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Ukraine And Supreme Court Pick In State Of The Union Spotlight; Russia's Currency Crashing As West Targets Country's Banks; Fighting Escalates As Russians Face Pushback From Ukraine. Aired 5:30-6a ET

Aired February 28, 2022 - 05:30   ET

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

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[05:32:45]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Russia's invasion of Ukraine pushing foreign policy front and center for President Biden's State of the Union speech tomorrow night, along with the president's nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to be the first African-American woman on the Supreme Court.

CNN's Jeremy Diamond is joining us now on this. OK, on Ukraine, do we have an idea of what he is going to be saying in his speech?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's certainly going to be a central part of the speech just given this moment that we are right now facing in this country.

President Biden, I'm told, is expected to talk about this crisis and about what he has been doing to kind of build up this coalition of U.S. and European allies in order to stand up to Putin. The sanctions that we have seen over the last several days have really evolved in large part because of the U.S. leadership around this topic because of what President Biden alongside the Ukrainian president have done to get European allies to the point where they're willing to do things like this SWIFT -- these SWIFT sanctions, for example -- removing Russian banks from that financial -- global financial messaging service.

We heard the White House press secretary Jen Psaki talk yesterday about how this also fits in the theme that we have heard from President Biden before of democracy standing up to autocracy. That's something that President Biden talked about last year during his first joint address to Congress and now, obviously, has new and much more forceful meaning.

But beyond that, this is also going to be President Biden's first and, really, the biggest opportunity yet for him to talk to the American people and to level with them about the cost of what the U.S. is doing here in standing up to Russia and also the reasons for why. We have heard President Biden talk about this before but this is going to be his biggest audience yet to really talk to the American public at large about why the U.S. is doing what it's doing as it relates to Ukraine -- the possibilities of higher gas prices and other prices at a time when there is already inflation. And it's not like he doesn't have other things to talk about.

Inflation already is a problem. Gas prices are already a problem. You've got the next phase of the coronavirus pandemic that President Biden wants to prepare the American public for.

And he has some wins to talk about, too, as you just referenced. The Supreme Court is something that the president is obviously going to want to talk about -- that history-making pick that he has selected.

[05:35:00]

So, no shortage of topics. It's already difficult, usually, for advisers at the White House to get one line or two lines in the president's speech. But there's going to be a lot of -- a lot of things for him to discuss tomorrow.

KEILAR: It's going to be really interesting to see how he divides talking about challenges versus touting successes, so we'll be staying tuned for that.

Jeremy, thank you so much -- Berman.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: This is satellite imagery of the large Russian convoy seen in the last 24 hours moving towards Kyiv -- three miles long -- with troops and supplies. Just to give people a sense of how close it is, you can see here on this map it's up here in this city, Ivankiv. This was yesterday. Only about 20-30 miles away from Kyiv right there.

Joining me now is a Ukrainian member of Parliament who is in Kyiv right now, Lesia Vasylenko. Thank you so much for being with us. Talk to me about what the last 12 hours have been like in Kyiv.

LESIA VASYLENKO, UKRAINIAN MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT: Hell continues -- hell that was unleashed by President Putin and his huge million-people army, which is invading -- no, infesting Ukraine from every single side. They are just moving in closer and closer on Kyiv with their tanks -- with their armored vehicles. They are hitting us from the sky everywhere. Around the country, we have several simultaneous airstrike attacks.

Basically, all our children are in constant stress, sleeping under stairs, in cellars, in metro stations.

And -- well, every morning we all wake up and just are so happy to see the sky and to see the sun and to know that we are alive. We are alive in an independent Ukraine, which is still standing.

BERMAN: Now, you tweeted out a photo of your daughter this morning. What has this been like?

VASYLENKO: (INAUDIBLE) of my daughter? Seriously?

BERMAN: Well, I see a picture here of a child reading. What's it been like --

VASYLENKO: Oh, no, no. That's just not a -- yes, OK. That was fine because I was just concerned.

BERMAN: OK.

VASYLENKO: I wouldn't tweet my children at the moment. I think it is a really, really high security risk to -- for anyone to be posting their kids.

BERMAN: My question, though, what has this been like for the children living through these long nights of aerial bombardment?

VASYLENKO: You know, we will know the consequences in the years that will come after this war is over. At the moment, the children, as the adults, are standing strong and are standing confident that the war will end and that Ukraine will win.

But children always ask the same question. When will this end, mommy? How many more days of war? When can I go back to my home? When can we go out and buy a croissant on Sunday and eat it in the park and feed the pigeons? And that's just the reality, which I am not able to offer my children and which Ukrainian mothers do not know when they will be able to go back to with their kids.

BERMAN: Again, I want to show people right now where we saw those pictures of this Russian convoy moving in. The city, Ivankiv, right here -- it's 20-30 miles north of Kyiv moving toward the city.

Are you conscious of the approach of Russian troops?

VASYLENKO: Yes, we are conscious -- especially myself and other members of Parliament. We are all conscious of the approaches of Russian troops. As I said, they are like vermin. They are just infesting the whole country everywhere. Our armed forces are hitting their military targets -- these columns (ph) or armored vehicles and tanks, which are approaching.

And the Russians -- they are just keeping on the move. They don't even stop to pick up their bodies. We have over 5,000 Russian soldiers dead within the five days of war and the fifth day is just started. And they are not picking up their bodies. They are not sending their dead home. This is another liability imposed on Ukraine and it's as if we don't have any other things to deal with.

We have Russian fighter jets in the sky. We have Russian missiles thrashing at our civilian residential areas -- our civilians who are simply walking in the streets. And now we have to deal with their dead and the bodies of their soldiers as well.

This is insane. They -- it's like they are completely inhuman and like savages just pushing in with one sole task to destroy Kyiv and to destroy Ukraine.

