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Ukrainians Take Refuge in Subway Station; Russia Invades Ukraine in Large-Scale Assault; U.S. Watching Russian Assault; Angela Stent is Interviewed about the Russian Invasion of Ukraine; Global Markets Plunge. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired February 24, 2022 - 08:30   ET

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

[08:30:00]

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: (INAUDIBLE) was crying because of her just sense of panic and fear and desperation not knowing where they can go and what they can do.

I interviewed also a young man called Vladimir (ph), who speaks perfect English. He's a professional. He's really indicative of this thriving, young metropolis. And he said, we view Russia as being our brother. What kind of way is this to treat your own brother? And I think that that's a sentiment reflected by many people here.

I just want to come off again so that we can have a chance to show you people's faces here. We're going to try to move down, and you can see, people have been waiting here, some of them for hours and hours. And see they have their pets. They have their families. And there's just no sense of what happens next.

What is their new reality? Because the reality is here in Kharkiv, Russian tanks are making their way here and nobody knows what their objective is. Are they going to surround the city? Are they going to occupy the city? We heard President Putin yesterday saying that they don't believe -- that they have no intention of occupying the city. But there is so much uncertainty around this moment, and such apostasy (ph) of information coming in about what people's course of action should be.

The streets are largely deserted. We saw people buying --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you speak English?

WARD: Hi, do you speak some English?

Can you tell me, what are you doing here?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) actually we came here for studies.

WARD: You came here for studies?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

WARD: And what -- this morning, what was your reaction when you heard that --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Actually, it's very hard to -- very scary.

WARD: And what have you been told to do? What made you come to the bomb shelter?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Like I -- we got some (INAUDIBLE).

WARD: And could you hear the bombing this morning?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. Yes. I think one of backroads (ph) we heard explosions.

WARD: I'll let you go.

Sorry.

It's very crowded and a little bit chaotic down here, as you can imagine. You can hear the sounds of people's dogs barking. There's a lot of children. I don't know, Brianna (ph), if you just want to see over here. All schools in Kharkiv are closed today. And people have brought their children here for safety. They've got some snacks. They put some blankets on the floor.

But how long can people stay here without any sense of what's going to happen to their lives? Where do they go from here? What is the new reality going to be? That's a question, John and Brianna, that we just don't know yet.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Clarissa, I think it's so important for people to remember, as you're looking at all those faces in there, these are people. These are human beings right now.

WARD: Can you still hear me?

BERMAN: Yes, I can hear you, Clarissa. I hope you can stay with me.

These are the victims right now of an unprovoked attack --

WARD: Can you still hear me?

BERMAN: An unprovoked attack from Russia. And when you see scenes like this in the subway, you know, it's reminiscent --

WARD: I'm going to try and -- we're going to dial back in.

BERMAN: I'll keep talking while Clarissa dials back in. You see people there hiding in the subway stations in Kharkiv. It's, you know -- reckons back to the London blitz where people in London during World War II hid in the tube stations while the Germans were assaulting. That's what's happened in Kharkiv.

And what Clarissa said, there are also strikes too. We know there are tanks on the way. We saw the tanks rolling from this part of Russia right here, toward Kharkiv, where Clarissa is. That's what could be arriving where those people are in the next few hours.

We're going to get back to Clarissa in a moment.

CNN's special live coverage continues right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:36:27]

BERMAN: All right, this is CNN's special live breaking news coverage of the Russian aerial assault in Ukraine.

Moments ago we heard from Clarissa Ward in the city of Kharkiv, where she is with people hiding in the subway, sheltering in the subway there, akin to the London blitz.

And, Clarissa, my question to you just before we went to break, if you could hear, we have reports, and you mentioned this, that there are tanks rolling over the border from here, headed toward Kharkiv right now, headed to where you are.

What's the sense of the people there? What's the awareness from the people there, that there may be Russian ground troops where you are in the next few hours?

WARD: Well, John, I think that's exactly why you're seeing so many people. I mean we're talking hundreds of people spread out throughout this entire subway station. There are just so many people and they have absolutely no sense of what is coming next. They have heard the reports about Russian tanks heading this way. They have heard the explosions this morning. And just as we arrived here, there were more explosions. People came flooding down the stairs into this subway station.

