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Russia Bombing Ukraine's Cities, Killing Civilians As Invasion Grows; Ukraine's Zelenskyy Says Russia is Planning to Bomb Odessa Soon; Civilians Struggle to Escape As Russians Hit Evacuation Routes. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired March 07, 2022 - 05:00   ET

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

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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to our viewers here in the United States and all around the world. It is Monday, March 7th, I'm John Berman with Brianna Keilar. This is our special live coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It's murder, it's simply murder. Those words from the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as the Russian attacks claim new civilian victims.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

(EXPLOSION)

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BERMAN: Eight civilians including two children were killed by Russian forces as they tried to flee a suburb of Kyiv. They were on a well- known escape route for civilians, raising questions about whether the Russians were targeting that route on purpose. The mayor of that suburb tells us, yes, he believes the Russians are killing civilians on purpose.

Now, President Zelenskyy is now warning that Ukraine's third largest city, Odessa down here could be the next target. He expects imminent bombings, though there are reports this morning that the Ukrainians have pushed back the Russian assault in Mykolaiv here, the ground forces have been halted in Mykolaiv. That's the latest we're hearing from there. Also, Mariupol, over here on the city of Azov, there's been no food or water or power there for days, still holding out as long as they can.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Now, despite this relentless bombardment, Ukrainians are still resisting. There are special forces taking out two Russian tanks in a small village 30 miles northeast of Kyiv using rocket-propelled grenades. And according to a senior U.S. defense official, Russia has now fired 600 missiles since the start of its invasion with 95 percent of that combat power that it had amassed around Ukraine now deployed within Ukraine. In cities all over the country, civilians are packing what little they

can carry in attempting to evacuate. It is slow-going, it is treacherous, as you just saw with Russian forces frequently targeting them. More than 1.5 million people have fled Ukraine into neighboring countries, and this morning, Ukraine pushing back at Russia's claims that it is opening up humanitarian corridors for civilians in four cities, in part because Russia keeps bombing them.

We are monitoring that development as well as a third round of talks between Ukraine and Russia that are expected to begin sometime today.

BERMAN: All right, CNN's Scott McLean is live along the Ukraine- Poland border with the very latest this morning. Obviously, Scott, people still trying to flee. What do you have for us this morning?

SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, John, yes, so we are on the Ukrainian side of the border where you can see that green post there, that is the border that these people are waiting for, where they get their passports checked on the Ukrainian side. We're not allowed to film many closer than this, but I don't think we really need to because you get the idea there are a heck of a lot of people here who are waiting to cross.

Let me just take you along the line and show you how long this is. It seemed like for a few days, there's been of a reprieve at the border, but now with these new rounds of shelling and bombing, there are just more and more people who are making their way here. And you can see from surveying the line, it is almost entirely women and children with a few elderly men mixed in as well. And we have met people from all across the country, many coming from Kharkiv, many coming from Kyiv as well, packing up everything that they can and getting out of there.

A lot of people come from more safe areas, safe is a relative term, though, because these people are not really willing to risk what might come their way. They don't trust that Russia won't come to their towns, to their villages as well. And so, they've been making their way this way. And remember, a lot of these folks as well have been traveling for a day, for two days on packed trains. Many are also coming by car and having to wait for long periods of time.

At this particular border checkpoint, at the very least, they are allowing women with the smallest children, with babies to go first, to go ahead, which is obviously -- which is obviously good news for them because the temperatures here are quite frigid. The actual temperature is hovering around freezing, but it feels much colder. It feels like it is into the 20s.

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At the train station in Lviv where most of these people have come from, they've taken city buses here and been dropped off. Luckily, this line seems to be moving at a decent clip, but it is absolutely massive. Some people wait to get on trains and lineup that stretch out the door, others are taking these city buses and then they're ending up here and having to wait, we hope for not too long of a time. But you know, these people -- these people, however long that they've

been traveling, wherever they're trying to get to, some to Poland, some beyond, the wait is definitely worth it for a chance at safety, John?

BERMAN: That line just goes on and on and on, Scott. And you can see why so many people trying to flee west, civilians, as they see the Russians now, seeming to target civilians. That is the accusation from Ukrainian officials, so you can see the imperative to get out of the country if you can. Scott McLean, thank you very much.

