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People Emerging Alive from Bombed Mariupol Theater; U.S. Citizen Shares View as Volunteer in Ukraine Army; Biden: Putin is a 'War Criminal'; U.S. to Provide Drones to Ukraine; Air Travel More Expensive as Oil Prices Rises. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired March 17, 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.

[05:59:14]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to viewers here in the U.S. and around the world. It is Thursday, March 17. I'm Brianna Keilar with John Berman.

And today marks three full weeks of war, horror, and bloodshed. And the evidence shows Russia is only intensifying attacks on civilians across Ukraine.

Just in, though, a potential miracle unfolding. We are getting word that people are emerging alive from the theater in Mariupol that was the target of a Russian strike, despite being a civilian shelter for hundreds of people.

Before the bombing, you could see satellite images showing that the word "children" was painted in Russian clearly on the outside of the theater. As you can see from this video taken inside the theater one week ago, hundreds of people were sheltering inside.

Crews have been working to clear the rubble, allowing people trapped inside to walk out. We'll have more on this in a moment.

Meanwhile, two and a half miles away, a building that houses a public swimming pool was also hit. A Mariupol official says the building was housing pregnant women and children under 3 years old, as well as other women.

And just hours before a curfew in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv was set to expire, there was a new attack on a residential building there. At least one person was killed when part of a downed missile hit the building.

According to the U.K., Russia is resorting to using weapons that are older and less precise and they are likely to cause more civilian casualties.

Russia continuing to deny that they are targeting civilians, even though very clearly that is the case. Kyiv's mayor, and everyone else for that matter, obviously not buying it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR VITALI KLITSCHKO, KYIV, UKRAINE: They destroyed, they killed children, women, civilians. They -- for what reason?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Putin says he's only targeting military targets.

KLITSCHKO: (EXPLETIVE DELETED) Sorry. Where is military target? This building is not a target.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: The mayor's brother, Wladimir Klitschko, is going to be joining us in the 8 a.m. hour.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: For the first time, President Biden is calling Vladimir Putin a war criminal for the attacks on Ukrainian civilians.

Some examples of this, much of the small city of Volodarka (ph) lies in ruins amid Russian strikes. This is what this residential area and church looked like before the invasion. This is what it looks like now.

This was a round-about surrounded by homes and buildings. And now the area destroyed, with scorched rubble everywhere. Despite this, a senior adviser to President Zelenskyy claims that Ukrainian forces are beginning counterstrikes against the Russians.

We have new video that shows blown-up Russian military vehicles at the Kherson Airport.

We also have video from Mariupol, showing Ukrainian forces taking out a Russian tank.

We want to begin with CNN's Scott McLean, who is live this morning for us in Lviv. I want to start with the news coming from this theater in Mariupol. The idea that maybe, just maybe dozens, if not hundreds of lives might have been saved there.

SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John. We need to be cautious here, though. Because obviously we don't have the picture at this stage.

The information that we do have comes from the head of the Donetsk regional administration, who wrote that after a night of not knowing, finally some good news. He wrote that the bomb shelter of the theater was able to hold and that the rubble is beginning to be cleared. People are coming out alive.

Now, I stress some caution here, of course, because we don't know whether that means some people are coming out alive or all the people in the shelter are coming out alive. Local officials say there may have been more than 1,000 people sheltering in the basement of that theater. Many of them, of course women and children.

Now, the reason it took so long to get even this information is because local officials said that it was difficulty to get access to the site in the immediate aftermath, because of the constant shelling and because there was so much rubble impeding people from actually getting down into the shelter.

Now, this is the damage from air strikes, which are more and more commonly targeting civilian areas. But a British military assessment says on the ground Russian forces appear to be stalling in many plates.

An adviser to Ukrainian President Zelenskyy says that the Ukrainians are launching a counter offensive, as well, that is changing the situation on the ground in many places.

And even ordinary sequence are fighting back. People in the Black Sea town of Sedodsk (ph) were hit with tear gas from Russian soldiers after they were protesting the detention of their mayor and two other local officials.

One other thing that I wanted to mention here, John, is that train infrastructure has also been a target for Russian military strikes, as well. Yesterday we saw a strike on a train station, Zaporizhzhia, that left a crater on the tracks, left a building damaged, as well.

Zaporizhzhia, by the way, is the place that many people, the trickle of people able to get out of Mariupol, that's where they're ending up. So it seems like very few places are safe.

I also spoke with the CEO of Ukrainian Railways yesterday about this extraordinary journey by these three prime ministers from the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia, who were able to take the train out of Kyiv safely, where they spent a few hours on the ground with President Zelenskyy.

