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Russian State TV Employee Disappears After Crashing Newscast; Russian Military Forces Continue Invasion of Ukraine; Prime Ministers of Poland, Czech Republic, and Slovenia Traveling to Kyiv for Meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Despite Russian Attempted Siege; Residents of Ukrainian City of Vinnytsia Prepare for Possible Russian Siege. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired March 15, 2022 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And breaking this morning, word that prime ministers from Slovenia, the Czech Republic, and Poland, are headed at this moment to Kyiv right now, the Ukrainian capital, which is under siege, to meet with President Zelenskyy.

This is a remarkable statement of solidarity taken under great personal risk for these leaders. You would be hard pressed to find an example like it in history. It's akin to world leaders maybe going to London during the blitz there.

I want to get the latest from CNN anchor and chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto. Jim, thank you so much for joining us. I do want to start with the situation in Kyiv itself right now. We have seen these four residential complexes hit over the last 24 hours, an apartment building on fire, and word of a two-day curfew, day and night. What are you sources telling you? Is there some new increased risk to the capital itself?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: We need to be able to say explicitly what we're seeing develop on the ground there, and that is that civilian population centers and the civilians themselves are increasingly a direct and deliberate target of Russian attacks.

We see this based on the targets themselves, apartment buildings struck, for instance, by tank fire, that's deliberate, as well as the forces surrounding the city of Kyiv now, and rocket fire, artillery fire, again, directly targeting civilian targets, despite Russian claims to only be going after military targets.

This is something we have seen increasingly over recent days, and it is part of a timeworn Russian military playbook. When they face losses or setbacks on the battlefield, they go into an almost medieval siege mentality, right -- go after the cities, punish the citizens, and hope to squeeze them, pressure them and their leaders. And this is what we're seeing play out here.

U.S. military officials have been warning for some time that the intent of Russian forces is to circle Kyiv and then, first of all, punish the city, right, try to get it to surrender, and then perhaps invade. They haven't been able to circle it yet, but they're hitting it hard, and harder. And I think this helps us understand why you have this new longer curfew imposed, to help protect the civilian residents of the city.

BERMAN: You can see now, these are areas where Russian troops are operating in red here. This is the same situation it's been for the last several days, with the Russian troops trying to somehow surround Kyiv. Jim, the prime ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia on the way to the capital now. I do not know if I heard of anything like this. It has enormous implications.

SCIUTTO: It does. And we should respect the courage of these leaders. These are heads of state, right, who are putting themselves into the middle of a war, a war zone, and in the middle of the capital of that war zone while that capital is under attack. That is, we should note their courage first, and second of all note the importance of the show of support this shows for Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to have them come there, shake his hand, and say we're with you. We haven't seen it from other European leaders or U.S. leaders to this point. And that's remarkable.

BERMAN: Yes, it does make you wonder, would Vladimir Putin attack Kyiv with the leaders there? Might this instigate a move back to Kyiv from embassies and diplomats from other countries right now to perhaps create a toehold there? It is worth watching over the next several days. I'll be very interesting to see when we get some images of them there.

Jim, also, one of the areas that I think that has been underreported has been the presence of foreigners in Ukraine now fighting for the Ukrainians, and you, before you left, first of all, I'm so glad to see you back, so you can be with your family.

SCIUTTO: Thank you.

BERMAN: But before you left, you actually did some reporting on the ground of foreigners going in. What have you learned?

SCIUTTO: That's right, in fact we met the Ukrainian official who was in charge of vetting the backgrounds of all foreign volunteers that come into the country. And he told us that 20,000, 20,000 of them already on the ground there. And this is a wide variety of nationality nationalities. There's lots of Europeans, but we met Canadians, we met Swedes volunteering to fight, and we met Americans. I met several, met and spoke to several former marines. The picture you see there, that's of a Canadian, he told us he's a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. But we met a marine, served for a couple of years in Okinawa, he's going in. He said he's willing to die to protect the Ukrainian people.

We met a group of marines, former marines who are also veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq, now missionaries there who are there to do combat medical support, which is a tremendous need. And we met a young nurse, she's a travel nurse, 25 years old, from Missouri, and she's in there right now, risking her life to help protect the Ukrainian people. It's remarkable. You have a lot of folks talking, right, about support for Ukraine, and

that's important. But you have a lot of folks putting their lives on the line there right now.

