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January 6 Committee Seeks Secret Service Text Messages; Middle East Diplomacy; Gang Fighting In Haiti; COVID-19, Banking Scandal Take Toll On Chinese Economy; Celebrations In Sri Lanka; Biden Vows Executive Action After Manchin Knocks Climate Agenda. Aired 4-5a ET
Aired July 16, 2022 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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BECKY ANDERSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL HOST (voice-over): Hello and a warm welcome to our viewers joining us in the United States and around the world.
I'm Becky Anderson, live from Saudi Arabia, where we are following what is a pivotal day of bilateral meetings between President Biden and the Gulf Cooperation Council members plus the leaders of Egypt, Iraq and Jordan.
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ANDERSON: This coming, of course, just hours after his controversial meeting with the Saudi crown prince.
KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): And I'm Kim Brunhuber live at CNN Center in Atlanta, where we'll have the latest on the missile strikes by Russia targeting civilians in Kyiv. We'll have the latest.
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ANDERSON: Well, it's 11:00 in the morning in Saudi Arabia, day two of President Joe Biden's controversial visit to the kingdom. Right now, we do expect Mr. Biden to begin a bilateral meeting with the Iraqi prime minister.
That will be followed later this hour with a one-on-one meeting with the president of Egypt and next hour with the leader of the UAE. This is an incredibly busy day for the U.S. President on what is his first tour of the Middle Eastern Gulf since he became U.S. President.
The brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 has cast a pall over U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia. President Biden hoping this trip will help move the two countries forward, while still making clear he holds Mohammed bin Salman responsible for that killing. Here's what he said after meeting with the crown prince on Friday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I made my view crystal clear. I said very straightforwardly, for an American president to be silent on an issue of human rights is inconsistent with who we are and who I am.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANDERSON: Some will find it difficult to square the president's rhetoric with him greeting the crown prince with a fist bump. It was Mr. Biden who labeled Saudi Arabia a pariah just a few years ago. The president says he doesn't regret the remark but both men close to ignore reporters' questions as their meeting started on Friday.
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QUESTION: Jamal Khashoggi, will you apologize to his family, sir?
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ANDERSON: Let's bring in CNN international diplomatic editor, Nic Robertson.
It can't be comfortable for the president.
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: This was sort of a, look at it as a long race or a marathon, if you will, to get to the moment. There has been so much talk about it, wanting the moment, wanting to have that, that image.
And the White House not wanting to have something like that, that would potentially embarrass President Biden. And like you get to the finish line and it snatches victory just as President Biden is about to go behind doors. There's the crown prince at the palace.
We'd heard there would be a fist bump. But their was very public and the cameras positioned. And it gives the Saudis want they wanted. It gives President Biden a headache. And they're both saying business was done.
ANDERSON: That's about resetting a relationship, which quite frankly over the last 18 months or so, had become particularly frosty. UAE and Saudi upset and frustrated with a lack of security guarantees.
Let's be quite clear, it is not unfamiliar for a U.S. president to visit this kingdom. Almost every single U.S. president has visited the kingdom of Saudi Arabia over the last 18 years.
What is that wider, that wider narrative that both key stakeholders here want to pursue at this point?
ROBERTSON: There are global concerns. There is global energy security, global food security, which would affect a country like Saudi Arabia, because it's in a region surrounded by less-stable countries who are more at threshold on food levels. (CROSSTALK)
ANDERSON: And we're seeing that across the region.
ROBERTSON: We are seeing this across the region. They are sensitive to this. They are sensitive to climate change as well. This is what President Biden talked about. The renewables, the hydrogen, liquid hydrogen.
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ROBERTSON: -- transition. So there are these gains there as well. But I think what we're going to hear more detail on.
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ROBERTSON: And President Biden spoke about their last night this last night at their press conference, food security. This is something he said in Germany and Bavaria, that he wants these nations, these richer nations, to stump up money to do that.
ANDERSON: Yes, and the food security story, which is just so critical to so many of the poorer countries in this region exacerbated, of course, seriously exacerbated by Russia's conflict in Ukraine.
You just have to go across the border from Saudi Arabia to Yemen to see the effect of the food and fuel issue that is impacting a country like that. So the president bringing some help, be that financial or in the frame of sort of economic initiatives across a myriad of different things.
