It then requires Secretary of Defense approval, presidential approval and then the Secretary of State before it comes back to the Pentagon to actually begin the process of shipping the weapons.

That process compressed to as little as is humanly possible to get it done to ship weapons from the U.S. stocks to Ukraine. As they need not only small arms, ammunition and artillery but all the other weapons and equipment to stay in the fight. The U.S. knows this is a priority. They know the almost insatiable need of the Ukrainian forces in this fight against Russia. And they're trying to make this go as quickly as is humanly possible. Again, a process that's now down to 48 to 72 hours from beginning to end to start shipping weapons.

And we see it with, for example, last week's approval of $800 million from the Biden administration to ship to Ukraine. Within days that has already begun shipping. A separate senior defense official saying, five flights have already gone in, another seven flights or so expected in the next 24 hours. That speaks to the speed by which these shipments, these weapons, these packages of equipment are moving -- Max.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: Well, joining me now from Geneva, Switzerland, Neil Melvin. He's the director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute. Thank you so much for joining us. You know, $800 million worth of kit is obviously a huge amount, but the Ukrainians saying it doesn't really compare to what was sent to Afghanistan for example, so isn't enough still.

NEIL MELVIN, DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY STUDIES, RUSI: Hello, Max. Yes, it is very significant. But of course, it's actually the key equipment that Ukraine needs at the moment -- which is as your correspondent was highlighting -- it's artillery, it's all of the artillery shells, the small weapons, light weapons, body armor. These kind of things. So, in terms of what Ukraine needs, this is spot on. But the challenge now is to get it to the front line really quickly.

FOSTER: Yes. And also, this strategy of the Russians to take out rail lines and roads to try to damage the supply lines and make it difficult for the Americans to get that equipment to the Ukrainians on the front lines.

MELVIN: Yes, we see the battle now is very much focused on Donbas. But Russia is also striking other parts of Ukraine. We've seen missile strikes in the last 24- 48-hours on key cities including Lviv. And this is I think is very much as you say. It's about trying to prevent these weapons which are crossing from the Polish border and other borders are being flown in directly from reaching the Ukrainians in Donbas.

FOSTER: What do you make of what's happening in Mariupol? Pretty extraordinary that Ukrainians have still managed to hold the city after all this time. And no great surprise presumably that we're hear Russian commanders talking about leveling the city at this point.

MELVIN: A desperate situation obviously, the civilians and the remaining Ukrainian forces in a small pocket. They've done a heroic defense, and of course this is really frustrating the Russian military who want to close this pocket of resistance. But also, been pivot those Russian forces to the fight in the Donbas. So actually, this resistance is not just about Mariupol, but it's really holding up the whole Russian push now which is gathering force further to the north.

FOSTER: And presumably at some point the Russians are going to have to take some sort of break because they must be pretty exhausted after being rerouted around to the Donbas area. How long can they keep going without a break, do you think?

[04:10:00]

MELVIN: Well, I think this is really the key question now. So, this is phase 2 for the Russians. They're tried the blitz's screen on Kyiv and that's failed. They're regrouping. They have tried to put together forces, often were quite badly mauled in the fight in north of Kyiv and they really have I think one more go at this. But many of these units already quite exhausted. The ones fighting Mariupol, one questioned whether there'll be much use even if they manage to suppress the final Ukrainian resistance. They'll been exhausted, disorganized and are out of ammunition. So, my estimate is that we have a sort of couple now where the Russians are really going to push and try and break through the Ukrainian lines.

FOSTER: And what's your view about what happens after that? Is the battle for Kyiv really over? Or do they take the east and then move on to Kyiv?

MELVIN: Well, it depends really what happens now in the battle of Donbas. This is the key fight. The Russians are using their advantages which is artillery and air power. They'll be trying to denude the Ukrainian forces and then potentially move on Kyiv.

We don't know their political goals. Their broad political goals seem now to have been abandoned. It's not possible to occupy the whole of Ukraine. And probably not to even replace Ukrainian government. So, the key now, is can the Ukrainians hold on for sort of a couple of weeks or even a month and then we'll see whether the Russians are exhausted at that point.

FOSTER: OK, Neil Melvin in Geneva, thank you very much indeed for joining us with your analysis.