KEILAR: Heavy fighting continuing in southern Ukraine today. This morning, Mykolaiv was hit by multiple rocket launchers. New images showing the aftermath of shelling on residential buildings there. CNN's Nick Paton Walsh joining us live from Odessa, which is about 85 miles southwest of Mykolaiv. Can you just give us an update, Nick, on the latest there in the south?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR: Yes, certainly. We just before we came on air, heard sirens for the first time across Odessa today after the warning from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that this could be the next target of Russian bombing. It has been though, eerily quiet here despite the extraordinary anticipation that something bad may be around the corner. Less in terms though, silence towards Mykolaiv.

That's the other major port along the Black Sea. We were there yesterday to see the aftermath of significant fighting. That fighting has continued today. The regional head, Vitali Kim(ph) saying that there had been an attack by the Russians on their airport there. We can't verify his statements, but he also said too that attack had been pushed back just in the last few minutes. In the morning, though, at dawn at 5:00 a.m., a number of residential buildings hit with rocket fire.

We are told by a hospital official, one dead and three injured at least from that. I should warn you, our report from this weekend's events in Mykolaiv does contain some very graphic and distressing images.

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WALSH (voice-over): Putin needs it, but he's having real trouble getting it. Drive to the last Ukrainian position outside the port city of Mykolaiv, and you can see the mess made of the Kremlin's plans. Even the Z Russian propaganda says it's from the denazification they ridiculously claim to be enacting. Its chart, its occupants captured or dead. Their missiles on display --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

WALSH: Along with their names. Says the army of Russia. Further down this road are the rest of the Russian tanks, but one was left behind, and now farmers, pensioners and bemused locals are picking it over. The model may be newer, but the empire it seeks to restore is long gone. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

WALSH: He's just saying it goes forward, but doesn't turn around. The same can't be said for its crew who fled. The Ukrainians here are a little gleeful this keeps happening.

(on camera): That they left the tank or?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They needed to do that.

WALSH: Right, OK, they didn't have much of a choice.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, they didn't have another choice.

WALSH (voice-over): I see, then a warning.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a helicopter coming.

WALSH: A helicopter is spotted and we have to leave. Rushing in the weapons, this David has hit the Russian Goliath with again and again. But the Kremlin is sure to impose a cost on anyone it can.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

WALSH: Grand rockets have slammed into homes regularly.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

WALSH: This woman thinks she has broken her back.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

WALSH: "The house collapsed on me", she says, and then they pulled me out. There are no other patients in this hospital. All the injured treated here died in their beds, we're told, including one 53-year-old man brought in on Sunday morning.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just here.

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WALSH: Across town, the rockets apparent cast ammunitions that seem to fall just anywhere.

(on camera): So, another rocket landed up the street here.

(voice-over): From cars, to vegetable gardens. At the morgue, the toll is growing. At least, 50 bodies, they told us, 20 of them incinerated in a Russian missile strike on the Naval port of Alchevs'k, they said. The bodies so often of the elderly who would have survived being a Soviet citizen, but not this.

Ruslan(ph) has worked here 13 days straight and is from Crimea where Russian state propaganda still calls this a special operation against Nazis.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

WALSH: They show us the corpse of a Russian soldier and ask us to film him up close, which we don't do. Loathing here, setting deep and lasting with each body in the ground.

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WALSH (on camera): It is dark, frankly, to see what on earth Russia is trying to do with Mykolaiv. Yes, we know it's strategic for them on their way to here, Odessa, which essentially if you want to run Ukraine, you need to have control of. It's the third largest city and essential to the economy. But the strategy around Mykolaiv just seemed blundering. Every day, they seemed to try and push their way in, and again, this morning, they get pushed back, they lose vehicles at one point.

The regional head was joking with me that they just had too many, and so, it is strange to see quite what resolution there could be there. And when you see this volume of firepower, almost vengefully dispatched on their civilian population there, you begin to wonder quite what Moscow's plan actually is, if indeed, there is still one, and they are not just doing what damage they can in the hope that, that forces some change in the calculation here. I'm not seeing --

KEILAR: Yes --

WALSH: Any Ukrainians thinking they're not on the right path.

KEILAR: Yes, what is left of what they're trying to take, too? Nick Paton Walsh live for us in Odessa, thank you so much for that report.

BERMAN: All right, joining me now is retired Brigadier General, Mark Kimmitt; the former assistant secretary of state for political and military affairs. General, great to see you here. This is what's happening. This is what Nick was just talking about. The Russian are trying to push up from Crimea, right now, they're stalled in Mykolaiv. They want to get here to Odessa. You just heard Nick describe the situation there. How are the Ukrainians doing this?

