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Russians Escalate Attacks on Major Ukrainian Cities; Russians Strike Oil Depot in Chernihiv; China Asked Russia to Delay Invasion Until After Olympics. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired March 03, 2022 - 06:00   ET

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

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

[05:59:23]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to viewers here in the United States and around the world. It is Thursday, March 3, and I'm Brianna Keilar with John Berman.

We're beginning with breaking news. The first major Ukrainian city seized by Russian forces. Kherson is a strategically critical port city of about 300,000 people near the Black Sea. And the mayor confirming that Russian soldiers have entered city hall to begin installing a new administration. He urged his people to follow their orders.

And new images just coming in, showing how the Russians are intensifying the air war. A shell hit an oil depot in Chernihiv, about 50 miles North of Kyiv. So far, no word on victims or injuries there.

Also, new satellite images from Maxar Technologies of the region, showing that homes are on fire, buildings have been leveled, huge craters visible, and further South, explosions continuing to rock the Ukrainian capital, one of them lighting up the sky overnight.

In Kharkiv, at least three schools have been hit by Russian military strikes. Schools. No injuries reported there. But Kharkiv authorities say 34 civilians have been killed in the city in the last 24 hours alone.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So as Russian forces bombard city after city, Ukrainians, they are refusing to give up. Protestors in Mariupol (ph) stared down Russian military vehicles.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE) GRAPHIC: Occupiers! Occupiers! Go home! Go home! We are unarmed. Nazis!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: "Go home, go home. We are unarmed." Dozens of unarmed Ukrainians trying to push back those Russian troops. They were eventually forced aside. The convoy did pass through.

Moments ago, I spoke with the deputy mayor of Mariupol. This is on the Sea of Azov. This is a strategically vital city here. This city, at this point, being cut off by Russian troops that have surrounded it. Russian forces all the way around it. The deputy mayor said he thinks they can hold out for several more days, but he says they need help fast.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DEPUTY MAYOR SERGEI ORLOV, MARIUPOL, UKRAINE: Their style of war is to make humanitarian creases (ph). For example, we do not have electricity in whole city. We do not have water supply. We do not have sanitary system, and we do not have heating. Only natural gas supply is left. And that continues for one day and a half.

So we have continuous shelling for 26 hours. Twenty-six hours, they are destroying our city. So from all the weapons, from artillery, from airplane bombardment, from tactical rockets, from multiple launch rocket system. So situation is very bad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: "Twenty-six hours," he says, "they are destroying our city."

Now, about 1 million Ukrainians have now fled the country since the beginning of the invasion. The United States [SIC] -- sorry, the United Nations, I should say, says it has recorded more than 750 civilian casualties in the last seven days, but that number is probably on the low end.

And this just in. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says the Russian delegation is waiting to speak to the Ukrainian delegation today in what would be the second round of talks.

Let's begin our coverage. Bringing in Scott McLean, who is in Lviv in the western part of Ukraine this morning.

Scott, obviously, some of these cities being attacked. Mariupol very much under siege.

SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. You can imagine what life is like there, John, for the people in that city. As you heard there from the deputy mayor, 26 hours of continuous shelling. No water, no sewage, no electricity. Only the natural gas supply left in place there.

It is also not looking good in some other cities around Ukraine. Kherson has fallen to the Russians. It appears the mayor says the Ukrainian forces are no longer there. He says that armed people, in his words, came to the city administration and said that there would be a new administration set up, similar to the one in the breakaway regions of Eastern Ukraine.

People are being urged to stay inside. The mayor says that the Ukrainian flag is still in place, but in order for it to stay that way, people need to follow directions.

But it doesn't seem like they're very willing to do that. We have seen new video, scenes of defiance. Ukrainians waving their flag in front of Russian tanks, Russian soldiers who have been parked out front of the city administration building.

It is a similar situation in the small town of Konotop in the Northeastern of Ukraine. That is where people had been confronting soldiers. They had been standing in front of tanks, as well.

The mayor there says that there is, at least, some kind of an understanding with the Russians that no one will shoot. The Ukrainian flag will stay in place. But also, the Russian artillery that's surrounding this city, that will also stay in place for the time being.

President Zelensky said this morning that humanitarian aid is getting into the country, getting to where it needs to go. He also said that arms are coming in from foreign allies abroad.

And, John, I just want to talk a little bit, as well, about the refugee situation here in Lviv. I was at the train station yesterday where we are seeing things a lot less chaotic than they have been in past days.