I should say, John, there are some concerns, right, because not every one of the volunteers who goes in has really truly valuable experience. You have some who are real combat vets. You have some that have never seen combat before, and we met some with no military training whatsoever.

[08:05:01]

And that's become the job of the Ukrainian military to make a decision, right, who can contribute on the battlefield, and who cannot, because what they don't want, they don't want weekend warriors coming in right now. They want true soldiers with battlefield experience.

BERMAN: And they don't need any new liabilities there, but people training would be a huge help. Jim Sciutto, thank you so much for being with us this morning.

SCIUTTO: Thank you.

BERMAN: We'll see you at the top of the hour.

SCIUTTO: For sure.

BERMAN: I want to go to CNN's Ivan Watson, who is live on the ground in Vinnytsia in Ukraine. And, Ivan, you're getting a sense -- look at that, a checkpoint right there -- you're getting a sense of the defenses being put in place by Ukrainians who are anticipating Russian advances.

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, as one local official put it, every day that this city gets to prepare is like gold for them. The weeks that other Ukrainian cities are buying for Vinnytsia in the center of Ukraine, which has not seen active combat operations, ground combat. There have been rocket strikes in areas around here, but has so far been spared the brutal violence that we have seen in other parts of Ukraine.

As you pointed out, yes, I'm at a checkpoint. This is a village outside of the city of Vinnytsia. And we're getting a sense during our visit here of how the local population has been mobilized by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. So all of this has been erected in the last two weeks. And it is all homemade, just concrete blocks, spare tires, sandbags, just kind of metal rebar that has been kind of welded together, netting here that locals have sewed here. And we're going to spin around, and you can get a sense of what the guys who are volunteering here, they have their Molotov cocktails at the ready.

And this is entirely a voluntary effort. I've been speaking with some of the guards here. One of them is a fireman, one of them is a retired police officer, another one is an electrician, all an example of how the local population has mobilized here. A local official I talked to, he estimates that about 20 percent of the population of more than 12,000 people in these villages have gone into the Ukrainian army, have gone into the Ukrainian territorial defense. He estimates maybe 10 percent have fled, and the rest, he says, are very active in the volunteer effort in the war effort. That means people who help out with humanitarian assistance that is being brought in from Europe and that is collected here and that is then loaded into other trucks and shipped back out to front line cities where people are in such tremendous need right now.

Vladimir Putin, one of his objectives by invading Ukraine, he said, was to demilitarize this country. We're seeing the exact opposite result, John, which is an entire population that is being mobilized in the defense of their homeland.

I want to bring in a local official here that I've been talking to, Vladislav (ph) Kaveshka (ph), thank you, who is just 23 years old. He's the district candidate of three villages. You have not seen ground fighting here yet. Are you ready if the Russian military reaches this region?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, we are ready. And it is all the situation is intersection of community, of unity in Ukraine, in Ukrainian population. And here we have 20 percent of mobilized people to the army, to the territorial defense, and local defense.

WATSON: What kind of message would you like to send the rest of the world? We're seeing the aid that was sent in, humanitarian assistance, food, clothes. What kind of message would you like to send from your region?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The highest point of my message would be please close the sky. This is the most important thing that we need, because here, on the ground, we could fight. But on the sky, we need to close the sky.

WATSON: All right, thank you. Again, a call that we have heard from the president of Ukraine for a no-fly zone, which President Biden, of course, has ruled out, arguing that that would be the beginning of World War III.

This is just one village, John. I drove in from Moldova into Ukraine yesterday, and everywhere on the side of the main road you saw similar fortifications, similar defenses, a sign that communities are ready to defend themselves from this invasion. John?

BERMAN: Ivan Watson, I haven't seen anything quite like this. I'm so glad you're showing us what's going on. This is where Ivan is right now in Vinnytsia. You can see, it's some distance from where Russian troops are now currently operating. But clearly, they're taking protective measures now.

[08:10:05]

You say 20 percent of the people in that town have fully mobilized to help with the territorial defense. What about everyone else, Ivan? Does life go on in that city as they anticipate a possible invasion?

WATSON: We rolled into this little village, and I got out of the car and there was a little grandmother with a crutch. And she saw me and she said who are you? I said I'm a journalist, I'm from the U.S. And she said, show me the documents. She was suspicious, and probably with good reason. I talked to the grandmother next to her, and she said I'm 71 years old. I was with the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 80s. I've fired a gun, I fought with the Afghans. I'm ready to fight the Russians here. That was a 71-year-old grandmother talking.