I wanted to talk to this lady here.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi.

WARD: Tell me your name.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My name is Sveta (ph).

WARD: Sveta, tell me, how many hours have you been here in this shelter?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We've just heard about information that it's expected some -- I don't know -- explosions and we arrived maybe an hour ago.

WARD: Are you frightened? Are you scared?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sure. We just bring our necessary stuff.

WARD: What have you got with you?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I have -- I have nothing, actually.

WARD: You have nothing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, I have just (INAUDIBLE) documents and some money and mostly we can take cash because I'm not sure that I can pay by card now. And I'm not sure I can get anywhere from Kharkiv for now.

WARD: Do you have a car?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, I have van (ph). But I don't have the thought that I can be safe in Ukraine in any city.

WARD: Yes.

And this is something we're hearing a lot, John, it's this idea, people have a car, but where do they go? People have no idea in this moment where is safe to go because this is such a widespread assault targeting cities across the country. There's this sense of desperation. The only thing to do is grab what you can and come down to bomb shelters like these, which are, by the way, subway stations.

Yesterday, this would have been busy with people coming and going to work. Today, they have won't up in a new country, and they have no idea any longer what their future in it is, John.

BERMAN: Hundreds of people with you. Where do they go? As you can see, you're here in Kharkiv. You're surrounded, at this point, by enemy territory, Russia, Belarus. The entire nation of Ukraine right now targeted by air assault.

Clarissa Ward, please, you and your team, all the people you're with, stay safe. We'll come back to you in a little bit.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: All right, let's head now to Sam Kiley, also in Ukraine.

You are in Kharkiv, which is the second largest city there in Ukraine. And you've been on the receiving end, or at least outside of the city, Sam, from some artillery shells coming in from the Russian-backed area. What's it been like?

[08:40:02]

SAM KILEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we're here in downtown Kharkiv, where things are actually fairly quiet because people have been monitoring very closely these missile attacks that are coming in sporadically, but they have been coming in since an hour or two before dawn. About two hours ago now, there were a very substantial series of explosions, fairly close in, and they coincided with film that Fred Pleitgen, who's on the other side of this war (ph), about 50 miles north of where I'm standing, on the Russian side, he was able to film multiple rocket launching systems firing into -- or towards, rather, Kharkiv.

Now, we don't know exactly where those landed, but they were landing close enough to cause a slight concussion on the windows of my hotel room. And I put my hand up against it. We've also, in the last 25 or 30 minutes, seen an air strike -- or, rather, a missile strike or an artillery strike further to my south, not very far -- a bit closer in to the center of town.

The issue really now is whether or not the Russians are going to extend their operations beyond what they say they're going to limit them to, which is to military targets, attacking what would be predictable air fields, communications centers, concentrations of artillery and so on, or whether they are going to extend their battlefront and take on the Ukrainian military, who do have the capability for defense, who are claim some battlefield successes, but are also acknowledging that there is very fierce fighting in a number of locations.

North of Kyiv in particular there are real concerns that the Ukrainian capital could be encircled or attacked. There are reports coming from there of -- and this has been part of allegedly the Russian planning according to British and American intelligence, suggesting a couple of weeks ago that the plan was to effectively decapitate the political structures here, replace them with Russian puppets, possibly jail or even kill members of the opposition likely to run an insurgency campaign.

We are not even more than about 15 hours into the beginnings of this Russian campaign and we have already got reports of land troops crossing in just to my north here, north of Kyiv. We don't know whether, as Clarissa was rightly pointing out, whether the idea would be to surround Kyiv, a population here predominantly Russian, at least 75 percent Russian speaking, I should say. Fiercely, though, Ukrainian in soul.

That has changed, I think, over the last eight years since Russia's first incursion into the country. And the 14,000 or 15,000 people who were killed during that process, the local authorities here reporting some 40 military dead. They don't know how many civilian. They're saying upwards of ten. But, of course, that was several hours ago now. And, of course, sadly, those numbers, both of military dead and civilians, also increasing.

I have to say also, appearing on social media there have been claims that Russian soldiers are also dying on these rapidly evolving and fast moving front lines.