He wanted to take away a commitment on oil. Back home it is the price of gasoline at the pump which is a very difficult issue for Joe Biden to deal with the Democratic Party.
What did he get?
ROBERTSON: It isn't clear. One of the reasons it is isn't clear is, coming into this, the administration said this was diplomacy better done behind closed doors. And we know that because the Saudis have been very public, saying we are not an oil spigot and we don't turn it on just to get additional security.
That's a paradigm they want to move away from. So what we heard from President Biden was a sort of, well, let's see in a few weeks. I've talked about the need for this. I think it's there. Let's see what happens in a few weeks.
Rather than coming out and doing a reverse of what Mohammed bin Salman did to him, which was put him in a very embarrassing position, Biden has stuck to his diplomatic tenets. The Saudis, on the other hand, saying, look, there are commitments under OPEC+ and these going to be followed through.
ANDERSON: This is not just a meeting between the U.S. and Saudi, although arguably that leg, yesterday afternoon, was pretty much the most important part, I think the White House would admit. And so would the Saudis.
This is a wider meeting of regional leaders, the UAE and Iraq and Egypt, who the U.S. President will have bilateral meetings with in the next hour or so.
Is it clear how this region is positioning itself with regard the U.S. at present and what the wider region expects from the U.S. President or hopes to get?
ROBERTSON: It's very hard to predict. This region is changing. They expect the United States to keep up with that change.
One of the indicators that they might be aligning themselves more deeply and over the long term with the U.S., was their commitment that Biden said he from the Saudis to invest in U.S.-made G5, G6 cellular technology.
The U.S. says you have to go with us, because China's state will get the information. And you can't be a real security partner. That's only part of the picture and you can't say that fills the whole frame.
ANDERSON: Very briefly, the quest to get Israel better positioned and normalized with other Arab states, how much success has the U.S. President had, briefly?
ROBERTSON: Biden came out with an unexpected press conference to head off that imagery of the fist bump, that he could fly here. Saudi Arabia said other countries can overfly Saudi Arabia.
That's a big step, a big bonus for Israel. The Saudis got out of that, a commitment from Israel, that they can have a bigger role in controlling influence over the islands that are strategically important for Israel, that they've had a role in, that have been a flashpoint in the region for many, many years.
And that was a give, if you will, from the Israelis to Saudi. So you see this slow thaw coming. But on the big issues, the Saudis say they can't until they see an Israeli leader they can deal with.
ANDERSON: Thank you, Nic Robertson.
Nic will continue to work his sources.
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ANDERSON: The U.S. President continues his day of what are key bilateral meetings with regional leaders here right across the Gulf and into the Middle East. Tough times and lots of tough talk, it seems. Let's head back to Atlanta for our top stories -- Kim.
BRUNHUBER: Thanks so much, Becky, really appreciate it.
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BRUNHUBER: Ukraine says Russian forces are stepping up military strikes across the board. The cities of Dnipro, Odessa, Mykolaiv and the Kharkiv region all coming under rocket or artillery fire Saturday morning.
Ukraine says a rocket attack in the Kharkiv region collapsed an apartment building and left three elderly people dead. In the east, Ukraine says it pushed back against Russian attempts to gain more ground in the Donbas region, including repelling an attack on a strategic highway.
Scott McLean joins us live from Kyiv.
Let's start with the rocket and artillery attacks on several Ukrainian cities.
What more can you tell us?
SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: What stands out to me is, the city of Mykolaiv. It had rocket attacks yesterday on a university. There was more this morning, though they're trying to figure out exactly what the damage was and the casualties were.
And the mayor says that, of 142 days of war, they have only had 21 that have been quiet, 21 without artillery strikes. So that southern part of Ukraine has been especially dangerous, especially active as of late, of course, because of Ukrainians have been trying to launch their own push to take back territory around the city of Kherson.
You also mentioned the rocket attacks in Dnipro. There was one on a residential area where two were injured. Others may have been trapped under the rubble after a rocket attack last night that injured 16 and killed three in an industrial area.
And in total officials say, as of late there have been 57 rocket attacks on the city. And in the eastern part of the country, this must be frustrating for the Russians. They wanted to quickly move on to focusing on taking the Donetsk region.
