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Russia Defense Minister: Nearly 2,000 Ukrainian Soldiers Surrendered at Mariupol Steel Plant; Russian Missile Strike in Kharkiv Injures 7, Including a Child; "Finally Home, The Trevor Reed Interview" Airs Sunday Night at 8:00 Eastern; Incumbents Faces Trump- Backed Candidates in Georgia Primaries; Ethan Crumbley's Parents Ask Judge to Quash Charges Against Them. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired May 20, 2022 - 14:30   ET

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

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[14:31:00]

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: A new assessment from British intelligence reveals Russia recently fired several senior commanders for performing poorly during the early days of Putin's war.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: Meanwhile, Ukrainian commanders have ordered fighters at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol to stop defending the city against Russian forces.

CNN's Melissa Bell is in Kyiv for us.

Melissa, there may be several hundred fighters left inside the steel plant, so what will happen to them?

MELISSA BELL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: This is a big question tonight, Alisyn. But what does appear to be the case, as you were just saying, is the last bastion of Ukrainian resistance in the key strategic port of Mariupol, that resistance at Azovstal does seem to be coming to an end.

We've seen extraordinary pictures coming out of the plant today, posted, some, by the very soldier who has been posting all the images that have helped make the resistance so iconic and known to the entire world.

That soldier posting that this would be his last post and that they wouldn't be hearing from him again, from what had been his life and his death.

Also, that message from the Azov commander saying that Ukrainian senior armed forces have now ordered the men to stop fighting.

We know that nearly 2,000 men have been evacuated and are in Russian hands. We don't know exactly how many more have yet to surrender. Unclear also at this stage, Alisyn, how many have died.

And I think it's important to remember that you're talking, then, about many hundreds of men, many hundreds of families who, until tonight, didn't really have much clarity about what was happening to their loved ones.

We've been hearing from some of the wives and daughters of those families tonight in Istanbul, who are beginning to get messages from them, text messages saying, I'm OK, I'm going to be all right, I'm leaving hell, but I'm now back in hell.

That's been the messages of the families who are extremely worried about the fact that those who survived and are now in Russian hands are essentially prisoners of war.

BLACKWELL: Melissa, there's new video of this Russian missile strike in the Kharkiv region, seven people hurt. What more are you learning about the fighting in that region in the east?

BELL: Just terrible pictures tonight from that town in southern Kharkiv. And that is really close to one of those many flashpoints that continues tonight between Ukrainian forces and Russian forces.

On one hand, you'll remember the counteroffensive by Ukrainians has been remarkably successful this last week.

Not only ensuring that Kharkiv itself, the city will no longer be the victim of the extraordinary siege and bombardments we had seen over the last few weeks but pushing toward the east.

And threatening the Russian supply lines, who are trying to make their way further south, even as Russian forces push up northwards from Donetsk.

So a great deal of fighting along that frontline, a great deal of shelling, civilian deaths as well.

There's also the town of Severodonetsk further to the east where we understand that 12 civilians have died. There are some 15,000 tonight even there hunkering down in their cellars -- Victor and Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: Melissa Bell, thank you very much for all of your reporting.

Now to a CNN exclusive. Marine veteran, Trevor --

BLACKWELL: Marine veteran, Trevor Reed, who was recently freed after nearly three years in a Russian prison, is speaking about his harrowing experience.

In an extensive sit-down with Jake Tapper, Reed detailed his coping mechanisms while behind bars.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR, "THE LEAD": Any prison is brutal. Russian prisons are notoriously awful and tough. Did you have a strategy for surviving?

TREVOR REED, FORMER U.S. MARINE FROM RUSSIA: I did. I tried to kind of compartmentalize and focus, not on being in prison, kind of distract myself.

[14:35:02]

Think about future plans, what university I was going to go to, what plans I was going to have with my family, all of those things, and just tried to distract myself from reality, which was not something that you want to think about.

TAPPER: Did you have confidence you were going to get out?

REED: No, I didn't. And a lot of people are not going to like what I'm going to say about this, but I kind of viewed their having hope as being a weakness.

I did not want to have that hope of, like, me being released somehow and then have that taken from me.

TAPPER: You denied yourself hope?

REED: Yes, I did.

(CROSSTALK)

REED: I wouldn't let myself hope.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Wow. Jake Tapper is with us now.