KEILAR: Look, and we just heard from our Matthew Chance there, just outside of Kyiv, the belief of government officials is that not only will Kyiv be surrounded, but that the Russian military will come straight into it and try to topple the government. So, a lot of things changing there on the ground.

Sam and Clarissa, thank you so much, live for us from Kharkiv. We do appreciate those reports.

Russia attacking Ukraine as we speak. Our CNN coverage of the ongoing assault in Ukraine continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:47:32]

BERMAN: This is CNN's special live coverage of the Russian attack on Ukraine.

Our reporter Fred Pleitgen up here across the border in Russia, seeing tanks heading into Ukraine right now. Also reports of Russian personnel heading from Belarus into Ukraine.

They are watching this very closely at the Pentagon. Our correspondent Barbara Starr standing by there.

Barbara, what are you hearing?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning again, John.

As you look at that map, and in the face of this overwhelming Russian firepower, U.S. officials familiar with the latest thinking tell us that the administration, the Biden administration, now looking at potential additional moves of U.S. troops in Europe.

Now, to be clear, President Biden, no indication he will send troops into Ukraine, not the U.S. fight. But there are U.S. troops ringing that eastern flank of NATO in all of those countries, the Baltics, Poland, Romania, those countries very nervous about Russian moves.

And now what is on the table, we understand, are -- are a number of potential options in the coming hours, possibly, possibly if the president makes a decision. You could see more U.S. troops already in Europe shifting to the east. You could see the troops who are there getting different tasks. You could see things moving around.

And indeed, earlier today, at NATO headquarters in Brussels, the top NATO military commander, who is a U.S. Air Force general, General Walters, given additional authorities to call up NATO response forces if he sees fit.

All of this really is, to some extent, as I say, and we're led to believe in the face of this Russian firepower, it is what you would expect the U.S. military looking at what it believes it may need to do next. And already today, if you are tracking it, there are a number of NATO reconnaissance aircraft, U.S. reconnaissance aircraft, up and flying in eastern Europe, not going into Ukraine air space, but flying outside of Ukraine air space, conducting surveillance but also a presence mission, showing Russia that NATO and the U.S. military are there.

John.

BERMAN: Again, this is Ukraine. This is where it's all happening right now. But here, the surrounding NATO countries where Barbara is talking about, the possibility of more troops being deployed in air reconnaissance missions now being flown. Barbara Starr, thank you very much.

STARR: Sure.

KEILAR: And with us now to discuss is Angela Stent, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of "Putin's World: Russia Against the West and With the Rest."

[08:50:09]

Angela, we're watching this unfold here over the last several hours with a swiftness and audacity that many people did not expect. But now that we're seeing this, what does this tell you about Putin's mindset and his goals?

ANGELA STENT, AUTHOR, PUTIN'S WORLD: Russia AGAINST TH WEST AND WITH THE RESET": Well, he has been consistent in both his grievances and his ambitions. He is determined to subjugate Ukraine. I think they will try and put in a government in Ukraine that's pro-Russian. He really wants to crush Ukraine.

If you listen to the diatribe on Monday night, the speech he made, the animus towards Ukraine and this belief that the Ukrainians, you know, should be ruled by Russia was very, very strong. So, I think, you know, whatever has prompted him to do this now, he wants to finish this and to get a Ukraine that will lose its independence. It's really, really tragic.

KEILAR: But this isn't going to finish it, right? I mean he must know that. If he topples this government and puts in place a pro-Russian government, he's seeing the Ukrainian resistance to that, the bloody resistance, the successful resistance to that in the past. What will it look like?

STENT: Yes. Well, the resistance will continue. There will maybe be some kind of guerrilla warfare. It will be very difficult for Russia to maintain its rule over Ukraine. Ukrainians have, over the centuries, fought for their own independence. So, I don't know how this ends. And I'm not sure Putin knows how this ends. But he's, obviously, driven to do this by his belief that this country belongs to Russia.

KEILAR: What will the brutality be like? I mean what is your expectation as we're seeing -- we've seen these air strikes. We've seen artillery shells. We're expecting ground forces to come in. What is the relation to civilian innocent life going to be like? What are you expecting this to look like?

STENT: Oh, I think the brutality will be terrible. I think we've seen in previous Russian campaigns, in Chechnya and other places, you know, they're not going to worry about civilians. They're going to do what they have to do.

