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Russia Accuses Ukraine Of Killing Daughter Of Major Putin Ally; Biden, Western Leaders Call For U.N. Watchdog Visit To Ukraine Nuclear Plant Amid Safety Fears; Dr. Anthony Fauci Announces He Will Step Down In December; 72 Percent Of Economists Expect A U.S. Recession By Mid- 2023. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired August 22, 2022 - 15:00   ET

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

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: CNN's Royal Correspondent Max Foster is in London. Max, how normal are we talking really?

MAX FOSTER, CNN ROYAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, unprecedented in royal terms, certainly not for the rest of us. So we're talking about them down shifting, basically, Victor, from this grand palace with many rooms, many members of staff in central London to a cottage on the Windsor Estate, which does have four bedrooms. It's a really lovely cottage, but they won't have any live-in staff, so it is a big change for them. We haven't seen this in the royal family before.

And in addition to that, they're taking the kids out of London schools and taking them to a local school, which is again, very prestigious and very expensive, but it is a local school. And this is all about, in their terms, looking for some normality in their lives, or the most normal lives they can have as a family.

So this is a family on their own in the house and also being very involved in the school, so a big change for them in seeking normality as opposed to achieving it, I think, Victor?

BLACKWELL: All right. I wonder if the kids weighed in on this. I don't know if there's no people helping there anymore, maybe not their vote. All right. Max Foster, thank you.

Top of a brand new hour on CNN. Thanks for staying with us. I'm Victor Blackwell.

There are growing fears that there may soon be an escalation in Ukraine after a violent attack in Moscow this weekend. The Kremlin is accusing Ukraine's intelligence officers of carrying out an assassination of the daughter of a prominent Putin ally. She was killed in a car bombing on Saturday night near the Russian capital.

Now, Russia Security Agency claims a Ukrainian woman was behind the attack and the bomb was detonated remotely. Ukraine denies any responsibility. And CNN's Fred Pleitgen is live in Moscow for us. Fred, what's the latest?

FRED PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, Victor. Well, the Russians have put out a video claiming to show this Ukrainian woman enter Russia then move into a housing complex where Darya Dugina also apparently lived to try and see the sort of daily routines of Darya Dugina carrying out the bombing and then escaping to neighboring Estonia.

Now, of course, it's unclear whether or not that was indeed really the case, but there is certainly a lot of anger here in Russia. One of the people who is now spoken out is actually Alexander Dugin, the father of Darya Dugina, who's, of course, a really important idealogue here in Russia, also very much in line with Vladimir Putin. Some people even say influential to Vladimir Putin.

He said the following, he said: "Our hearts yearn for more than just revenge or retribution. It is too small, not the Russian way. We only need our victory. My daughter laid her maiden life on the altar. So win, please."

Obviously calling towards the Russian army and that certainly seems to be a call to a further escalation in what Russia called its special military operation, of course, the war in Ukraine that has now been going on for about a half a year. So you can see that this already is something that really adds fuel to that situation.

As you mentioned, though, Victor, the Ukrainians are saying they have absolutely nothing to do with this. They are accusing the Russians of as they put it living essentially in an alternate universe and clearly saying that they are not behind what happened to Darya Dugina.

What you do see here and I think it's quite important to point out, when you're on the ground here in Russia, you do feel a lot of anger within especially the sort of upper echelons of Kremlin-controlled media and also Russian politics as well. Indeed, right now a pretty charged up situation here in Moscow, Victor.

BLACKWELL: Fred Pleitgen for us, thank you. Jeffrey Edmonds is the former director for Russia on the National Security Council. He's also a former CIA military analyst. Jeffrey, good to see you.

Let's start here with who might want to target Darya Dugina.

JEFFREY EDMONDS, FORMER DIRECTOR FOR RUSSIA, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL: I think it's very hard to say. I think this could either be an internal issue in Russia. She was actually quite critical of some of the military operations and that Russia wasn't pursuing this war in Ukraine as much as it should be, I do find it rather dubious that the FSB released a statement in 24 hours saying that the Ukrainian assassin, a mother with a daughter in tow, escaping to Estonia in a MINI Cooper to be a bit incredulous.

BLACKWELL: So then what do you expect the reaction or the retaliation after that identification of who they call suspects here will be from Russia?

EDMONDS: Right. So I do think that the Kremlin, whether it believes in this Ukrainian story or not is s likely to conduct even more attacks against Ukrainian cities. Of course, they're already doing that. They're already indiscriminately bombing the cities. But you could see an increase in that. Another thing you - that we might want to keep an eye on is if things

like this continue, the Russians might start to think that the United States has a hand in this and clearly we do not, but they think we're behind a lot of the Ukrainian in this war (inaudible) involve in this maneuver.