Obviously a traumatic ordeal, to both think about the future, but deny yourself the hope of achieving all that he was thinking about. How is he now mentally and physically?

TAPPER: Well, those are two obviously very different things. He's not a super tall guy and he lost about 45 pounds in Russian captivity because of malnutrition, because of his hunger strikes, because of his sickness.

So since coming back to the United States, he's gained about 10 to 15 pounds. So he looks much better today than he did when he just got back and he was really emaciated. He's working on getting his physical sense back to where it was.

And then in terms of psychologically, I have to say he seemed great. I know, obviously, it's more complicated than that. One doesn't come from -- I mean, he told stories that are out of a horror movie.

And one doesn't just emerge and go back to normal. It's going to take a reclamation and lot of work to physically be back where he was.

But if you met him, you wouldn't know that he had been in Russian captivity for three years. He seemed great. He was defiant. He was emotional. He was angry. He laughed. He got upset at times.

So, I mean, better than can be expected, I guess, is my answer.

BLACKWELL: Yes, it's going to take some work and some time, obviously.

You mentioned that he shared these stories like out of a horror movie. What did he tell you about how life was like there?

TAPPER: Well, I mean, just everything about it was -- I mean, the trial itself was like something out of Kafka, just this ridiculously unfair, constantly changing stories in terms of why they were detaining him.

You know, Orwellian is the best word for it. And of course, Orwell was a critic of the Soviet Union.

And then just the physical stories of what he had to deal with. The most awful is this one story he tells about, as punishment, they put him in a psychiatric hospital, a criminal jail.

And they put him in a room with about seven other inmates, who were -- I mean, there's no other term for it than psychos.

I mean, they were criminally insane. And he basically had to stay awake for days because he thought they would kill him. There was blood smeared on the wall.

And the fear of being killed by these other inmates was also rivalled by the fact that if you misbehaved, they would jab you with a tranquilizer to turn you into something like a zombie, like the end of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". So it's really harrowing stories.

But obviously, it's also an uplifting story about a Marine's determination to survive and a family's fight to get their son home.

And it was really an uplifting story in a lot of ways, and a real honor to meet Trevor and also spend time with his family.

BLACKWELL: Yes, I imagine that it was.

Now, there are other, obviously, Americans still being held in Russian prisons. Paul Whelan, another former Marine, has been there for more than three years now. We know WNBA star, Brittney Griner, has been held there in a Russia jail for several months, since February.

Did he have any thoughts about Whelan and Griner?

TAPPER: Yes. I mean, this is why he's doing the interview. This is why he talked to me. This is why his family was so eager to sit down and do this hour-long special that we're doing on CNN Sunday.

He wants there to be more awareness of all of the dozens of Americans being unjustly held as prisoners and unfair captives around the world. And he wants the U.S. government to do more of what they did to get him out of that Russian jail cell, which is prisoner swaps.

He wants -- the whole family wants this to be an acceptable thing for the U.S. government to do to get Americans out of these unfair situations and bring them home.

[14:40:05]

And personally, Trevor was very distressed, very upset when he got on the FSB plane to fly to Turkey for the prisoner swap with the Americans, he was very upset to find out that Paul Whelan wasn't there.

He got very emotional during the interview talking about that. And he talked about the guilt he felt and the anxiety he felt leaving Paul Whelan behind.

I asked him and he had never met Paul Whelan. It was just the sense of brotherhood, the sense of not wanting this other American, this other Marine veteran to be left behind that weighed so heavily on him.

And we're actually -- the Whelans are going to be part of our show on Sunday night as well.

BLACKWELL: I'm really looking forward to watching that. And the story you tell about being in the psych ward with convicted murderers, I mean, it is really compelling.

Jake Tapper, thank you for spending a few minutes with us. We'll toss it back to you in a little more than an hour.

And again, the special report, "FINALLY HOME: THE TREVOR REED INTERVIEW," airs this Sunday at 8:00 p.m. Eastern only on CNN.

We're days away from a critical primary in Georgia, one that pits a Trump-backed candidate against a candidate endorsed by Mike Pence. What the outcome could signal for the future of the GOP. That's next.

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[14:46:06]

CAMEROTA: On Tuesday, voters in several states will head to the polls. One key race, Georgia. Incumbent Governor Brian Kemp faces a primary challenge from former Senator David Perdue.

BLACKWELL: And Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is up against Representative Jody Hice.

CNN's Eva McKend is in Atlanta.