All the community members in that village said that they had donated mattresses, they had donated canned foods to send to the military and, of course, to the civilian populations that are trapped. I talked to a young woman, used to work in the restaurant, and she was volunteering in one of the places where some of this humanitarian assistance is gathered. Another message that I heard from the young man that we just spoke with is that a message going from the city government is that stores and restaurants and businesses should remain open. Why? The ground fighting hasn't reached this area. They want some normality to continue, but also for the economy to continue functioning, because then sales tax, things like that, continue to gather funds, to fund the military as it's fighting.

So there is very much a sense of, OK, we haven't been hit by the war hard here yet, but we have a very important supportive role to make right now. In addition to that, this is one of the avenues out for refugees. So tens of thousands have come out through this city, hundreds have stayed behind, and there are support -- there is support for people who have been made homeless by the war. But it's very much, while you'll see people walking around on streets, you'll see the electric street cars still operating, commuters, it is a tense situation. Everybody knows this country is invaded, and then there is the billboards that you see, which will say in Russian, "Russian occupiers, go f- yourself," that's a message in case the Russian troops ever get here. John?

BERMAN: Ivan Watson on the ground in Vinnytsia, two tough grandmothers, I don't think the Russians anticipated the ferocity of will that they're seeing. Thank you so much, Ivan, for that report.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Joining us now is Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt. He is the former assistant secretary of state for political military affairs under George W. Bush. And let's just get a sense of the big picture of what we're seeing in Ukraine.

BRIG. GEN. MARK KIMMITT, U.S. ARMY (RET): Right now, I think we're seeing the Russians a little bit slowed down, a little bit stalled. In the north, they're preparing for the fight in Kyiv. But I suspect they're not real happy with what is happening down here. More than likely they had wanted to be in Odessa by now. Significant for them to take that warm water port. They're still tied up in Mariupol, surrounding it, sieging it, starving it. But right now, the real focus seems to be what is happening in Kyiv.

KEILAR: Because they would have wanted to push forward from the south, basically. KIMMITT: What they're trying to do is they're trying to own this

entire area, get some of the warm water port, but more importantly, it gives them the route from Crimea into Russia in that land bridge that they have been seeking for some time.

KEILAR: So let's look at Kyiv. Because it does seem that with the curfew here over the next couple of days, and this includes during the day, if you're in Kyiv, you can go to a bomb shelter, but that's it. You're not supposed to be out and about.

KIMMITT: Yes. I think we have to put this in perspective. If there is urban combat, and if the Russians want to take Kyiv, it will be the largest urban combat in history, three times the size of Aleppo, three times the size of Stalingrad. The Russians are going to have to take 350 square miles of territory. The question is, do they have the troops, do they have the capability, do they have the skill to do that? But it would be huge.

KEILAR: And what -- the resistance that they're facing is stiff. Do you doubt they can do that?

KIMMITT: It's up to a number of factors. Number one, will President Zelenskyy allow weeks and weeks of urban combat to go on? Number two, do the Russians have enough troops? And, number three, do the Russians have enough skills? Because if the Ukrainians fight, they have about a 10 to one advantage. In this map you can see the Russians are slowly trying to encircle Kyiv from this side and this side, because once they can encircle it, they'll go into the next tactic.

[08:15:02]

They'll siege it. They'll shell it. They'll try to starve it, and then they will storm it. It's going to be a tough fight.

KEILAR: To what end? What does Vladimir Putin walk away with considering what that will cost him?

KIMMITT: In military theory, it's called the center of gravity. It's that area or that thing that even if you can take it, you have destroyed the enemy's will to fight and capability to fight. Clearly, that's the capital of Kyiv.

It's not only the largest city, in Ukraine, but it's also the government head. If he can topple the government, change out the government, then he succeeded, at that point. Then you got the proverbial problem of the dog catching the school bus. How does he hang on to it?

KEILAR: Yeah. What does he do with it once he's caught it? We'll see if that happens.

General, thank you so much. Really appreciate you giving us your perspective.

KIMMITT: Thanks. KEILAR: And an incredible display of bravery, an employee at one of Russia's major state television networks interrupting a live broadcast, where millions upon millions of Russians would have been watching to protest the Russian invasion of Ukraine. What her lawyer just told CNN about where she is.