It is much easier to exit through the land borders. And that's taking pressure off of the trains. Though there is still a steady stream of people trying to exit the city.

It is, by and large, almost entirely women and children. I spoke to one man, though, who is in line, because he stood out, obviously, amongst the crowd.

And he was there not to board a train. A Ukrainian man of fighting age. He was there to see off his wife and his daughter, standing in line with them for hours on end, walking them all the way to the platform and the train, just to spend those last few hours with them. And it was amazing to see this very emotional moment of them saying good-bye, of course, because they don't know when they will see each other again.

This morning, that man is going to enlist in the military to defend his country -- John.

BERMAN: These are the life turning points that so many Ukrainians are facing at this moment. Scott McLean in Lviv, thank you.

So we have new video this morning showing the damage from a powerful explosion near Kyiv's central train station. Ukrainian officials say thousands of women and children were being evacuated from the station at the time of the strike.

CNN's Alex Marquardt, live on the outskirts of Kyiv with the latest on, really, the plight of the Ukrainian capital -- Alex.

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John. We are now, of course, a week into this war, and we are getting just nonstop reports of attacks and Russian strikes from all across the country. A reminder that this country is surrounded on three sides by Russian forces.

But of course, all eyes are on the capital as Russian forces seek to encircle it and, of course, topple the government here.

That blast that you're referencing, we believe to be the biggest one in the center of Kyiv that we have seen so far. It happened on Wednesday evening, right near that central railway station that so many people have been using to flee the country, to head west to safety, just you know, what Scott McLean was just talking about, heading west towards him in Lviv.

The blast damaged a platform at the railway station. But it also, very importantly, hit a major gas heating pipeline. It's not clear what the target was.

The interior ministry here believes that it was a Russian cruise missile that was intercepted by their anti-aircraft system. And so that it was damaged from that interception, that hit this.

But it really does raise concern about what the Russians may be doing in terms of their targeting in and around Kyiv, specifically, whether they may be going after heating.

We've also been worried that they might be going after the electricity grid, of course. And communications. Russians themselves saying that they do plan to try to -- do plan to hit communications infrastructure to stop what they call the information attacks on Russia. They know that they are losing the narrative. They know that they are losing this information war.

Just yesterday, John, you and I were speaking from the site of a Russian strike on Kyiv's TV tower, just three miles from the city's center.

So Russia stepping up their attacks. We saw earlier today a strike in Chernihiv, which is North of Kyiv, right near the Belarus border, on an oil depot. No word of casualties yet, but a huge plume of smoke is seen. This oil depot has a capacity of some 3,000 cubic meters. That's 660,000 gallons.

That town has seen a lot of fighting. It has -- it has been hit hard by the Russian advance.

Now, of course, we're also keeping a very close eye on this column of Russian vehicles that is coming towards Kyiv. All of those vehicles had to come across from that border, from Belarus, where they had been, they said, exercising. Of course, we know that they had been pre-positioning now for this invasion.

This convoy, some 40 miles long. It's stretched way out. It's about 20 miles, or 30 kilometers North of the city. It is of great concern. But at the same time, British and American officials say that it has stalled. It has come to a stop; that it has made no significant advances in the past 24 to 36 hours, they said yesterday.

And that, they believe, is due to a number of reasons. That they are having technical issues. They're having breakdowns, that they are having issues of fueling and feeding their troops. That there is Ukrainian resistance.

We have, of course, seen Ukrainian resistance, Ukrainian forces hitting Russian columns elsewhere around Kyiv. And at the same time, they believe the Russians are regrouping, reassessing and perhaps plotting their next move.

So keeping a close eye on that. It is of significant concern. But of course, we're also watching for the aerial bombardments of Kyiv, which appeared to step up, to increase overnight -- John.

BERMAN: All right. Alex Marquardt, stand by. Keep us posted, please.

KEILAR: All right. Let's take a closer look now at the Russian advance with our CNN military analyst, retired Air Force Colonel Cedric Leighton.

[06:10:04]

Cedric, I know you're keeping your eye specifically on this. Tell us about this.

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Right, Brianna. So what we're seeing this morning is this thrust toward the Kyiv area is very interesting, because it's coming from, first of all, Russian territory. And it's possibly a movement to go into the city from the Northeast.

The other part of this is, we already know about this movement right here. This is where that long convoy is, that 40-mile-long convoy that seems to have stalled out. Well, it's possible these forces could join together. And if they do that, then they could move together either this way or this way and, potentially, surround Kyiv in a -- in a pincer-like movement that then would cut off the city from the rest of the country at that point.