MARK KIMMITT, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR POLITICAL & MILITARY AFFAIRS: Well, down here, there's some big fight going on between both the Russians who have made significant progress in three directions and some Ukrainian units down there that seem to be doing quite well. So, unlike the focus that we've had up north, the sub-text is really what's happening in south -- in the south, and this fight towards Odessa.

BERMAN: And all these destroyed Russian vehicles, what do you attribute that to?

KIMMITT: Javelin missiles and hard fighting, sniper weapons and other equipments that the U.S. has been providing and the training that the U.S. and the NATO allies have been providing. BERMAN: The supply and the training. General, I know you've been

focused also -- there was a lot of talk last week about this convoy, this --

KIMMITT: Yes --

BERMAN: Forty-mile Russian convoy pushing toward the capital of Kyiv. What do you see happening here?

KIMMITT: Well, right now, I see most of the fighting that's happening back here between Kyiv and the border is Ukrainian units, small ambush units, getting their javelins out, getting their sniper rifles out and picking away at that 40-mile convoy.

And candidly, that may be the strategy that they take from this point on. Not these frontal assaults, not these frontal attacks, but going against the soft under-belly, the logistics of the Russians so that if the Russians may be firing on to Kyiv with their tanks, their missiles and their artillery, they're trying to cut off the supplies getting to that unit.

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BERMAN: This has been stalled, it hasn't moved much in the last few days.

KIMMITT: Yes --

BERMAN: Is that because of the Ukrainian efforts or --

KIMMITT: Yes --

BERMAN: Is that because of Russian choice?

KIMMITT: Yes, apparently, what we're hearing is that they did a pretty good ambush at the front of this, and it basically stopped this convoy, knocked out some bridges, knocked out their ability to move forward. Pretty smart tactic on their part.

BERMAN: And General, lastly, there is this discussion right now about trying to bring in Polish -- Poland's right here, some Polish MIGs, some fighter jets from Poland, bringing them here into Ukraine. What do you think of that strategy? How much would that help the Ukrainians?

KIMMITT: Well, it would help them a lot because it would give them for a short period of time perhaps air superiority so they could go after that soft under-belly of the Russians which is -- their logistics convoys. That's what they really need to be going at, not the front, but the logistics convoy. I am concerned, however, that the Russians have the most advanced air defense system in the world, the S-400, and that will be a significant threat if not an overwhelming threat to those aircrafts.

BERMAN: So, these MIGs, if they were brought in could help the Ukrainians for a time, but that'd be a very high risk? KIMMITT: It'd be a high risk, yes.

BERMAN: All right, retired Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, great to see you in person, thank you very much. So, this new round of talks, this would be the third round between Ukraine and Russia expected to happen today. Is there a chance for any kind of progress there, as innocent lives are taken by these Russian attacks?

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KEILAR: A third round of talks are expected to take place today between Russia and Ukraine as civilians are dying as this war rages on. Joining us now is Vladislav Davidzon; Atlantic Council Fellow and journalist who is on the ground in Ukraine right now. He was right outside of Kyiv when the invasion started, and is now in Chernowitz, which is near the Romanian border.

And Vladislav, I know you are aware of this video that has been captured of civilians using a well-known unofficial humanitarian corridor over that bridge from Irpin being killed.

VLADISLAV DAVIDZON, FELLOW, ATLANTIC COUNCIL: Yes --

KEILAR: I mean, this is on camera. What do you make of this new development?

DAVIDZON: Right, it's absolutely horrific. It's absolutely a horror, (SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE), whatever you want to call it, whichever language. The Russians are doing very badly at taking territory. Their logistics are truly horrific. They are not capable of taking territory or winning hearts and minds, or winning large battles. It's day 12. They should have taken Kyiv nine days ago according to American Intelligence in the run up to the war.

So, what they're doing now is what they've always done in places like Grozny and Aleppo, bombed the civilian population in order to subjugate them, and it's having the predictable effect, and it's a total horror and it's turning even the most pro-Russian Russian speaker in Kharkiv or wherever into a Ukrainian patriot if they weren't already. And it's just not going to work.

KEILAR: We've also learned from our Jim Sciutto reporting, according to a senior U.S. official, NATO and the U.S. have supplied 17,000 anti-tank missiles, 2,000 stinger anti-aircraft missiles. That is a lot, and may inform why we're seeing what we're seeing with what Ukrainian forces are doing to Russian forces. Is there a sense that Ukraine can keep this going on long enough with these weapons to effectively deter Russia?