But it seems that the front lines have barely moved at all over the last few weeks. So the Russian efforts to move them forward have been pushed back and unsuccessful. And in the meantime, they continue to drop bombs on the towns and villages on the other side.
BRUNHUBER: And that horrific attack in Vinnytsia, you've been covering that.
What's the latest there?
MCLEAN: Yes, so according to the local officials, they are still trying to identify the victims, the victims that they found so far, 23. So they say that, of the 19 people who they have actually identified, most of them have had to be identified using DNA testing because the bodies are damaged beyond recognition.
At the hospital I saw two women outside the hospital door in tears. And, of course, at the hospital, that's not uncommon. They wouldn't speak to me on camera. But we did manage to speak to them briefly.
And they told us the reason they were so upset is because they had gone to every hospital in the region, looking for their missing relative. There are still eight people from the attack who are missing.
And this was the last hospital that they had gone to. This was their last hope of actually finding them alive. Obviously, they didn't find them. They assume that they are somewhere amongst that rubble.
On the scene, they've been using dogs to try to sniff out any human remains. But given the level of damage that we saw to the actual building and the actual structures, you can only imagine what the force of those explosions would do to a human body.
BRUNHUBER: Really just horrific situation there. Appreciate the reporting, Scott McLean, thanks so much.
Millions of people outside Ukraine can pay the price for the war in the form of food shortages. A former Ukrainian minister will join us to talk about ongoing negotiations on food exports.
And a new first in the 2020 election probe coming up. The January 6 committee sets its sights on the U.S. Secret Service over missing text messages. Details on that in a moment.
And a Senate Democrat sinks his party's climate agenda. Stay with us.
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BRUNHUBER: For the first time, the January 6 committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol has issued a subpoena to the Secret Service for information about text messages that were later erased. Jessica Schneider has the latest.
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JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari on Capitol Hill. He briefed all nine January 6 committee members on his claim that the Secret Service erased text messages from January 5th and 6th, 2021. Now that the committee heard his take they want to talk to the Secret Service.
REP. BENNIE THOMPSON (D-MS): One of the things we have to make sure is that what Secret Service is saying and what the I.G. is saying that those two issues are in fact one and the same.
SCHNEIDER: The inspector general says he raised the issue of erased text messages with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas more than once but ultimately turned to Congress for help, telling congressional committees this week that many U.S. Secret Service text messages from January 5th and 6th, 2021, erased as part of a device replacement program. The U.S. Secret Service erased those text messages after OIG requested
records of electronic communications.
But the Secret Service quickly shot back, saying the loss of text data was part of routine phone replacement.
The insinuation that the Secret Service maliciously deleted text messages following a request is false --
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SCHNEIDER (voice-over): -- adding that the inspector general requested electronic communications for the first time on February 26, 2021, after the migration was well underway.
The Secret Service notified DHS OIG of the loss of certain phone's data but confirmed to OIG that none of the text it was seeking had been lost in the migration.
The Secret Service says they have been cooperating with the I.G., handing over almost 800,000 redacted emails and nearly 8,000 Microsoft team's chat messages.
The agency has been at the center of intensifying questions after Cassidy Hutchinson testified last month. She was a top aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
And she recounted how she was told by Deputy Chief of Staff Tony Ornato that President Trump lunged at Secret Service Agent Robert Engel in the presidential SUV and tried to force his detail to take him to the Capitol on January 6th.
CASSIDY HUTCHINSON, FORMER AIDE TO WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF MARK MEADOWS: The president reached up toward the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel. Mr. Engel grabbed his arm, said, sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel.
SCHNEIDER: Trump has dismissed Hutchinson's testimony but a Washington, D.C., police officer who was in that motorcade corroborated details of the heated exchange to the committee. That's according to a source familiar.
HUTCHINSON: Mr. Trump then used the free hand to lunge toward Bobby Engel. And when Mr. Ornato had recounted the story to me, he motioned toward his clavicles.
SCHNEIDER: The Secret Service has not given a public account of what happened. One official telling CNN that the agents dispute Hutchinson's account but Hutchinson's lawyers say she stands by her testimony.