Now residents and volunteers are cleaning up the massacre Russia left behind in Bucha. Where bodies have been discovered in basements, on the streets and in mass graves. As our colleague Phil Black learned, the liberation of Bucha has the coroner's office extremely busy. And a warning to our viewers, some of these images are disturbing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PHIL BLACK, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Morgues aren't supposed to be busy. For so overcapacity, they needed a team of volunteers to move bodies around and large mobile refrigerators to accommodate them.

This is one of seven sites in and around Kyiv, working to cope with the tide of death, left behind by Russia's retreating forces.

BLACK: Are there still more bodies coming?

ANDRII BILYAKOV, FORENSIC MEDICINE PROFESSOR, BOGOMOLETS NATIONAL MEDICAL UNIVERSITY: Coming here a lot. A lot every day at morning.

BLACK (voice-over): Andrii Bilyakov, normally teaches forensic medicine. Now he's a full-time volunteer, performing endless autopsies.

BLACK: How many murders are you seeing?

BILYAKOV: Murders, I think near to 30 percent is exactly murder.

BLACK (voice-over): By his definition, that means 30 percent of the people in these bags have deliberate gunshot wounds to the head.

We witness a continuous cycle, shuffling bodies from vehicles to storage, to autopsy, to storage and ultimately preparation for burial. Usually, it will be their second, most have been exhumed from temporary graves. Families buy new clothes for those they have lost as a gesture of love and respect. But they often go unworn. They can only be laid inside the coffin. The condition of the bodies means dressing them is impossible.

Among those lying here, waiting to be collected is Roman Lepa (ph). His family says he was killed when munitions struck his home in a small remote village. Roman's wife, Victoria, survived, only to endure a form of hell. Intense fighting meant she couldn't escape the house.

Victoria's brother Igor says, my sister had to step over her husband's body for two weeks, she had to go through it to get to food or water, the room is still covered in blood. She is very bad now. Very bad. I don't know how she will live with this loss.

Others who grieve are living through a different form of hell. They can't find the body of the person they love. Volodymyr is searching for his brother, Leonid. He shows us where he was shot and killed. Where he was buried in a shallow makeshift grave before officials exhumed the body and took it away.

So, Vladimir has taken leave from active duty to travel through devastated communities, going from morgue to morgue, but no one can help. Eventually, he's directed to a police office, with a central list of the dead. He's told his brother probably hasn't been processed yet. Volodymyr must return to the war, he doesn't know when he'll be able to come back, even if Leonid's body is found.

[04:15:00]

It hurts a lot, he says. It hurts a lot, but we don't give up.

Russia has left so much death behind in areas near Kyiv, some people must wait their turn to grieve.

Phil Black, CNN, Bucha, Ukraine.

(END VIDEOTAPE) FOSTER: Still ahead, the request from Kyiv's deputy mayor. What the

city is asking for and what it signals about the types of attacks that they fear could be coming.

And while some travelers are celebrating the end of the mask mandate in the U.S., health officials are urging caution in some settings. Details ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FOSTER: The deadline is looming in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol. Russia has given Ukrainian soldiers hold up in a sprawling steel factory until 2 p.m. local time to lay down their weapons and leave or face more attacks. That's a little less than three hours from now. But Ukrainian forces have so far refused to surrender despite being surrounded.

[04:20:00]

In the capital Kyiv the deputy mayor has now requested 200,000 gas masks to protect against potential chemical weapons attacks. The U.S. has already shipped some protective gear to Ukraine and more is on the way.

In eastern Ukraine's Donbas region where much of the fighting is now focused, Ukrainian soldiers have already repelled numerous attempts by Russian troops to advance. That's according to the latest update from British intelligence.

Meanwhile, Russia is accusing the United States and its Western allies of doing everything they can to drag out the war. Russia's defense minister claims Western weapons shipments into Ukraine prove the U.S. wants to provoke Ukraine into fighting. CNN's Nic Robertson joins me now from Brussels. You're all over this sort of language. It is your job to keep across it. And there has been a slight shift, hasn't there, where their bringing in the U.K., the U.S. into the language in terms of them being aggressive as opposed to Ukraine being aggressive.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, the more weapons that are shipped in, the heavier those weapons, and that's all the talk between the United States and its European allies and partners at the moment. Tanks, heavy artillery pieces, howitzers -- that sort of material, armored vehicles. The more it sort of allows Russia to fuel its own propaganda campaign saying it's under threat from NATO and therefore justify its original rationale of invading Ukraine. So, it feeds into Russia's narrative.