So, I think we can expect this to be very brutal. And I hope that, you know, Ukrainians, I know they've been training with civil defense and things like that, that they'll be able to defend themselves. But it's going to be very, very hard for them.

KEILAR: What, if anything, would stop him?

STENT: I think at the moment nothing will stop him. I think he's unleashed this war and he's going to go until the end, whatever the end is. Hopefully we'll put very tough sanctions on Russia today, but that's not going to stop him.

He had us guessing since December, was he really interested in negotiations. We know the answer, no, he wasn't. This was all a bluff. And he was planning to do this all along and now he's doing it.

KEILAR: Yes, bad subterfuge perhaps in retrospect.

STENT: Yes. Yes, exactly.

KEILAR: Angela, thank you for being with us.

STENT: Thank you.

KEILAR: Just moments ago, CNN learned President Joe Biden convened a meeting of the National Security Council in the Situation Room to discuss these latest developments in Ukraine. Russia's attack on the country. We're going to bring you the breaking details, ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:56:57]

BERMAN: All right, the breaking news, this is the scale and scope of the aerial assault by Russia on Ukraine now. All these sites have been targeted. Explosions reported in each and every one of them.

What is one of the effects of that besides the profound human suffering? It is having a deep financial impact on markets around the world here. Look at all this red, with markets, especially in Europe and Frankfurt, just plummeting, Paris.

Our chief business correspondent Christine Romans here now with that.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Markets rattled around the world here because of that dark day in Europe, the invasion of Ukraine.

Let's start with European stocks. The invasion incredibly destabilizing. European stock markets tumbling. Germany's DAX down about 5 percent right now. And commodity prices are surging.

Russia and Ukraine are major wheat producers. Wheat futures in Paris up 15 percent to a record high. Higher commodity prices mean higher food costs around the world.

This is a dangerous, new front in the global inflation fight. To U.S. Stock index futures, all down sharply here. The S&P 500 even sliding deeper into an official correction, now down about 14 percent from its most recent high. And the Nasdaq, the Nasdaq nearing a bear market, that's a 20 percent drop from its high. That will happen today when we open here.

Putin's aggression driving global oil prices at least 8 percent higher, above 100, then 105 per barrel for the first time in eight years. Oil supplies already very tight. The concern now is disruptions from oil flows from Russia, from either fighting or from sanctions. Hitting Russia where it hurts, sanctioning its energy, that could carry a cost for the west.

The EU already facing higher home heating and electricity costs in the U.S. As you know, gas prices already at a seven-year high.

And Russian paying a deep financial price as well. A crash in its stock market. They had to pause trading there. And the ruble is at an all-time low against the dollar.

BERMAN: Yes, they lost 50 percent of its value at one point.

Can Russia sustain that kind of a hit?

ROMANS: Its central bank is going to probably step in, no question there. But the Russian government has been trying to insulate itself in past months by importing foreign currency and by doing other things to sort of ring itself off from the outcome. But clearly, clearly it's being felt there.

BERMAN: We've got about 30 seconds left, Romans.

The sanctions that the Biden administration has been discussing for next, what would that then include?

ROMANS: It could be maybe technology export controls, which could hinder the economy. It could be ringing off more members of the inner circle of Vladimir Putin. And some are talking about trying to get Russia kicked out of the swift banking system. That would be very significant, very severe. Not sure if that's on the table yet right now.

BERMAN: We saw the German and the French markets down 5 percent in one day. That's an enormous amount.

How much can they sustain? Are they built for this?

ROMANS: I mean this is war in their backyard. This is something we haven't seen since the end of World War II. So there's really no playbook here for what happens next.

You're going to see -- I mean 5 percent move in Frankfurt in one day is a very big deal.

The next move here is, what are the next level of sanctions from the EU and from the U.S., and does that deter Putin or does that hurt the global inflation picture even more?

BERMAN: Christine Romans, chief business correspondent, thank you very much.

[09:00:01]

This is just one of the many things we are watching as this Russian invasion, this large scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, that we have been watching along with Brianna Keilar, happens all morning long.

Our teams fanned out across the country into Russia. They pick up the breaking news coverage right now.