REP. PETE AGUILAR (D-CA): If people want to come forward and have a different recollection, we would encourage them to come forward give testimony under oath. That is different than putting out anonymous statements. SCHNEIDER: The committee has just announced plans for an eighth and possibly final hearing. It will happen Thursday at prime time, 8:00 pm and it will focus in what was happening in those 187 minutes when Trump was out of public view and not stepping in as rioters attacked the Capitol -- Jessica Schneider, CNN, Washington.
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BRUNHUBER: Georgia's Republican Party chairman David Shafer has received a letter warning him that he may be indicted. He helped organize a slate of fake electors in the state and has been cooperating with prosecutors and was initially told he was a witness in the investigation.
Shafer has also faced inquiries from fellow investigators and the House Select Committee.
The Atlanta-area investigation was triggered after former president Trump's infamous phone call to Georgia's secretary of state, pressuring him to find more votes. Here's part of that call.
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DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.
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BRUNHUBER: U.S. Democrats are hoping to expand their Senate majority in midterm elections this fall, since the Senate's 50-50 split means every lawmaker carries outside weight.
Joe Manchin represents West Virginia which supported president Trump in 2016 and 2020. He's told Chuck Schumer he won't support climate change or tax provisions in any economic package right now.
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SEN. JOE MANCHIN (D-WV): So, I said, "Chuck, until we see the July inflation figures, until we see the July basically Federal Reserve rate, interest rates, then let's wait until that comes out so we know that we are going down the path that won't be inflammatory, to add more to inflation."
He says, "Are you telling me you won't do the other right now?"
I said, "Chuck, it's wrong. It's not prudent to do the other right now."
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BRUNHUBER: He's open to extending enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies for two years. But he won't support energy or climate provisions or tax increases.
Cases of COVID-19 are increasing globally, according to the World Health Organization. The number of new infections rose for the fifth straight week, driven largely by the BA.4 and BA.5 variants. Earlier, the director general warned the public on easing up.
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DR. TEDROS ADHANOM GHEBREYESUS, WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION: The waves of the virus demonstrate again that the COVID-19 is though nowhere as the virus pushes at us, we must push back
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BRUNHUBER: And here in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control says more than half the population lives in a county where there's a high level of community transmission.
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BRUNHUBER: Los Angeles County, the nation's largest, is on track to require indoor masks again as COVID cases and hospitalizations there continue to soar.
A show of resilience after a horrific mass shooting. The Tops supermarket in Buffalo, New York, reopened Friday. It's been two months since 10 people were shot and killed in a racist attack.
There were mixed emotions as customers returned to Tops, a long-time fixture in the community. They say it's undergone a complete renovation with additional safety and security measures in place.
There's also a memorial for the shooting victims inside the store, where, across from the store community members have placed hundreds of flowers to commemorate them and pay their respects. A community thinking of those innocent people who were gunned down while doing nothing more than shopping.
We'll be right back.
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ANDERSON: Welcome back to our viewers from around the world. I'm Becky Anderson in Saudi Arabia.
U.S. President Joe Biden is set to be wrapping up his bilateral meeting with the prime minister of Iraq about now and will soon meet with the Egyptian president. Next hour he's to meet one on one with the president of the United Arab Emirates. And from there he will head to the GCC for a final round of summits on a whole range of issues.
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ANDERSON: This isn't just about U.S.-Saudi relations but arguably that leg of his visit here has been the most important and controversial. The president expected to announce a $1 billion commitment, for example, to food security in the Middle East and North Africa.
Well, relations quite frankly around the region have been strained but specifically U.S.-Saudi relations, strained since the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 and the alleged role the Saudi crown prince had to play in that death.
Here with me now is Stephen Kalin, a Middle East correspondent for "The Wall Street Journal."
If you were assessing to date and this trip isn't over for the U.S. President but if were you assessing to date how it has gone, how would you rate it?
STEPHEN KALIN, "THE WALL STREET JOURNAL": Well, I mean, I think the president came in last night, had this meeting with the crown prince, really scrutinized with how they were going to engage with each other.
And I think it went off without anything really bad, anything really going wrong. So he, the president, had to come and have these conversations. They spent two or three hours ago.
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ANDERSON: But it's the optics --
KALIN: -- so it was a fist bump. It wasn't a warm handshake. There were some smiles in this meeting.
You know, I think it probably went about as well as the White House could have hoped for. The president, you know, even a few weeks ago was saying this meeting wasn't going to happen. He was going to make the trip but not meet with the crown prince and had to walk that back. It's never easy to do.