And the CEO was actually critical of their decision to telegraph their movements. Obviously, there are major security concerns. He was quite frankly dumbfounded by the decision to tweet and Facebook this announcement that they were headed towards Kyiv before they had even arrived there in one piece. He says that it was naive. And he says he doesn't even have to tell his own children not to give away their location because they should simply know that this is war -- John.

BERMAN: Scott McLean for us in Lviv this morning. Scott, keep us posted. Thank you.

[06:05:03]

KEILAR: Now, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said that evacuation corridors did not work in Mariupol, as the Russian military continued to shell the areas. They didn't work overnight here.

Now, in a video message, Zelenskyy announced he is ready to send humanitarian aid and to remove civilians, but he won't expose people to shelling on the road.

Joining us now is a U.S. citizen who is fighting in Ukraine, Miro Popovich. Miro, we've been checking in with you every few days. MIRO POPOVICH, VOLUNTEER IN UKRAINE: Yes.

KEILAR: You are a U.S. Army veteran who had gone back to see family while you were taking a little help from school. And now you find yourself in Kyiv, fighting for the resistance. You've been deputized as an officer. Tell us what you have been seeing kind of day to day here.

POPOVICH: Well, day to day what I'm seeing in the capital is it's pretty quiet inside. But, you know, there have been a lot of air strikes here, which is very unfortunate. And some saboteurs and a lot of humanitarian help for our civilians and our military and our police.

So, yes, that's about it. But there's been many air strikes. They keep increasing. That's why I want to, free anna, we talked multiple times but I haven't mentioned it. And I want to take this opportunity to ask President Biden and the U.S. government and NATO to finally close our sky. Because they keep bombing our schools, our maternity hospitals, our bomb shelters. And it's increasing day to day.

You heard yesterday they bombed a shelter which were -- clearly said "children" on top of it. And you know, it's very unfortunate. They are losing against our military, so they're targeting our civilians, our children.

And you've seen images of the maternity hospital when they bombed it. And, you know, pregnant women with detached limbs and murdered infants. I'm pretty sure it's uncomfortable even to hear this. But here people are experiencing this every day. Our civilian people are experiencing it.

So please, NATO, don't be scared of Russia. We -- we show to the whole world that Russia is not as strong as they want people to seem. I mean, we are a small country that's 28 times smaller than Russia, and we are actually sort of winning this war. So I ask NATO to close our sky and don't be scared. Russia will do nothing to you, nothing, because they're not strong.

KEILAR: Miro -- Miro, I want to ask you, because Russia -- Russia is -- look, they've been on their heels. They're sending in reinforcements of Russian soldiers coming from as far away as Armenia. They're bringing in mercenaries from other places.

Are you concerned, though? I mean, that is -- that's a lot of manpower that is coming in to back Russia up.

POPOVICH: Am I concerned? Yes, of course. But I'm also sure that they already sent mercenaries from Chechnya. What happened to them? The same as other mercenaries. They are doing this because they are running out of manpower. They are running out of fuel. They don't have a lot of logistics. They're losing. I mean, they're losing.

That's why they -- they increased the air strikes, ballistic rockets. Unfortunately, our air defense is not as advanced as it should be. And that's why we asked NATO and U.S. to close our skies so we can take care of their ground forces.

Ground forces, we're good. Air strikes, you know, that's a little bit concerning to me. Because if they would bomb us, the military, or me or the police or the military, you know, it's war. It sort of makes sense. I mean, it's horrible, but it makes sense. But they target children's hospital. Come on. Seriously. This is horrible.

KEILAR: Yes. We're seeing a swimming pool in Mariupol, a theater, as you said, marked "children." Can you tell us a little bit more? You said there's Russian saboteurs. Are there Russian forces in Kyiv? What is this looking like?

POPOVICH: Well, it's looking like the saboteurs -- usually, they look like civilians. Some of them Russian. Most of them are from the East. They're sort of Ukrainians that speak Ukrainian.

Usually, they gave markings for ballistic rockets, you know, the guides missiles. Or they take information about the infrastructural buildings, like military bases or other important parts, police stations. They sort of record it, and they send information to the enemy.

So our job has been to identify those people and arrest them and give them to the authorities. Yes. So --

[06:10:04]

KEILAR: Well, Miro, please stay safe. We will continue to check in with you. And we thank you again for spending time with us today.

POPOVICH: Thank you, Brianna. And when you talk to Wladimir Klitschko, tell him that I love him and he's our champ.

KEILAR: All right, Miro. We'll let him know. Thank you so much.

POPOVICH: Thanks.

BERMAN: Just one more look this morning at the theater in Mariupol destroyed by a Russian air strike. This is a look at it before. And you can see circled on the ground -- and I'm doing it right now -- big letters in Russian that says "children." So this was clearly marked so that people could see. This was an area where civilians were sheltering.

The destruction of this, perhaps, prompted words from President Biden that we haven't heard before. He called Vladimir Putin a war criminal.