Eva, good to see you.

Both incumbents are being challenged by these Trump-backed candidates. Where do things stand going into Election Day?

EVA MCKEND, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS REPORTER: Well, Alisyn and Victor, incumbent governor, Brian Kemp, clearly has the momentum going into Tuesday against challenger, former Senator David Perdue, who appears to be losing steam here in the final hour.

He's still campaigning, to be sure. But he's spending no money on television ads, which is really surprising as we get into crunch time. You may have seen a recent FOX News poll that suggests that the

governor is up by about 30 points. And it also suggests that even if Perdue were to make inroads with undecided voters, he would still have a huge gap to fill.

Perdue was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, who still has a bone to pick with Kemp, essentially, because Kemp refused to essentially cheat in the 2020 election on Trump's behalf.

Republicans across the country watching this race, including Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, who says that Republicans -- he believes Republicans are favored to do well in this midterm environment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): We haven't had a better electoral environment for Republican success since 2010 or 1994, the two best Republican years anyone can remember.

If we get the right nominees through the primaries, we're going to have a good year.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCKEND: So on the Democratic side, less excitement. Democratic Candidate Stacey Abrams is running uncontested.

But also being watched is the Republican secretary of state race between incumbent, Brad Raffensperger, and challenger Jody Hice.

The election lie is on the ballot as well.

Hice's success or if he fails, it's going to be a true test if that election lie has potency among Republican voters. Do they care enough about it as an issue to drive them to the polls -- Alisyn, Victor?

BLACKWELL: Tuesday is a big day.

Eva McKend, in Atlanta, thank you.

[14:48:27]

The parents of Michigan school shooting suspect, Ethan Crumbley, asked a judge to toss out the charges against them. We'll have new details next.

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[14:53:16]

BLACKWELL: A building on fire at Geneva airport in Switzerland created a huge plume of black smoke. Look at this. Takeoffs, landings suspended for almost two hours. A video shows this huge fire burning among the thick black smoke there. The cause of the fire right now is not known. The parents of Michigan school shooting suspect, Ethan Crumbley, asked

the judge to void the charges against them this week. Jennifer and James Crumbley have pleaded not guilty to four counts of involuntary manslaughter.

Prosecutors allege they gave their son easy access to a gun and ignored warning signs that he was a threat. Ethan is accused of killing four students at Oxford High School during a shooting last September.

CNN's Brynn Gingras has been following this story.

Brynn, what do the parents want here?

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Victor, so their trial isn't slated until October but we're starting to see the filings from defense attorneys about how they're going to fight the charges.

One of them, you mentioned before, which is they asked the judge to just void the involuntary manslaughter charges that they're facing, essentially saying that these charges have no legal justification, they shouldn't be held responsible, and they kind of tick-tocked through the reasons why.

In a statement I want to read from their attorney, it says, "The Crumbleys did not counsel Ethan in the commission of the school shooting or act jointly with Ethan in any way. To the contrary, the Crumbleys had no knowledge their son intended to commit multiple homicides, nor did any common enterprise exist."

Essentially, remember, prosecutors have been saying they hold some responsibilities to the acts that their son carried out last year in that school shooting.

The prosecution in a different filing essentially said our case remains strong. And they're waiting for a judge to sort of give an answer as to what will happen moving forward.

[14:55:01]

Now there were other filings that were also put forward by defense attorneys. In one of them, they're asking that the judge throw out a lot of evidence that was laid out so far in this case.

Much of what we heard back in February when there was law enforcement that testified to a search warrant that was in the Crumbley's home after this incident happened.

And they're asking that a lot of this evidence just not be a part of the trial should it go to trial later this year.

That includes Ethan's 22-page journal. If you remember, law enforcement testified he wrote several instances about the school shooting, even up to the day before the shooting actually happened.

There were text messages from Ethan to a friend talking about how his parents didn't really care about his feelings or get him any help. There was a bird head found in a jar in Ethans room.

So defense attorneys here saying, none of this matters in the case, the parents shouldn't be held responsible, and they want this to really be thrown out.

We'll see what the judge rules next month when he hears these filings. It will be interesting. This is one, of course, that we're watching very closely.

BLACKWELL: Indeed, we are.

Brynn Gingras for us with the latest. Thank you very much.

All right, the stock market selloff, it continues. Take a look. The Dow is on track for the longest weekly losing streak in nearly a century. More on this, next.

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