ANDERSON: One of the things to point out here is the White House realized and the president admitted this when he was in Israel, that the Americans need to work harder with the Saudis and the region. They fear that any vacuum left by de-prioritizing this region will be filled by firstly the Chinese and then the Russians.
We are already seeing a lot of influence of Chinese, Russian business industry here in the region.
So what is the president doing to reset that relationship?
I mean, he's got a whole load of meetings, hasn't he, with regional leaders. I'm struggling to see an overarching sort of message from the region. It feels to me it's quite piecemeal what countries are looking for at this point.
KALIN: It seems that everyone's coming with a different ask of the president. Everybody sits in a different place and will have different priorities. The president will have the opportunity to speak with three of the key leaders this morning. Obviously, it's his first trip and there haven't been that many visits to the White House from these leaders. There have been top-level engagements because of Afghanistan but this
is an opportunity for them to hear from him.
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ANDERSON: There were two themes as the president flew in here. One was the bettering of relations between Saudis and other Arab countries, some of that I think the U.S. President has got.
But the overall story is there's no road map. And the other thing, this is really important. The States seems to want a regional security arrangement here so that, while they are still active in the region, they haven't got boots on the ground.
How's that coming together, if at all?
KALIN: I think very, very slowly. This is something that's been talked about for years, that the previous president tried to create this Arab NATO.
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ANDERSON: Which frankly people don't want here, as far as I can tell.
KALIN: Yes, certain countries want it to a certain extent. But this might be the opportunity for more organization, for close cooperation, for example, on air defense, to protect countries that feel threatened by Iranian missiles, to work together to protect themselves.
For various reasons, that doesn't seem to be coming together. There are various regions, Qatar and the UAE, that have closer relationships that have to deal with Iran, that Saudi can be more confrontational. There are some who are more comfortable dealing with Israel for example which would be a boost to the alliance.
And there are other countries that don't want to provoke Iran by getting in a closer relationship with Israel.
ANDERSON: This is a region still roiling.
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ANDERSON: There are some financial heavyweights, the likes of Saudi Arabia and UAE and other countries in the region really struggling, not least because of the high price of fuel and food, exacerbated by Russia's war in Ukraine. Thank you, Stephen.
Fascinating times here. The U.S. President will wrap up his meetings here and be headed home within the next few hours. Before arriving on Friday, Mr. Biden met with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank and affirmed his commitment to an independent Palestinian state and a two-state solution.
But Palestinians remain deeply frustrated over a number of issues, not the least a Trump-era decision to close the consulate. The head of the Palestinian mission to the U.K. and a former head of the PLO general delegation spoke earlier to CNN about that closure. Let's have a listen to part of what he said.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In fact, the lack of opening of such a very important diplomatic mission is also indicative of how serious the administration is about the two-state solution and how much they are willing to spend political capital as opposed to rhetoric and statements.
The consulate general is the key matter because if you believe in the two states, you need two embassies. If you really believe in the 1967 borders, then there is one missing.
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ANDERSON: That does it from me here in Saudi Arabia. Let me head back to CNN headquarters and Kim for our other top stories, Kim.
BRUNHUBER: All right, thanks so much, Becky, appreciate it.
Ahead here on CNN NEWSROOM, talks in Turkiye offer some hope about the global food supply. We'll speak with a former Ukrainian official and get his take. Stay with us.
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BRUNHUBER: All right, we'd like to show you what Ukrainian farmers call a second front in Russia's invasion of their country. Have a look here. You'll see it here. Wheat fields on fire, sparked by Russian shelling.
If Ukraine doesn't produce and export its grain, tens of millions of people around the world could struggle to put food on the table. Much of that grain is now stranded because of a Russian naval blockade.
But the United Nations is optimistic the ongoing talks in Turkiye could lead to a deal in resuming those exports. Ukraine and Russia have agreed on basic principles earlier this week and followup talks are to resume in the coming days. The U.N. secretary-general says that's a very hopeful sign.
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GHEBREYESUS: We have seen a critical step, a step forward to ensuring the safe and secure export of Ukrainian food products through the Black Sea.