DAVIDZON: Absolutely. The panic and the grim fatalism of a week ago is gone. I think 80 percent of the population now thinks that they can grind Russians out. They are taking out Russian tanks and BMPs and AMPs, supply truck logistic convoys out faster than we can watch the Telegram and YouTube and social media video of them every day or even every hour, every half an hour. We get another video of an entire block, entire convoy of these bombed out husks of former Russian vehicles with Russian military guys hanging off the sides of them.

There are so many of these videos now, they're not fake. I do believe the reports from the Ukrainian military that they've taken out 800, 900 trucks, BMPs, 250 tanks, you know, there are so many videos of farmers pulling away with their John Deere tractor a Russian tank or BMP or artillery device or even something bigger than that. The Ukrainian state has even made a statement that they will not be charging taxes to anyone who captures artillery or tank in the Ukrainian.

If they sell it to whoever, they won't have to pay taxes on it. It's an incentive to go out, capture that Russian piece of artillery, Russian piece of tank, make your $50,000, make your $100,000, sell it back to the state, sell it to whatever private collector and you don't have to pay taxes on it, and that's where we are.

KEILAR: You wrote a book about your beloved Odessa, and we've now heard from President Zelenskyy, he believes Russia is preparing to bomb the city. What are you thinking as you hear that?

DAVIDZON: I'm thinking that I want to cry, first of all. Secondly, I've been on the phone trying to figure out how to get my relatives and my friends out, anyone I know in Odessa who is middle class or higher is already gone.

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Anybody with money, anybody with connections, anybody who has worldliness to travel the world, they're already gone. Some of my relatives, my in-laws are -- you know, they're rooted in the city, they don't travel much. For them, getting into the psychological head space of leaving is difficult. We're trying to get them out. I'm on the Romanian border, I'm going to cross into Romania tomorrow, meet my -- meet the women and children in my family because the men are not allowed out.

Military age men are not allowed out of the country. I'm going to take them to a border town in Romania, then I'm going to put them on a plane, then I'm going to go the other way back into Ukraine. My wife forbad me to go back to Odessa, but I guess I'm going to have to. I'm actually in Chernowitz now where some of my ancestors are from. Right behind me, you see alster(ph) Hungarian 19th century ceramic oven in the kitchen, it's utterly amazing, you know.

The alster(ph) Hungarian empire lives behind me, that's a ceramic tile oven heating the apartment that I'm in. But I'm going back to Odessa to get my family and my friends out. I have to just say, thank you to a huge amount of tremendous support from Americans all over the place who are gathering money to get refugees out, from San Francisco to Boston, from Texas to New York, I am getting so many DMs and so many Americans who are opening up their wallet and their heart to get people out.

I imagine that so many people have gotten their wallet out and we're getting children and old people out of Odessa as the Russian army is about to come in with rockets and Grad missiles and airplanes. And so I'm really grateful to my fellow Americans for showing their best side.

KEILAR: Vladislav, what are those conversations like with your wife as you are going to do what she's asked you not to, go back to Odessa?

DAVIDZON: Yes, she's going to find out about this from CNN, she's not going to be happy. You know, my wife -- my wife and I spent half the time in Ukraine and half in France. She's a film producer. The film projects that she's been working on for two years are not going to happen now, so she spent two years working on things that are not going to happen. Everyone else in this country has been building things, businesses, houses, families, which are now under attack, often destroyed, often are derailed.

It's a catastrophe. My wife is an activist now. She's back, home in Paris. I'm extremely proud of her. She is gathering support from all her friends, she works 18 hours a day, directing the Diaspora, the Ukrainian and Russian speaking Diaspora in Paris to send money, to send vests, to send helmets, to send medicine. She is organizing protests and film producers. I'm extremely really proud of you, my dear, my beloved Regina Maryannovska.

I'm sorry you told me I can't go back to Odessa, but a man has to do what he has to do. I will get a -- I will get a helmet before I get back there. But I'm really grateful to my fellow Americans for sending so much help.

KEILAR: Vladislav Davidzon, we do hope, sir, that you stay safe. Thank you so much for being with us.

DAVIDZON: Thank you so much for your coverage.

KEILAR: You're watching a humanitarian crisis unfold in real time. A million and a half refugees have fled Ukraine as Russian troops advance. And that is just what has gone so far. Can Ukraine's neighbors help all of them? We are on the ground in Palanca, Moldova, next.

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