KEILAR: And tell us about the change in Kherson and also about the challenges that the Russian military is going to have holding this.

LEIGHTON: Right. So let's go to Kherson. This is, of course, in the Southern part of Ukraine. Kherson is right here. It is a port city of about 300,000 people.

Notice that the Russians have already moved up. They've controlled Kherson, but they're also moving up to the town of Mykolaiv right here, not too far, by the way, from the main port of Odessa.

So if Russia controls this area right here, what they will effectively do is control the entire Black Sea coast of Ukraine. Between this area and that area, and the Sea of Azov over there, they're basically working their way so that they can control the coastline of Ukraine, making it a landlocked country.

KEILAR: You talk to us about some of the weapons that we're seeing, the weapons that we've seen, perhaps, used but certainly that are on the move here.

LEIGHTON: Right. So one of the areas in which these weapons show up is in the Kharkiv region. Kharkiv, of course, in the Northeastern part of Ukraine. This area right here, this is Ukraine's second largest city.

And you note that right now we have Russian forces in the area, to the North, Northwest and Northeast of Kharkiv. Well, this is the area where we've actually seen the Toss One, the TOS-1 flamethrower. In essence, what it is, it's is a thermobaric bomb, and it is designed to actually suck out the air of the target that they're going after.

So if you're going after a particular emplacement of troops, the bomb hits. It takes the air out of the area, the enclosed area that they're in. And that's one of the biggest -- biggest problems that Ukrainian forces have, is bombs like that.

KEILAR: And what happens to those troops?

LEIGHTON: What happens to those troops? They die, unfortunately. What it is, very hard to survive something like that. Gas masks really don't protect you. It is one of the worst forms of combat weapon that we've seen. And in fact, they're illegal under the Geneva Convention.

KEILAR: It's barbaric.

LEIGHTON: It is.

KEILAR: Cedric, thank you so much for taking us through hall of this.

LEIGHTON: All right, Brianna.

KEILAR: So at least three schools in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv have been hit by Russian military strikes as the Kremlin continues to baselessly claim that it is not targeting civilians.

Also, yachts, private jets and luxury apartments. How Russian oligarchs may finally be paying a price for Putin's war.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:17:24]

BERMAN: We do have some new video just in. You can see here an oil depot that was hit in an airstrike. This is in the Northern city of Chernihiv. You can hear the sirens there. You can see the firefighters trying to put the blaze out. This will go on for some time. Just some of the damage to the Ukrainian infrastructure being

inflicted at this moment by the Russians.

We can show you on the map where this is. This is in the Northern city of Chernihiv.

The other major news this morning is the first major Ukrainian city to fall to the Russian military, the Southern city of Kherson near the Black Sea, a strategically important city, now in the hands of the military. That's according to the mayor of Kherson.

Joining us now is Vladislav Davidson, Atlantic Council fellow and journalist. He is on the ground in Ukraine right now in Chernowitz (ph), near the Romanian border.

Vladislav, thank you so much for being with us. I want to talk about Kherson, if I can, for a second. The significance now of the first fairly large city to fall to the Russian military. What do you think?

VLADISLAV DAVIDSON, ATLANTIC COUNCIL FELLOW/JOURNALIST: It's both symbolically important and also strategically somewhat important. But the Ukrainian forces made a decision to concentrate on Kharkiv and Kyiv, their resources and their manpower.

They fought extremely well in Kherson. And -- and they fought like demons for that city. Many people, including myself, are surprised that it held on for as long as it did. But ultimately, they -- they pulled back forces to defend Mykolaiv. So my family's able, Odessa, is not taken. And they pulled back resources to the North, so as to defend Kharkiv and Kyiv.

But Kherson is important, but it's not the most important thing. And they abandoned it, essentially, after putting up a heroic fight.

BERMAN: Now, you mentioned you're from Odessa. Not to get too personal, you still have family there. Have you been able to speak with them? What are their immediate concerns?

DAVIDSON: Not personal role, but this is what I want to talk about. My -- my father-in-law is living right outside the airport. My -- my mother-in-law, blessed memory -- she died exactly one year ago of COVID -- was an airport traffic controller at the Odessa Airport.

My very depressed and very lonely father-in-law, he lost his wife of 50 years to COVID, does not want to leave. I'm trying to get him out. I'm going to call him immediately after we get off the phone. I have other relatives in Odessa, my wife's relatives.

