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Karina Orlova is Interviewed about Russia Shutting Down Independent Media; Russia Attacks a Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine; White House Worries Putin will L ash Out. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired March 04, 2022 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00]

KARINA ORLOVA, JOURNALIST, ECHO OF MOSCOW RADIO: In new (ph) Russia. It was founded in 1919 when the Soviet Union fell apart. And the only time, until yesterday, it had been cut of air was in 1991. The coup attempt by the KGBs. The coup attempt failed, and there was new (ph) Russia in Echo continued for 30 more years. And, yesterday, it stopped to exist.

And when I, you know, went to Wikipedia today to check on some facts and dates, the first sentence states, Echo of Moscow was a radio station. And it really broke my heart.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: So, I mean, this could be the end, but certainly it's the end during this critical period for Russians to get independent information. And, right now, there's also been a regulation or a law passed in Russia that puts in place jail time, severe penalties, up to 15 years, for coverage that is critical of the Russian military invasion.

Tell us about this.

ORLOVA: Yes, they call it a law against fakes about this military operation. So, it is very ironic because every person who works for the Russian propaganda media, they should go to jail because all the fakes come from them. So maybe, maybe one day we will use this law, you know, in Russia to prosecute and imprison those who really produced and keep producing fakes about this war.

So -- but for now, if you call this a war, which it is --

KEILAR: Or an invasion, an attack.

ORLOVA: Yes. Yes, no, no attack, no invasion, just a special military operation. If you call it a war, it's fake. And that's why Echo was targeted.

So, five days ago or so, the Russian authorities demanded that Echo deletes, removes a -- its show where the war was called a war. And that's how it started. But then they decided to just shut it down entirely.

KEILAR: So, what are everyday Russians hearing about the war from their media and can they seek out accurate information?

ORLOVA: Well, this is very sad for me to say, but, I mean, I would love to tell you that, oh, you know, Russians are not behind this. It's just Putin. And he's not supported by Russians. But, unfortunately, he is. Not a narrow majority of Russians support Putin. A vast majority of Russians support Putin. Yes, there is several videos made by independent media still. You know, you can find it on the Internet where they ask people in the streets, what do you think of this? They show pictures. Ninety percent of these people say that they support it, that it's -- it's, you know, that they defend Russia against NATO. And they also said that it's Ukraine who -- that threatened Russia with its nuclear weapon. So, people really think that Ukraine has nuclear weapon, for starters.

So -- and also a very sad sign is that a lot of people went to ATMs, to banks, you know, to try to buy some currency to withdrawal cash. They also -- there were thousands of people in Ikea stores. Ikea doesn't work in Russia since today it stopped all the operations. All the stores have closed.

So people somehow found this information, right, and they cannot find it in the propaganda media because they don't say anything bad about the Russian economy or financial or this stuff. So, they know where to find this information. And I tell you, whenever they find this information, there's also all the independent and true information about the war. So, probably they choose not to -- not to see, not to read, not to know some, you know, part of it and to focus on their own needs. That's very sad.

KEILAR: Yes. Well, the ATM doesn't lie, right? The cash machine does not lie.

ORLOVA: That's right.

KEILAR: Karina Orlova, thank you so much for being with us. And we're very sorry -- very sorry that Echo of Moscow has been taken off the air.

ORLOVA: Thank you. Thank you so much.

KEILAR: We do have some more on our breaking news.

The Russians capturing Europe's largest nuclear plant after they attacked it overnight. A deadly attack. Stand by for breaking, new details on this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:38:42]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, breaking news.

A new statement from the Twitter account of the U.S. embassy in Kyiv. We should note that there are no U.S. personnel at the embassy in Kyiv. Nevertheless, this is an official statement. It reads, quote, is a war crime to attack a nuclear power plant. Putin's shelling of Europe's largest nuclear plant takes his reign of terror one step further.

This as the Russians are now in essential control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the southern part of the nation. The company that runs the station, the plant, says that managers are now working at invader's gunpoint.

Joining us now, CNN chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour.

Christiane, to hear that statement from the embassy saying it is a war crime to attack a nuclear plant, that takes it one step further than President Biden went the other day who said that war crimes need to be investigated. It's saying, war crimes are happening before our eyes.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Indeed. And not just on that but in the shelling and the killing of civilians.

But, you know, this is a really huge steps in the very wrong direction. NATO foreign ministers are meeting in Brussels today. We've already heard from the French foreign minister calling it unacceptable and dangerous.