BLACKWELL: You mentioned that for months, we've watched Russian forces target residential areas, a myriad of civilian targets.

[15:05:06]

Do you think that this type of attack makes retaliation against specific Ukrainian government figures more likely?

EDMONDS: Well, I think that Russians have been trying to target government figures for some time. They clearly just aren't very good at targeting or they just don't have the intelligence. But I certainly think that if they believe that Ukrainian leadership was behind this, they might step that up.

BLACKWELL: What do you think the U.S. government is doing right now to try to get to the bottom of who's responsible for this car bombing?

EDMONDS: I mean, I can only imagine that the intelligence agencies are trying to figure out who's actually behind this and that may just be very difficult. If it's an internal issue to Russia that maybe only a few people know about, that would be a very hard target to get even for the intelligence community.

BLACKWELL: So the U.S. and the U.K. have sanctioned both Darya Dugina, her Father Alexander Dugin. Dugin is someone who is influential, said, over Vladimir Putin. Expound his relevance here to the Kremlin.

EDMONDS: So I would push back a little bit on how influential he is. He is influential in Russian society or certain parts of Russian society. He writes a lot. He speaks to a certain crowd there. He wasn't influential in 2014 and '15 when it seemed like his views and the Kremlin's views are more aligned but then they fell out of alignment a bit. He thought they should actually annex Donbas Eastern Ukraine and the Kremlin at the time did not do that.

So it's when his figures has a very large persona, but he kind of drift, like so many other people at Kremlin, he kind of drifts in and out of influence in different times.

BLACKWELL: Yes. There was this friend of Dugina who says that the target was actually Alexander Dugin. It was his car that he typically would be driving it. Is that more likely of a scenario considering potentially the disparity in relevance, in influence here? I mean, she certainly was on television, but he was far closer to Putin.

EDMONDS: I think that's certainly possible, especially since - from what we hear, he was going to be in a car and then just decided not to at the last minute. But I think it's also just very hard to tell.

BLACKWELL: All right. Jeffrey Edmonds, always appreciate the insight. Thank you, sir.

President Biden and Western leaders are urging the United Nations' nuclear watchdog to visit Zaporizhzhia power plant in southeastern Ukraine. Heavy shelling near the facility is raising fears of a potential nuclear disaster. Russia and Ukraine are blaming one another. And the lack of independent access to the plant, which has been occupied by Russian forces since March, has made it incredibly difficult to verify what is happening there.

Joe Cirincione is a national security expert and the author of Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World Before It Is Too Late. Joe, good to see you again. Let's start with the end game here and then work our way backwards. What likely is the Russian end game? Is it the crisis that we're watching? Is it to steal the energy? Is it to freeze out the Ukrainians in this upcoming winter? What do you think the goal is here?

JOE CIRINCIONE, AUTHOR, NUCLEAR NIGHTMARES: SECURING THE WORLD BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE: Victor, I think you just hit all three of them. Number one, this is clearly a new form of nuclear terrorism. You remember Vladimir Putin's nuclear threats at the beginning of the war to use nuclear weapons. This is another way of doing that of trying to intimidate the West, intimidate Ukraine into saying, look, stop, have a ceasefire, pull back or else there could be a nuclear disaster here.

Number two, they do want to steal the plant. They have announced plans to actually switch the - this plant which has provided about one-tenth of Ukraine's electricity at this point, with two of the six reactors operating and switch it over to the Russian power grid. So literally annexed the plant just as they're trying to annex other parts of Ukraine.

And number three, you take that much electricity out of Ukraine and you are really hurting Ukrainian society. So I'd say it's all three of those goals.

BLACKWELL: So I spoke with Professor Jeffrey Lewis. He's a nuclear expert. I said that like you all know each other. I spoke with him last week ...

CIRINCIONE: I do know him.

BLACKWELL: Okay. All right. Well, then good. So he said that an accident potentially at Zaporizhzhia could have the same impact of Chernobyl in the '80s, of Fukushima as well. Putin has to know that. The locals on the ground there have to know that. So is it worth risking that level seven maximum severity here that would have impacts on Russians as well?

CIRINCIONE: Yes. Yes. Vladimir Putin is playing with nuclear fire here. I understand what he's trying to do, we just described it, and he thinks he can control this situation. And it may be that one of his scenarios is actually to cause an accident at this plant.