In a world darkened by global crisis, today at last we have a ray of hope, a ray of hope to ease human suffering and alleviate hunger around the world, a ray of hope to support developing countries and the most vulnerable people, a ray of hope to bring a margin of much- needed stability to the global food system.
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BRUNHUBER: For more we're joined by Tymofiy Mylovanov, the president of the Kyiv School of Economics.
Thanks for being with us. Russia seems to be targeting farm fields, accused of stealing and reselling Ukrainian crop. They are accusing them of waging a war on wheat. Is that how you see it?
TYMOFIY MYLOVANOV, PRESIDENT, KYIV SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS: That's correct. They also target infrastructure, agricultural infrastructure as well as logistics by shelling. And the areas that they have occupied and later left, they took away the equipment, the farmers' equipment.
BRUNHUBER: So right now, aside from what you said, from the targeting of fields, the dangers that farmers face as well, there's also the problem of what to do with the products because of Russia's blockade of the Black Sea ports.
But there's news, a hope of a deal to allow Ukraine to export from those seaports.
How close are we, do you think, to an actual deal here?
MYLOVANOV: I'm more optimistic than let's say a week ago. I talked to the government, some officials, who are informed about the process, the progress of the talks. So there's actually a realistic hope that there will be a way to export.
BRUNHUBER: Are you worried at all that Russia may not be negotiating in good faith here?
I mean, they still have plenty of conditions apparently. And, of course, Putin would still have to sign off on the deal.
Now I think we may have -- we have lost our guest there. Well, we'll see if we can reconnect with him. We'll see if we can get him back later.
We'll be right back in a moment.
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BRUNHUBER: Several intense wildfires are burning throughout Portugal, Spain, France and Croatia, fueled by a record-breaking heat wave across Europe, including France, where 18,000 acres have been destroyed, forcing evacuations.
In Portugal health authorities say around 240 deaths between July 7 and 13th are likely caused by the heat wave.
Spanish officials say at least 84 people are thought to be dead because of sweltering temperatures. They're warning that the heat is expected to rise, along with the death toll.
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BRUNHUBER: Well, as we mentioned, Russian missiles hit the Ukrainian port city of Odessa this morning and we're receiving reports of damage. Our Ivan Watson is in Odessa.
What are you seeing there?
IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We're seeing quite clearly quite a large fire here in an industrial complex, over my shoulder here. The residents in the surrounding neighborhood that I've spoken to, they say that they heard the almost ubiquitous sound of an air raid siren around 4:00 in the morning.
And just before 5:00 am, the explosion that shattered windows in the surrounding neighborhood and clearly caused substantial damage inside this industrial complex. We're not being allowed in by the Ukrainian security forces. The firefighting is still underway right now.
We don't exactly know what the target was. The authorities are saying no one was injured in this strike. We are seeing this pattern that has been developing of a missile and rocket war on front lines, artillery between the Russian and Ukrainian forces.
But much deeper into civilian areas, rockets and missiles being hurled, dozens each day. On Thursday, reports of dozens of rockets hitting in different Ukrainian cities. The city of Mykolaiv, about two hours' drive from Odessa here, pounded repeatedly day after day, schools hit, universities hit, a hospital hit there, a hotel hit.
The city of Vinnytsia rocketed on Wednesday, with devastating results of children and civilians, dozens killed and injured there.
The eastern city of Dnipro also pounded yesterday, reports of a bus driver coming home from duty, from a day's shift, incinerated in that blast.
This is not a conflict that really discriminates between military targets and civilians. And civilians are living in this period of real terror. When you see, when you hear the air raid sirens, Kim, Ukrainians go to their phones.
[04:55:00]
WATSON: They look up websites and they see reports of which provinces, which regions are in danger. And they take to their basements, because they don't know whether or not one of these deadly projectiles could be coming through their roofs. BRUNHUBER: As you say, some 70 percent of Russian attacks have been
focused on non-military infrastructure. So again, we don't know -- we see the smoke coming over your shoulder there from the target in the industrial area.
As you said, we don't know what was in there but certainly, many, many residential areas have been targeted. Ivan Watson, appreciate your on the spot reporting there in Odesa. Thanks so much.
All right, that wraps this hour of CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Kim Brunhuber. I'll be back in just a moment with more news along with my colleague, Wolf Blitzer in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Please do stay with us.
