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Western Officials Weigh Plans for a Ukrainian Government in Exile; Zelenskyy Urges Ukrainians to Fight, Tells Russians to Stand Up; Irpin's Mayor Says Russian are Animals Attacking Civilians and Ambulances. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired March 07, 2022 - 06:00   ET

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

[08:00:04]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to viewers here in the United States and around the world. It is Monday, March 7th, and I'm Brianna Keilar with John Berman.

This morning we are seeing horrifying new evidence that Russian forces are targeting and slaughtering Ukrainian civilians. Ukraine's president is calling this murder. And moments ago he was pleading for new sanctions against Russia, including a boycott of oil for deadly attacks like this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(SHOUTING)

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KEILAR: Eight civilians including two children killed by Russian forces as they tried to flee a suburb of Kyiv. That area right there, that is on a well-known escape route for civilians. It is just over the bridge where Clarissa Ward was reporting over the weekend. And so this is raising questions about whether the Russians were intentionally targeting that route used by civilians.

President Zelenskyy is warning that Ukraine's third largest city, Odessa, which is on the Black Sea coast, could be targeted next. He is expecting imminent bombings. Also under assault, Mariupol, where there has been no water or power for several days now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And Ukrainians are fighting back. Special forces taking out two Russian tanks in a small village about 30 miles northeast of Kyiv. You can see the aftermath of the attack right there. According to a senior U.S. defense official, Russia has now fired 600 missiles since the beginning of its invasion, 95 percent of its combat power is now deployed in Ukraine. This morning a senior official tells our Jim Sciutto that U.S. and NATO members have sent Ukraine 17,000 anti-tank weapons and 2,000 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles. And that's just so far.

More than 1.7 million people at this point have now fled Ukraine to neighboring countries. And this morning Ukraine is pushing back at Russian claims it's opening up humanitarian corridors for civilians in four cities, in part because Russia keeps attacking the areas where those corridors are supposed to be. We're watching that development as well as this third round of talks between Ukraine and Russia expected to begin within the next hour.

I'm joined now by CNN chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto live in Lviv this morning. And Jim, you have the reporting on arming the Ukrainians, this mass shipment of weapons from the U.S. and NATO members just within the last few weeks.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Enormous and swift, right. That's an incredible number to reach. The vast majority of that number coming just since the invasion began some 12 days ago. But close to 20,000 anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, highly sophisticated, shoulder fired, and so far highly impactful on the battlefield. Those convoys you've seen destroyed, Russian convoys, a lot of the armor, tanks, armored personnel carriers, aircraft helicopters and jets taken down by these missiles provided by the west.

And by the way, there was some prework on this as well, that these are systems that U.S. trainers have been training the Ukrainian military to use for some time prior to the invasion. So there was some investment in time and effort prior to the invasion, but really the vast majority coming in since then.

And part of the reason for that, John, is because they're concerned that these supply lines are that are getting those weapons in, they're not going to be there forever, that eventually Russia is going to try to target them, perhaps successfully target them and then stop that flow. So they want to get as much into position as possible prior to that point.

And the other note I would make just about weapons is now a new weapon under consideration, and that is sending fighter jets in from Poland. Soviet -- aging back to Soviet times, but the kind of jets that Ukrainian pilots know how to fly. Until a few days ago, I heard a lot of opposition to this from NATO partners, but now you have the U.S. secretary of state saying he's working on that deal to help bolster the Ukrainian air force.

BERMAN: The former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, just told us he wants to see those plans, those MiGs in Ukraine as soon as possible. Jim Sciutto in Lviv, thank you very much.

KEILAR: Thousands of Ukrainians are now fleeing that area near the nuclear plant that Russian troops shelled last week. As you can see, women and children have been jamming onto the few available trains. CNN's Sam Kiley was on that train platform with them, and he is joining us now from nearby Dnipro, Ukraine. This is the reality, I think, they saw some something maybe they didn't expect of what Russia would actually do, and now they're trying to escape, Sam.

[08:04:56]

SAM KILEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's absolutely right. I think they said two things had combined together to precipitate this exodus effectively from Zaporizhzhia. That's about an hour's drive from where I'm standing. A similar level of anxiety is beginning to grip Dnipro where I am now. There are sirens, I don't know if you can hear them in my microphone going on at the moment. That's an almost all-day daily occurrence.

But it was, first of all, the attack on this nuclear power station, the biggest in Europe. Six reactors, six reactors, plus a storage area for used rods. A highly dangerous thing to do. Never in the history of humankind has a nuclear reactor been subjected to an armed assault, much less actual strikes. This precipitated movement towards the railway station, the desire to leave town. And then on top of that, there's people looking at what's going on on social media around the country, and seeing that as the Russians draw close and Ukrainians are reported to be fighting about 25 or 30 miles south of Zaporizhzhia, trying to hold the Russian advance up.