Now, we do know, we need to be clear from what the experts are saying, the head of the IAEA and others who are monitoring, that it has not released any radio activity into the atmosphere.

[06:40:06]

They have not, apparently, attacked a reactor.

We believe it to be either a training building, a dormitory. It depends on who you talk to on the ground.

But, nonetheless, a fire deliberately caused this close to an active nuclear reactor from which Ukraine gets most of its energy, a huge amount of its electricity and energy, is another escalation and a step up. And you really do have to ask whether this is an actual order from the ground to actually attack a nuclear plant. There's just literally no military reason for that whatsoever.

BERMAN: And, Christiane, as these ministers are meeting in Brussels, as NATO gathers to talk about things, when they look at almost limitless escalation to fire at a nuclear plant, whether ordered or not, almost limitless escalation, no red lines there, how do you respond to something like that if you're NATO? What will they discuss?

AMANPOUR: Well, I mean, again, it's really hard because there's not a huge amount they can do there. They can, you know, read damash (ph) to Russian diplomats. They can again try to get Putin to understand where the red lines are. Like NATO has said, he knows, or at least he should know, that our red line, and he better not miscalculate, is on another NATO nation. But they, obviously, also need to up the ante about this nuclear plant.

We know that over the last several days, Ukrainians tried their very best, those who work there, tried their very best to protect it with their own bodies, with garbage trucks and the like. We understand that Russians are in control of Chernobyl. This one in Zaporizhzhia is bigger than Chernobyl and provided much more. Chernobyl is not active. But this one provides much more of Ukraine's nuclear energy.

In any event, it's a -- it's a really dangerous step. And you just keep have to wondering -- keep have to wonder what orders these Russian forces are getting, or are they just going at it, you know, on their own? It's really difficult to understand that move.

BERMAN: You know, Lindsey Graham, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, last night, put out a statement where he called for the Russians to rise up and kill Vladimir Putin. That's, obviously, an extreme statement.

But the Russian people, how much do you think that they know about what's going on right now with the media crackdowns and how likely are they to countenance something like an attack on a nuclear power plant?

AMANPOUR: Well, look, that is really interesting and very nuanced because Russia has several degrees and layers of what people know. There were two independent organizations still broadcasting until just this week. That is Echo of Moscow. You just had the journalist on the air. And also Rain (ph) Television, whose editor in chief I interviewed on Tuesday, and then he decided he had to flee because they've shut them down.

And now you see the Russian parliament has actually voted on this law that they mooted (ph) earlier this week which makes it a crime of potentially up to 15 years to even criticize the war. And God forbid they describe it as a war because that's also a criminal activity. They need to describe it as a special military operation. So, this is what's happening.

However, on the other hand, there are many, many Russians who still have access to social media, to their phones, to WhatsApp, and who have many friends and relatives, not just in Ukraine but outside in the rest of the world. So they are still able to get a huge amount of information. The question is, what will they do about it?

Now, in the early days, a week ago now, just over, you had thousands of Russians on the streets around the country. According to an independent -- well, according to a group there, there are some 8,000 or so who have been rounded up and detained. And you can see that the number of people on the street is getting less and not more.

So Russian mothers, we understand, are beginning to ask the authorities, where are our children? Where are our sons? Many of them, and we see this in newspapers and other reports, had communication with their boys -- because they are boys who have gone into this fight -- just before the invasion was declared and have not seen them since unless they're on these videos whereby, you know, they have -- you know, they've been captured and they talked to their parents about not knowing what they were doing or why they were sent there. So it's a very difficult -- yes, difficult situation to get the accurate information. But some are.

BERMAN: Christiane Amanpour, thank you so much for being with us this morning. As always, we appreciate it. So, this game of cat and mouse underway across the world right now as

Russian oligarchs move their yachts or try to, to friendlier ports, hoping to evade sanctions leveled against Russia.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:49:08]

KEILAR: "The New York Times" reporting this morning that senior White House officials are concerned that the sanctions targeting Russia could prompt President Putin to lash out, perhaps extending the war beyond Ukraine.

Joining me now is one of the reporters on this story, CNN political and national security analyst David Sanger. He is a White House national security correspondent for "The Times." And also with us, CNN national security analyst Beth Sanner. She was the deputy director of national intelligence during the Trump administration.

OK, David, let's first start with this really, I think, insightful and interesting reporting talking about the cornered Putin problem. What is the concern here?

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, the concern here is, in an odd way, that the administration has been more successful than it had initially anticipated. That the number of sanctions, that the depth of them has been greater.