[00:05:04] And there's - you could - it could be a variation of a Fukushima-type

disaster. That is some of the fuel that's stored at that plant, some of those casts could crack and be a radiation leak that would radiate the area. This - the town where most of the workers lives. Zaporizhzhia itself has about 700,000 people there, that's that would contaminate them.

If you hit the reactor, if the power was cut off, if the water supply is cut off, if there's an operational error or if the containment dome is breached, then you are looking at what Jeffrey describes as a Fukushima-type event, which would contaminate thousands, maybe 10s of thousands of square kilometers, including Russia itself.

So Putin here is showing a flagrant disregard, not just for the lives of the people in Ukraine, but also of his own citizens.

BLACKWELL: All right. So there are Western leaders who want the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, to be able to go in and inspect this facility. (Inaudible) says that after his conversation with President Macron of France that Putin agreed to that mission if the IAEA goes in. Okay, so now they're there. What can they do? Do they have any authority to take control?

CIRINCIONE: Well, just their presence, it could be enough to ensure that the basic safety mechanisms are being followed. Remember, Putin caused this crisis first by seizing the plant that had never happened before. No country has ever seized the nuclear power plant of another country and then by making the Ukrainian workers operate at gunpoint, and in the process, violating all the basic safety protocols.

You bring IAEA inspectors there and they can assure that the staff is operating without duress, that there's secure power line to pure communication lines, et cetera. That's number one. But that's not going to be enough. In order to really solve this crisis, you have to get a ceasefire around the plant. Russia is, of course, key to that and then ultimately get Russia to withdraw from the plant.

Putin created this nuclear crisis. He can solve this nuclear crisis if he can just do the sensible thing, both for the people of Ukraine and for the people of Russia itself.

BLACKWELL: All right. We'll see if that IAEA mission gets even close to the Zaporizhzhia plant. Joe Cirincione, I appreciate the expertise. Thank you.

After decades of leading the country's response to the public health threats, Dr. Fauci says he is stepping down. Details on his exit.

And the troubling news studies shows advanced stage cervical cancer is on the rise among white and black women. What's behind this disturbing trend, that's next.

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[15:17:00] BLACKWELL: Dr. Anthony Fauci announced today that he will step down

in December. He said, in part, "While I am moving on from my current positions, I'm not retiring. After more than 50 years of government service, I plan to pursue the next phase of my career while I still have so much energy and passion for my field."

CNN White House Correspondent MJ Lee is with us now. So Dr. Fauci, he's become a household name since the onset of the pandemic. But he started at the National Institutes of Health more than 50 years ago. He's now 81 years old, what's next?

MJ LEE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. He had said previously that he was unlikely to stay in government, past President Biden's first term in office. And he confirmed today that he is in fact going to be leaving government by the end of the year in December.

And it is difficult to overstate just what a big figure he is in the space of public health. He has served in government for more than five decades under seven different presidents of different political parties and he really saw the country go through different major public health crises from HIV and AIDS to Ebola to Zika. And then, of course, in the last two years or so he has really become the face of the country's fight against the COVID pandemic, and in some ways, has been a divisive figure.

He has been a real hero to so many people across the country, sort of the voice of reason and talking about the science of the pandemic and trying to reassure people through a very scary time. And for other people, he is more of sort of the villain figure. He represented for a lot of people, the government essentially being able to tell people you should do this or shouldn't do that, as we got through the COVID pandemic.

And President Biden who is vacationing here right now, in Rehoboth Beach, he put out a lengthy statement, expressing his gratitude for Dr. Fauci's service to the country. He said, in part, "I've been able to call him at any hour of the day for his advice as we've tackled this once-in-a-generation pandemic. His commitment to the work is unwavering and he does it with an unparalleled spirit, energy and scientific integrity. Whether you've met him personally or not, he has touched all Americans lives with his work, I extend my deepest thanks for his public service. The United States of America is stronger, more resilient, and healthier because of him."

As you noted though, Victor, Fauci making clear that this isn't retirement, He is going to continue work in the science and public health field and he said it was important for him to do that while he's still have the energy to do so.

BLACKWELL: All right. So we've got the announcement from Dr. Fauci. When are we expecting that announcement from the Biden administration on student debt?

LEE: Yes. The Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said over the weekend that this is an announcement and a decision that is expected in the next week or so. This is what he said. MIGUEL CARDONA, EDUCATION SECRETARY: We know August 31st is a date

that many people are waiting to hear something from. We've been talking to lie about this and I can tell you that American people will hear within the next week or so.