As they get closer, they tend to hit civilian areas. We've seen that in Kyiv, in this part of eastern Ukraine. We've seen that a lot in Kharkiv, the second biggest city in the country. And of course, we've also seen Mariupol completely surrounded with promises of a cease-fire and opportunities to get civilians out. There was an effort a day ago to get 200,000 civilians out of Mariupol. That fell apart and the Russians wouldn't guarantee safety for people on the route out.

The Russians have now announced unilaterally that they will allow people out, but only into Russian territory, from Kyiv, from Kharkiv, and from Mariupol, as well as other relatively small places. Some of these routes out actually take them through areas of combat where the Russians are under serious pressure. So all of those offers being treated with a bucket of salt.

KEILAR: Yes, a bucket of salt, as it should be. Sam, thank you so much for that report. Appreciate it.

BERMAN: Joining me now is retired Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the former assistant secretary of state for political and military affairs. And General, we were just looking on this map, and on the red you can see where the Russians have made gains. The Russian military now operating in these areas in red. It's increased a little bit over the last two days, but not too much. How do you think Ukrainians should be fighting this battle?

BRIG. GEN. MARK KIMMITT, U.S. ARMY (RET): Well, we seem to be focused on no-fly zones, bringing in MiG aircraft, trying to fight the Russians like the Russians fight them. One thought would be to go to your own strength, look at where they're having success. They're having tremendous success, as Jim Sciutto said, with those Javelins. We've given them the best sniper rifles in the world, what we affectionately call the "man cannon." They've got all these Molotov cocktails for city fighting. This is a different kind of warfare that they're very good at, partisan warfare. Don't fight the convention fight the way the Russians are. Fight the partisan warfare which will cause them to bleed.

BERMAN: You mentioned them fighting them the way the Ukrainians do best. There was focus on this 40-mile Russian convoy heading toward Kyiv, and people were seeing that as a sign of a Russian advance. But you look at it as a moment of opportunity for the Ukrainians.

KIMMITT: The Ukrainians used their tactics to stop the convoy. They blew up the bridges. They painted the road signs differently. They held it up, and it's just sitting there. They could slowly, methodically go after it with snipers and with javelins to go after the missiles in that convoy, to go after and tanks in that convoy. By the time the aircraft get there, it will be too late.

BERMAN: We saw pictures -- I don't know if we can actually pull up those pictures so people can see tanks positioning in the city of Irpin right here, Russian tanks, five tanks in downtown on the urban streets here. We've also seen the Russian troops operating around these cities right now. Clearly, they have this increased presence around Kyiv there. Do you think the Russians can hang on to their -- sorry. Do you think the Ukrainians can hang on to their capital city?

KIMMITT: First of all, it's going to be a bitter fight. But remember, the defender in urban combat has about a 10 to one advantage against their attackers. They've been building Molotov cocktails for weeks now. Those tanks are great Molotov cocktail types of targets. I would not want to be a Russian soldier trying to fight urban combat against dug-in Ukrainians with sniper rifles and Carl Gustafs and other equipment.

BERMAN: These Russians tanks, again, we're looking at these Russian tanks right now in Irpin, what are they doing there?

KIMMITT: They're setting up roadblocks right now. As you can see, they're aiming in two different directions. They're trying to set the conditions to start bringing in the ground troops. Anybody that comes on the street with a gun, they will try to shoot them. They're also going to be used to destroy infrastructure. They're also going to be used to shoot at civilians if necessary.

BERMAN: Do the Russians have what it takes to occupy Kyiv if they want to?

[08:10:02]

KIMMITT: That's a good question. They've got a long history of occupying after bitter, hard fighting. Look at Stalingrad in 1942, look at Grozny. They helped out in Aleppo. But that is a war -- that is an urban combat fight that takes a lot of troops, and you have to have a lot of spine because you're going to take a lot of casualties. The Ukrainians, if they fight the city combat well, can take a devastating toll on the Russians.

BERMAN: This comes at an enormous cost to the Ukrainian people right now. You talk about Grozny and Aleppo, the Russians may have helped occupy them ultimately, but at such a cost. They leveled them first.

KIMMITT: But the Ukrainians seem to be willing to pay that cost for their country.

BERMAN: General Kimmitt, great to have you here. Thanks very much.

So the mayor of Irpin, we were just talking about it, says the Russians are deliberately attacking evacuation routes. That mayor will join me next.