[06:50:03]

They've built more quickly. That Germans and others have joined on.

And, Brianna, you know, they -- you've seen what's happened with the ruble. You saw that the Russians had to close their stock market for days on end. You've seen oil companies announce that they're pulling out. So, this damage -- the message to Putin is, this damage is long lasting. He has only one way to strike back at our financial system, and that's cyber. He doesn't have the ability to do what we can do to his by manipulating the fact that we have one of the great reserve currencies of the world.

And so the question is, does he reach out in a cyber way? Does he double down? Beth can talk about this better than I can, but his pattern when cornered is usually to double down. And, finally, does he reach for some other method to get to everybody, like going into Moldova or Georgia, another non-NATO state?

KEILAR: Let -- we'll talk about that in a second. But just, his methodology here is -- it seems to be that he attacks when he sees weakness and he attacks when he sees strength as well.

BETH SANNER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, I mean, he's attacking right now because he has a goal. And he's not going to let up on this goal. He's not at a point in time where he can show this kind of weakness. So, he has to keep going. And I think the question is, you know, does he feel confident enough

despite his claims of everything being on track. Clearly that's not the case. So does he -- does he feel comfortable enough that he is on the right track, that he just sticks with that, or is he feeling more and more cornered, as David and his colleagues pointed out, and he has to do something in reaction? And I think that, you know, some really big choices are coming on what to do on sanctions. So, oil and gas sanctions could indeed, you know, lead to that backlash. This is a real -- it's a dilemma at this point.

KEILAR: Yes, that could be the death blow to him. But also it's a shared problem that the U.S. would face, as well as western allies.

I want to listen to something that Senator Lindsey Graham said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): How does this end? Somebody in Russia has to step up to their plate. Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military? The only way this ends, my friend, if there's somebody in Russia to take this guy out. You would be doing your country a great service and the world a great service.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: What do you make of that?

SANGER: Well, it's interesting, he said someone in Russia had to do it, not someone from the United States. So that gets around the legal problem that, you know, it is illegal under many a statutes for the United States to assassinate foreign leaders.

Second, could be one of those issues where you sort of want to think about what happens if you get the result that Senator Graham is talking about. We're talking about a nuclear state here where the command and control is in the hands of, right now, one man. And if you had a situation like that, and there wasn't a clear successor, it might not be clear who's in command of those nuclear weapons.

KEILAR: What do you think?

SANNER: There is definitely not a clear successor. Most autocrats make sure that that doesn't happen. I do think that, you know, it would be a military security official. But there would, obviously, be, you know, some competition for who would be taking control.

So, I think it would be incredibly chaotic. I also just think that having these kinds of conversations coming from a U.S. government official when we are dealing with a nuclear state is just maybe the kind of escalation and the direction that isn't very helpful.

KEILAR: Yes, I think that. You might really be on to something there, I will say.

Beth, thank you so much. Beth Sanner, David Sanger, thank you to both of you.

SANNER: Thank you.

SANGER: Thank you.

BERMAN: All right, the breaking news this morning, the Russians are in essential control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plan. This after an attack on the power plant overnight. We are told by the company that owns this power plant that station managers are working at invader gunpoint this morning. Luckily, we're told, no elevated levels of radiation, no serious damage to any of the reactors, but the U.S. embassy in Ukraine overnight -- or just minutes ago put out a statement saying that an attack on a nuclear power plant is a war crime.

We have much more. Our breaking news coverage continues right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:58:56]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

KEILAR: We want to welcome our viewers here in the United States and around the world. It is Friday, March 4th. And I'm Brianna Keilar with John Berman.

We're following breaking news.

Russia has attacked a civilian nuclear power plant. This is a first in human history. Russian troops now control the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant after Russian forces lobbed missiles at the facility, setting parts of it on fire. This, by the way, is the largest nuclear plant in Ukraine. It's also the largest in all of Europe. And that fire is now out. But the company that runs the plant says managers there are now working at gunpoint.

So far we are told there has not been a release of radioactive material. And the integrity of the reactors has not been compromised. Still, outstanding questions, though, about other possible damage. Are the cooling systems safe, for instance? No indications that they are not but we're trying to get some good answers to these questions.

Just moments ago, this tweet from the account from the U.S. embassy in Kyiv, it is a war crime to attack a nuclear power plant. Putin's shelling of Europe's largest nuclear plant take his reign of terror one step further.

[07:00:03]

Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, waring that the worst may still be ahead.