BERMAN: Plus, a bold statement from a soccer star, declining to be called up to the national team's training camp in Moscow because of the conflict in Ukraine, because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

We have new details ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:20:05]

BERMAN: A news editor for a Russian state television channel missing this morning after interrupting a live news broadcast to protest Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Marina Ovsyannikova held up a sign saying no war. It's a remarkable sign of defiance, no war, stop the war, do not believe the propaganda they tell you lies here. That's what the sign says, while shouting similar remarks before the program cut away. The bottom of her sign read, Russians against war in English.

Her statement marks the first time that an employee from Russian state media has publicly denounced the war as the country continues its crackdown on dissent. And just in, the lawyer tells CNN he still does not know where she is. That's despite trying to locate her for the past 15 hours.

I want to bring in Julia Davis, a columnist for "The Daily Beast."

I can't get over that video, the courage of that woman to do that during a broadcast when she knew what the likely consequences would be. What exactly do you think those consequences are?

JULIA DAVIS, COLUMNIST, DAILY BEAST: That is a remarkable bravery that should definitely be praised. There are signs that this case is escalating, the latest in the state media says that the case that originally was supposed to involve only administrative charges is now being reviewed by Russia's investigative committee for criminal charges about so-called fake news, maligning Russian troops and misrepresenting Russia's so-called special operation which everyone knows is just the war.

Also, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, while he called what she did hooliganism, at the same time he pointed out that she is in the position of importance, and that news station has a reputation for accuracy. That tells me that the criminal charges against her will be raised to the next level, because it all depends on the impact that is made by the so-called fake news is what they call them. The rest of the world would call it telling the truth.

So, she will be potentially facing some severe prison term. BERMAN: What is the impact of this statement she made? You can't hide

something like that.

DAVIS: The impact is enormous. Not only is the news spreading like wildfire all over the social media, but also this is one of the most important channels that is viewed by millions. So the impact could not be understated.

It will inspire other people because in her position, she took such an enormous risk that people would have to wonder what can they do to stop this war?

BERMAN: You know, we're also hearing over the last several minutes that the leading scorer on the Russian national football team, soccer team, is refusing a call-up to join the team for practices, Artem Dzyuba, because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And, again, I ask you, you see statements like this, this is a star inside Russia.

When he is taking a stand like this, people have to see it no matter what kind of information control the government there is trying, people have to see this.

DAVIS: Absolutely. And just with Artem Dzyuba, who is a major football star, the same as Marina Ovsyannikova who said her father is Ukrainian, her mother is a Russian, that resonated with me because the same is true for me. And it is also true for many, many other Russians that have families, loved ones, friends in Ukraine, it is only a matter of time before there are more protests and more public outrage against Putin's bloody war in Ukraine.

BERMAN: Julia Davis, I do appreciate you being with us this morning. Thank you very much.

DAVIS: Thank you.

BERMAN: So in less than a year, our next guest went from representing his country at the Olympics to defending his nation. In Ukraine, as a soldier, his story is next.

Plus, the breaking news in Kyiv, that city sets a two-day curfew as the Russians intensify their attacks on civilians there. At least four residential buildings hit overnight as 16-story building ablaze this morning.

Our breaking news coverage continues, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:28:39]

KEILAR: Amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, we're seeing the stories of Ukrainian athletes swapping the court or the ring or even the dojo in the hopes of defending their country. This includes an Olympian who won a bronze medal in karate at the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo.

And he's with us now from Lviv, Stanislav Horuna. Stanislav, thank you so much for speaking with us.

You were an Olympic medalist, without military training, and yet like so many Ukrainians, you're taking up arms. How do you explain that?

STANISLAV HORUNA, UKRAINIAN OLYMPIC KARATE MEDALIST, NOW FIGHTING AGAINST RUSSIA: I don't know what, it is strange, but for all of us, it's not an option. We don't have a choice. War came to us, and this is what we have to do, because this is our land and our home, and, of course, our people.

KEILAR: What is it like where you are and what are you preparing for?

HORUNA: Well, I am preparing for the worst that can happen. But luckily, we have broken the Russian plans and we have collapsed their plans and so now, we prevail the war. So, luckily, their ground forces cannot get here, to the west of Ukraine, but still we are not protected well from the missile strikes, and they hit sometimes around my city. And we cannot stay safe.

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