Plus, the west's plan to help Ukraine's president run the government should he end up in exile. And CNN's Clarissa Ward moments ago at a crowded train station in Kyiv where families desperately trying to escape. This is CNN's special live coverage. Stay with us

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: U.S. and European allies are discussing how the west would support a Ukrainian government in exile should President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have to flee Kyiv as the war in the country intensifies.

[08:15:00]

Joining us now is former European Affairs Director of the National Security Council, Lieutenant Colonel, Alexander Vindman, retired. He is the author of "Here, Right Matters: An American Story."

I wonder right now, I mean, first off here, we are still talking and the Ukrainians have withheld Russian advances, and it just seems to be stalling out even in the south where they've been making progress last week.

LT. COL. ALEXANDER VINDMAN (RET), FORMER EUROPEAN AFFAIRS DIRECTOR OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL: That's exactly right. I think we went through -- the Russians went through Plan A, B, and C, they're moving on to Plan D.

A was completely unreal. It was based on these false assumptions that the Ukrainians would fold, that the Russians would be able to achieve their political objectives through their military force in the first couple of days. That fell apart.

Plan B was really probably just a slight innovation. They were going to try to use additional force, start to bomb things, and start to affect the morale of the Ukrainian population, that if anything, that's hardened the Ukrainian population.

And now they're still trying to approach through these north, south, and east accesses on major cities, bypassing him not really holding ground, exposing their logistics there, which is the largest portion of the military. It's not the combat forces that are fighting, it's the logistics that support them. Those are all being targeted and destroyed.

Meanwhile, the Russians keep going to their strengths. They're going with artillery, aerial bombardments, cruise missiles, but it's not going to achieve their military objectives. They just don't have the resources to take a country like Ukraine, so this is going to be a long slog.

KEILAR: It's effective in destroying civilian areas. We're seeing that, right, and striking fear into the hearts of Ukrainians. But I wonder and look, I know you're in touch with a lot of people there, how are they feeling? And can they, when it comes to material and also psychology, how they're feeling withstand the Russians, do you think or is it inevitable that eventually they'll be taken over?

VINDMAN: Sure. So first of all, my commentary is the fact I've been -- I served in the military for 21 and a half years. So it sounds cold, but that's just the military picture on the ground. It's really a catastrophe.

Millions of refugees flowing, cities being destroyed, beautiful cities that I have walked the streets of being destroyed. It's a human catastrophe of Russia's making.

I think the fact is that the Ukrainian people are resilient. Morale is high. That's going to end up in hindsight when the military historians look at this. They're going to see a huge asymmetry in morale. But Ukrainians have that fighting spirit to defend their homes. The Russians don't want to be there.

The Russians came in. They are under the premise that they were conducting peacekeeping operations. Their affair started facing fierce resistance, and they don't want to kill Ukrainians. They were there because they believe they were coming in as liberators.

So the military operations have stalled, but Russia is a behemoth. It's a country of 140 million people and it is going to keep a feeding its soldiers, it's going to keep -- even though these are conscripts that are going to come in behind because of the frontline units, those are getting burned through.

The First Guards Tank Army, this is supposed to be the premier fighting unit. The airborne forces, they're getting ground down. So the backfills form are going to be less combat effective.

So this is in for the long haul, and that's what really the U.S. should be preparing for.

KEILAR: Is the U.S. doing enough? And at what point does the U.S. risk escalating with a nuclear power?

VINDMAN: Yes, so the risks of escalation, it is an important place to start because that's where everybody's mind goes to. Putin is particularly effective at nuclear saber rattling. He has done it before. It's meant to be nuclear blackmail basically.

If you continue to support Ukraine, this is the repercussion. But we have to also remember that there is another part of his rhetoric, that we are in war by committing ourselves to this economic isolation of Russia.

So as far as he is concerned, we're ready there to a certain extent. The question is --

KEILAR: Do you think the U.S. is already at war with him?

VINDMAN: Yes.

KEILAR: And Europe.

VINDMAN: And Europe. Yes. He said this explicitly. There is no guessing.

So, I think the fact is that there are different features to this war. That's economic warfare. The destruction he is actually imposing on Ukraine, that may, in certain ways be shorter, because the Ukrainians could rebuild, and they'll have a lot of international support.

But Russia is isolated and being cut off from the world economy. That is possibly something that endures for even longer, because who's going to want to go and do business in Russia with Vladimir Putin as President?

But we should remember that this nuclear saber rattling is hollow, we should be prepared for it, but it is also hollow because there's a doctrine called Mutually Assured Destruction. And Putin loves himself, you could see that by the distance he keeps from the people that he is talking to. He doesn't want to get sick, let alone or risk himself or his family through a nuclear escalation.

And on the conventional side, you know, in my book I talk about self- deterrence, I talk about these concepts when I'm sitting across the table from the Russians, where you could see that they have no interest in a confrontation with the U.S.