[06:20:07]

My young nephew view is of military age. I'm not going to be able to get him out, because men are not allowed out if they're younger than 55 or 60. I think it's 55.

I don't know what to say. They're about to attack my beloved Odessa. wrote an entire book about Odessa called "From Odessa with Love." It's a city I love very much. I've lived. I ran a magazine; somewhere I've reported from for years. My friends are there; my family is there. It is an important jewel of Russian (ph) culture outside Russia. It is an important Ukrainian port town. It's a remarkable place for world culture, historically for -- for both the Greek and the Jewish nationalist struggles were born there. Like Zionism and Greek national independence were born in the city of Odessa.

It's a remarkable town. It now has a Russian fleet full of amphibious landing craft on its way there.

BERMAN: I mean, you talked about Kherson maybe not being the most important thing. If the Russians do gain control, you know, of more of this Black Sea coast up to the Sea of Azov, what are the implications there?

DAVIDSON: Well, I mean, it's going to totally change the security architecture of, first of all, Ukraine, obviously, but also of all of Europe. This will change completely, if the Black Sea becomes a Russian lake. This will change security implications for Bulgaria, for Romania, for Moldova, certainly for Turkey. There will be Russian fleets continuously operating in the Black Sea.

The -- I'm not going to go into too much now, but America and Russia have a complicated relationship in the Black Sea. And the Turkish navy is continuously butting up against the Russian navy in the Black Sea.

If they take that port, it's going to totally change the security structure and the security alliance architecture for a bunch of NATO countries and a bunch of European Union countries.

BERMAN: Yes. I know it has major implications going forward. Vladimir Putin trying to change the map of Europe as we speak.

Vladislav Davidson, I hope your family is OK in Odessa. I hope you're able to get the ones who want to get out, out. Thank you for being with us this morning.

DAVIDSON: Thank you so much for your kind words.

BERMAN: A new report overnight that China asked Russia to delay invasion of Ukraine until after the Olympics. We have new details coming in. That's ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:26:54]

KEILAR: New reporting confirmed by CNN that Western intelligence indicates China asked Russia to delay the invasion of Ukraine until after the Winter Olympics.

China responded to this reporting, saying, "'The claims mentioned in the relevant reports are speculations without any basis and are intended to blame-shift and smear China."

Joining us now is former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, William Taylor. Ambassador, thanks for being with us this morning. I do wonder what your reaction is to this reporting and also China's response to it.

WILLIAM TAYLOR, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO UKRAINE: So, Brianna, this -- it confirms kind of what we had heard before, of course. It is -- is China being in a tough position.

So China, who has a lot of investments in Ukraine, did not want Russia to invade Ukraine. That was clear. It is interesting that they exchanged this information early on.

But, as I say, it confirms what we knew. It confirms the -- the intelligence that the United States government had and was putting out, that the Russians were about to invade. The timing was not clear. We remember Jake Sullivan, national security adviser, saying that it could come within the time of the Olympics or just after. And it turned out it was just after.

KEILAR: Can you speak now, just more broadly, about the situation in Ukraine? What -- what is this point in this conflict? How are you seeing it?

TAYLOR: Brianna, I'm seeing this as amazing resistance on the part of the Ukrainians. Here we are, eight days in. Many people -- probably many people in the Kremlin thought that this would be a quick win for the Russians and they would be in Kyiv and would topple the government right away. Well, it didn't happen.

The Ukrainians resisted, are still resisting. And Brianna, where it goes, I think -- I am sure that the Ukrainians will continue to resist from wherever. This will be a continuity. This will -- this will continue. The Ukrainians will continue to resist from wherever, from across the country. And we should continue to support them.

KEILAR: What do you make of these weapons that we're hearing about that are either being used or are on the move? You have these cluster munitions, which are -- these are designed just to kill people. Little bits and pieces flying off of other munitions.

And then this thermobaric -- thermobaric bomb capability, which if used in an enclosed space, sucks the oxygen out of the room, essentially drowning anyone that this would come into contact with in an enclosed space. What do you make of the potential use of these?

TAYLOR: War crimes. This is barbaric. To go after cities, to go after civilian targets, to use these kind of barbaric weapons against innocent people.

Again, we remember, this was an unprovoked attack. There's no justification for the Russians invading Ukraine, none. And no justification for them attacking civilians with these kinds of weapons. These kinds of weapons are barred. These kinds of weapons are -- represent war crimes.