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[15:20:05]

LEE: Now, he mentioned August 31st, that is when the current pause on student loan payments is set to expire. So the decision that we are waiting on from the administration, which has been a long time coming, is whether there might be another extension or whether there might be an announcement on cancellation of a certain amount of student loan debt per person.

Now, the White House has previously floated the amount of around $10,000 per family, but that would also be income dependent. And obviously, at this moment in time when a lot of people are feeling the pressures of high inflation, that kind of cancellation would mean a lot for a lot of families. So a lot of people just eagerly awaiting that announcement, Victor?

BLACKWELL: Indeed. MJ Lee, thank you.

Stocks are plunging, investors are worried again that the Fed will raise rates and there's a new survey that shows that vast majority of economists expect the recession by the middle of next year. Details next.

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BLACKWELL: All right. Markets are down right now. Let's put up the big board. Dow Jones, S&P and NASDAQ all down. You see here the Dow down a little more than 600 points. This is after a pessimistic report from some economists over the chances of a recession. Let's talk now with CNN Business Reporter Matt Egan and CNN Business Correspondent Rahel Solomon.

Matt, let's start with you. Why is this happening?

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Well, the mood on Wall Street is definitely darkened in just the last few days. I think markets were kind of in party mode. They were celebrating the last two months the idea that maybe the Federal Reserve could start to slow down its war on inflation, maybe inflation is peaking.

I think some reality is setting in, in just the last few days that the Fed is nowhere near done raising interest rates. And the problem is that the more they do, the greater the risk that they overdo it. Because remember, the Fed is - they're raising rates at a pace we haven't seen in decades and yet the impact of those rate hikes, it takes months to actually hit the economy.

So their concern is that they're not going to realize that they've overdone it until it's too late and so I think that that's what's worrying the market this idea of a potential slowdown and potential recession and that the Fed could keep raising rates.

RAHEL SOLOMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And the hope was that, oh, well, maybe we've gotten through it, right? I mean, we started to see those eases in headline inflation. But we all knew that that was because of energy coming down, right? I mean, when you look under the hood of the inflation report, you still saw inflation accelerating for really important categories like food, like shelter.

Shelter, by the way, makes up three quarters of top line inflation, and that was still accelerating. So the same old problems have persisted, but we got some sort of good news on the top line and maybe that sort of had led to a, as Matt pointed out, some feeling like there was a little bit of a party. But clearly the music has come to an end at least today.

BLACKWELL: So there are some reports coming out this week. What indicators are you going to be looking for to determine if the party can continue?

SOLOMON: Well, there are a lot of reports this week, right? So tomorrow, we get some really important data on the housing front, we get new home sales. On Wednesday, we get durable goods for the month of July. Thursday, weekly jobless claims and we'll get the revision for the Q2 GDP. We know that we have now seen two negative quarters.

So we might see a pretty significant revision regardless of whether it's revised up or whether it remains negative, you better believe on Thursday, we're going to be talking about a recession because that's going to reignite those conversations. That said, I'm going to be watching Friday, the inflation report PCE. That's the Feds preferred inflation gauge, it's a bit broader than CPI.

I do think that we will see some pretty sharp declines in inflation. However, I think July was just a really interesting month because we saw those declines in energy. When I asked Diane Swonk, the Chief Economist of KPMG, what she's going to be watching, she said she too is going to be watching Friday, but she's going to be watching the Jackson Hole conference. We're going to hear from Fed Chairman Jay Powell. She herself will be there. But she said she's going to be watching for language, tone. She expects Chairman Powell to remain very hawkish, very aggressive in terms of fighting inflation, so that's something - that's also going to be watched very closely toward the end of the week. But it's a pretty big week, economically.

BLACKWELL: Yes. And speaking of tone and expectations of what's coming next, there's this new survey economist of what they expect on the economic picture in the next year or so.

EGAN: Yes, from the National Association of Business Economics. One in five economists say the U.S. economy is already in recession, other 52 percent, 53 percent. Say that they expect the recession by the middle of next year. So you put it together, you almost have three in four saying we're either in a recession or one is coming very soon.

Now, we should caution that these economists don't have a crystal ball, right? They've been wrong before. Also, this report does not talk about the severity of a recession, right? Hopefully, if there is a downturn, it's a mild one, not a deep recession like the great recession.

And also, listen, there are a lot of positives about the economy right now. I mean, the jobs market is still somehow on fire, right, almost more than half a million jobs added in July alone. The lowest unemployment rate tied for the lowest since 1969.

[15:30:02]

Also gas prices, something that we've talked about a lot. They are down 69 days in a row.