Russia also feeding its own narrative of what its objectives are. The foreign minister Sergey Lavrov reiterating again in part propaganda to the Russian's people to distract them from the fact that their original objective to take the capital Kyiv failed. But now focusing on the fact that they're trying just for that eastern area of Donbas but also how important it is for them. This is how he framed it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SERGEY LAVROV, RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: Operation in the east of Ukraine is aimed as was announced from the very beginning to fully liberate the Donetsk and Luhansk republics and this operation will continue. It is beginning -- I mean, another stage of this operation is beginning and I'm sure this will be a very important moment of this entire special operation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTSON: So, a very important moment. What Russia recognizes is that its push in Donbas has to be successful. Whether they'll try to push further, that depends on how they get in Donbas. It has to be successful to give the leadership in Moscow something to say that they're actually making some real gains and victories on the ground. In this is why they're so coming down on the supply of weapons to Ukraine.

Because the more heavy weapons are supplied to Ukraine the less Russia will be able to take territory inside Ukraine. And these coming weeks are expected to be defining in the way that the war goes from here. No one is saying it is going to be over in a couple of weeks but does it grind to stationary front lines or does it give Russia fresh impetus to try to take other areas? So, that's why Russia is really calling out these heavy weapons supplies that are coming in right now -- Max.

FOSTER: But it's probably going to come up as a topic of discussion, isn't it, between the European Council chief who's in Kyiv, I think, at the moment -- he's in Kyiv at the moment. And he's going to talk about getting more weapons to the Ukrainians. They're trying to send the message they are going to continue supporting the military there.

ROBERTSON: Support at every level. Support economically, humanitarian aid, with weapons, with security guarantees. Perhaps not quite the liking of the strength that Kyiv wants. Should there be a peace agreement at some point, Charles Michel, the last if you will, of the big European presidents as you might call, and the president of the parliament -- the president of the commission already visited over the past few weeks. But it does just reaffirm that my dad message that the European nations are behind Ukraine.

Charles Michel represents, you know, the European Council. So, he's the one that actually sits down with all those heads of the European Union nations so he confers with them. He tries to draw them to consensus. He's the one that really is engaged at the very, very top table if you will. So, his conversations with President Zelenskyy are important for both the EU and for Ukraine.

FOSTER: OK, Nic in Brussels, thank you. We'll watch that visit as it unfolds.

The war in Ukraine and uncertainty about Russia's oil supplies is pushing gas prices in the U.S. back up. A regular gallon of gas averages $4.10 today. AAA says a steady decline in the national average price bottomed out last week at $4.07 a gallon. Lower oil prices and the unprecedented release of oil from emergency stockpiles fueled that drop. [04:25:00]

Americans are paying $1.23 more now than this time a year ago.

Now Netflix says it's lost 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of this year. The company blames a myriad of factors from increased competition, rising inflation and Russia's war on Ukraine, to users sharing their account passwords with roughly 100 million other households. That password issue affecting. And Netflix expects to lose even more subscribers, 2 million in the next quarter. Following the news, its stock dropped as much as 25 percent in afterhours trading. So, we're watching to see what happens on Wall Street later on.

The reversal of the mask mandate on public transportation is causing confusion as travelers deal with inconsistent policies. Coming up, advice from health officials on how to travel safely.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Contradicting. It's like a lot of stuff going on. Don't do this, don't do that and then you have to listen to both. I'm not wearing a mask at all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you want to play that game, you know, go ahead, but I'm going to keep the mask on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. President, should people continue to wear masks on planes?

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: That's up to them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: President Biden there appearing to accept that masks are now optional on public transportation. But the U.S. Justice Department says it will appeal the ruling striking down the mandates if the Centers for Disease Control determines masks are necessary for public health.

Many major airlines, public transit systems and ride sharing companies adjusted their policies to allow passengers to make their own decision. But public health officials say masks still preserve an important -- or serve an important purpose.

[04:30:00]