BERMAN: Lesia Vasylenko, please stay safe. Thank you for being with us this morning.

VASYLENKO: Thank you. BERMAN: The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, asking for help, restricting Russia from his nation's skies. He wants to set up a no- fly zone over Ukraine. The United States says it is not willing to take that risk to get more directly involved. We have a live report coming up.

[05:40:02]

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BERMAN: Welcome back. This is CNN's special live coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

We have seen reports over the last several hours that Russian forces have been turned back in several places, including here -- the city of Kharkiv; down here, the city of Mykolaiv. We know there is a convoy -- a Russian convoy with a lot of equipment moving toward Kyiv right now.

[05:45:00]

What is U.S. intelligence saying about what's happening on the ground? I'm joined by CNN's Katie Bo Lillis. Katie Bo, what are you hearing?

KATIE BO LILLIS, CNN REPORTER: Yes. Look, all eyes on Kyiv this morning, John. How long can Kyiv withstand this Russian advance?

You know, look, just on Friday, sources were telling myself and our colleague Jim Sciutto that nothing had happened to change the longstanding U.S. intelligence assessment that Kyiv was really only likely to hold out one to four days in the event of a full-scale Russian invasion. Well, obviously, we are -- we are outside of that window at this point.

I spoke to a senior Western intelligence official over the weekend who said look, part of that accounts for the fact that the Ukrainians know they have to hold Kyiv. They don't have a choice. It's the seat of their national government. It's where their president is. It's really the symbol of the -- the symbol of the identity and existence of the nation that they are trying to save.

Now, that said, we don't want to be too optimistic here even as the Ukrainians have performed better than expected. You know, none of the sources that I think we are speaking to have forgotten the fact that the Ukrainians are still massively outgunned, outmanned, and there is a sense of inevitability sort of hanging over Kyiv here.

I think one of the big sort of wildcard questions here for U.S. intelligence officials is if this becomes a kind of grinding campaign for Kyiv, as sort of seems to be the case right now, how does Russian President Vladimir Putin respond? You know, if he's watching sort of rolling footage of the glorious Russian military being turned back by this kind of ragtag band of Ukrainian military forces that he doesn't even believe has the right to exist, does he -- how does he respond?

And this, sort of, at a moment I think that we are starting to see signals kind of leaking out from behind the scenes that the U.S. intelligence community is beginning to have -- possibly have some questions about Putin's rationality here. You know, how rational of an actor is he? So that's a -- that's a big wildcard here, John, for officials trying to predict what happens next and how Putin responds.

BERMAN: Yes. That is something we're going to be talking about in- depth coming up.

Katie Bo Lillis, please keep us posted. Thank you.

LILLIS: My pleasure.

KEILAR: Western sanctions on Russia showing another immediate effect. The Russian Central Bank this morning more than doubling its key interest rate to 20 percent -- doubling it.

Joining us now is CNN White House correspondent John Harwood. And, I mean, that is something. This is the effect that the Biden administration wanted to see.

How significant was this John with the Biden administration deciding to pull some of these Russian banks from SWIFT?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: It's extremely significant, Brianna. I think what happened was not just the United States but European leaders were shocked both by the extent of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the bravery of Ukrainians, including Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president. And against that backdrop, when Zelensky began saying I don't need a ride, I need ammo -- I need you to take stronger economic action -- at that point, leaders discarded their concerns about blowback on domestic constituents.

You know, Europe had resisted some of these steps because of concern about rising energy prices. The United States was concerned about that as well. They've tried to construct this sanctions package to carve out energy so that it doesn't blow back on people in the United States and in Europe. But they set aside that risk and went forward, and it's a dramatic step.

You mentioned that the stock market is going to be closed. The ruble was down 30 percent. The sanctions on the Central Bank are designed to prevent Russia from protecting the ruble. And we're in a situation where we're going to have to watch this unfold over the next several days.

But we're seeing the Russian economy potentially being brought to its knees. Now, what is the effect of that on Vladimir Putin's calculations? We don't know the answer, as Katie Bo was just saying. We don't know how rational he is or whether he would react in a harsher way in response to those sanctions.

But the unity of European countries and the United States -- NATO countries and allies in other parts of the world is remarkable at this moment trying to stand by Ukraine, knowing that we're not poised to send troops on the ground. So, those allies are doing what they can and it's having an effect on Russia. KEILAR: Yes, the pain is real. We're watching it there in numbers.

John Harwood, thank you so much, live for us here in Washington.

Ukrainians are fleeing the fighting in droves. For many, crossing the border into neighboring Poland has been a battle of its own. We'll look at that next.

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[05:54:05]

BERMAN: All right, welcome back. This is CNN's special live coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

At this moment, there are actually talks underway between Russian and Ukrainian delegations. Those talks happening in -- near the city of Gomel, up here in Belarus. We are waiting for reporting about what's going on in those talks. Ukraine is demanding an immediate ceasefire.

Meanwhile, over the last several hours, we have heard reports of Russian forces being turned back, blocked by the Ukrainians in the port city of Mykolaiv, in Kharkiv up here. But meanwhile, the Russian assault very much continues.

We have seen satellite images of large convoys of troops and material headed toward Kyiv. This is happening not far from Kyiv, about 20 miles away. Let me see if I can show you here. This is up here in the city of Ivankiv, about 20 to 30 miles north of Kyiv, heading toward the city. So, right now, a great deal of focus on this city of Kyiv right here -- you can see again -- with troops moving toward it.

[05:55:04]

We're going to have a live report from the ground there in just a minute.

CNN's special live coverage continues right after this.

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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BERMAN: Good morning to our viewers here in the United States and all around the world. It is Monday, February 28th. I'm John Berman with Brianna Keilar.

And we do begin with breaking news on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

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