[08:20:10]

VINDMAN: They want to warn us off, they want to stake out their ground, but that seemed a little academic compared to now.

Their forces are bogged down, they're getting beat up in Ukraine. They have zero appetite to expand that conflict to NATO, which is a very, very capable fighting force.

So I think those are things that we should set aside, but your question about what are we doing? I'm very glad to see that these missiles are coming in. Of course, this is --

KEILAR: Stingers and the anti-tank.

VINDMAN: The stingers and -- yes. This is something that we should have been doing beforehand to harden Ukraine, especially if there was an expectation that Russia was going to go in. There is no reason to hold off and wait until the Russians fired the first shots. But I'm not going to complain about that. It's just something that we

should keep in mind in the future. That's great that they're there, but we need other things. We need unmanned combat aerial vehicles. We need loiter munitions, because that's where you actually help the Ukrainian military get gains.

The Russians have superiority in terms of airpower. These advanced aircraft, helicopters, and artillery, long range artillery, those are not something that the javelins could easily go after. Absolutely not. I mean, unless they're operating deep behind enemy lines.

So you need these other systems to wear down these critical capabilities that are actually punishing the civilian -- Ukrainian civilian population. That's where we need to go.

KEILAR: Very interesting to discuss this with you this morning. I keep, you know, I will say we keep talking days go by and we're still here watching the Ukrainians withstanding the Russian advances and it's really something to behold.

VINDMAN: Well, I'm glad I could be -- this is something I've been consistent on that, you know, this is not going to be short. This is something that the Russians, an ill-fated mission, pretty much from the beginning.

So we need to be prepared for the long haul, and that's why I wrote this piece on Lend Lease and we should be posturing for that.

KEILAR: All right, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, as always, thank you so much.

VINDMAN: Thank you.

KEILAR: The horror of war captured in this image, the aftermath of a family's failed attempt to escape Russia's invasion.

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[08:26:13]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: This horrifying video has emerged showing the moment Russia's forces fired mortars at a bridge killing a family with two children at a town west of Kyiv, Irpin'.

I want to warn you the video about to see is difficult to watch, but it's the reality of what's happening on the ground.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking in foreign language.)

(EXPLOSION)

[Bleep].

(END VIDEO CLIP) BERMAN: Photojournalist Lynsey Addario with "The New York Times," you

saw that video captured this image of the victims reporting that a mother, her teenage son and her daughter died in the attack.

You can see medics there, working on a man who did later die.

The Mayor of Irpin' reported at least eight people were killed in the strikes, and I spoke to him just a short time ago.

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MAYOR OLEKSANDR MARKUSHIN, IRPIN', UKRAINE (through translator): On the whole, eight people were killed yesterday during evacuation. These are not an army, these are animals.

They are killing civilians. They're shelling our city, our residential buildings and ambulances. They're firing on ambulances.

This is just a monstrosity. These are these are animals. They're not people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Just to give people a sense of a sense of what we're looking at here. This is downtown Kyiv. This is Irpin' right here. You can see how close, so that's Kyiv. This is Irpin'. It's just on the outskirts of the city.

You can see the Russian troops getting ever closer and we saw tanks in the streets of Irpin' just a short time ago.

KEILAR: All right, and so right now, at Kyiv Central Train Station, crowds of people are trying to flee the Russian invasion. And they're saying goodbye to family and crowding onto these trains.

CNN's Clarissa Ward award captured some of this scene on the ground moments ago on NEW DAY.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: This is a train that is going to be taking people to the relative safety of the western city of Lviv, and it has just been a chaotic scene here for the last few minutes.

People have been waiting some hours for this train. There has been a lot of arguing about who is able to get on it. You can see people are just packed in there.

People were originally calling for it to be just women and children, a man tried to get on the train. People started screaming at that man.

You can see over here, a number of people still just trying to pack onto this train. They've got their pets. They've got their family members. These are scenes that we've seen playing out across the country, John,

but we were at the train station about a week ago and it was nothing like this scene.

There is definitely an intensification, an urgency as people are trying to get out of the country, out of the city as we're seeing this push on the northwest and western parts of Kyiv.

These trains are now packed full of people who are desperately trying to get out of the city as the sense and the fear grows that Russia is sort of tightening its noose, moving down across the south and towards the southern western part of the city, which would then mean that this city is totally encircled.

The fear is that they will lay siege to it. These people some of them have been waiting here for hours. They've been pushing, shoving, desperately trying to get out.

And it's just awful to see the fear in people's eyes. They're just frantically trying to get their loved ones out.

We've seen a lot of families saying goodbye to each other.

[08:30:09]