CNN's Jeremy Diamond is at the White House this morning. Natasha Bertrand joins us live, as well. I want to start with Natasha in Brussels first.

Natasha, so what prompted these comments from President Biden, war criminal?

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that these were comments that came from the heart. Essentially saying that after Biden had been seeing these images for days of the Russian atrocities in Ukraine; of the potential use of cluster bombs; of the targeting of humanitarian corridors; of the pictures we saw of people held -- being held against their will in a hospital there; and of course, the shelling of this bomb shelter in Mariupol, this just came out.

And it's not, you know, uncommon. This is something that President -- that Prime Minister Boris Johnson has also said. He called it earlier this month war crimes that Vladimir Putin was committing.

But it is very significant for Biden to have taken this step and become the highest level U.S. official to actually call these atrocities war crimes by President Putin.

You have to remember, though, this is not the first time that President Biden has said something like this. Last year, of course, under very different circumstances, he did call President Putin a killer. And that prompted a lot of outrage in the Kremlin and a lot of kind of performative kind of outrage, I should say.

Because a couple months later they had this big summit in Geneva, and of course, the lines of communication and diplomacy remained open there.

But I think the real question that stems from President Biden's comments here, calling Vladimir Putin a war criminal, are what -- what is -- what are the consequences on of that? What are the diplomatic implications of him branding Vladimir Putin a war criminal? And how can the international community also deal with Vladimir Putin after dubbing him a war criminal?

Now, Germany, Britain, and Spain, they've already set up units to investigate whether Vladimir Putin has committed war crimes. So this is something that the international community seems to be on the same page about. Of course, the International Criminal Court is also investigating the potential war crimes here.

But again, how -- how does this impact the West's ability to actually conduct business with Vladimir Putin and diplomacy? And how does it raise the stakes, of course, of the international community's responsibility to actually respond to these atrocities that are being carried out in Ukraine -- John?

BERMAN: Natasha, one bit of breaking news I do want to give you is we are getting reports that survivors are coming from the destruction of the theater where hundreds, perhaps, of civilians were. We 're trying to get much more information on that. We'll bring you all that when it comes in.

In the meantime, Jeremy, you know, you had pressed President Biden recently, a few weeks ago, if Russia was committing war crimes. His tone has really changed in just two weeks.

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, two weeks ago yesterday, John, actually, I asked President Biden two key questions. First of all, I asked him if he believed that Russia was intentionally targeting civilians. He said, yes, it's clear that they are.

And then I followed up and asked him, "Well, do you believe that these constitute war crimes?"

And at the time, he said it was too early to tell. And that was clear that the president wanted to be cautious in his language as it related to war crimes, the legal designation.

And in the weeks since, though, it's become hard to ignore the atrocities that are being committed in Ukraine by the Russian forces.

And I also don't think it's a mistake that the president's comments calling the Russian president a war criminal came just hours after we saw President Zelenskyy's emotional appeal to Congress to President Biden himself.

And that video that he played of those images of civilians, children, women, being killed and being targeted by Russian bombs and missiles as those videos played.

We know that President Biden was watching those remarks yesterday, as well as that video, from the residence of the White House.

But there has been a broader shift, as well, from the administration. Just last week, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said that it's clear that these atrocities amount to war crimes, the atrocities being committed by Russia amount to war crimes.

At the same time, there is still that legal process happening on another track. You heard Natasha reference the fact that President Biden said -- that President Biden's remarks came from the heart. But the State department is still conducting this legal process to collect evidence, gather information and then ultimately submit that information as evidence of war crimes to international bodies.

[06:15:06]

BERMAN: All right. Jeremy at the White House. Natasha in Brussels. Thank you both very much.

Sources tell CNN that the Biden administration is planning to send these specialized drones to Ukraine. What exactly are the capabilities, and how could they change the situation on the ground?

KEILAR: And Vladimir Putin calling wealthy Russian living in the West national traitors. Why is he lashing out?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: So sources tell CNN the U.S. will provide Ukraine with these Switchblade drones. We have some video of it here. These are small devices. They fit in a backpack, and they can hit targets up to 50 miles away. You can see it right there. They get destroyed in the process.

These are something that the Ukrainians would need some training to use. But it is something that is fairly easy to use, we are told.

[06:20:00]

Joining us now, Kimberly Dozier, CNN global affairs analyst and "TIME" magazine contributor. Let me just put this back up here once again so people can see what we're talking about here. The significance of something like this, what can it do?

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, it can be shoulder- fired. And it was first used by U.S. Special Operations forces in Afghanistan.

So small groups of soldiers can carry these, fire it into the air. They can loiter for about 30 minutes, and then kamikaze drop into a target.

BERMAN: Right there.

DOZIER: And blow it up.

Now, I've got to say, we've all learned a lot about these drones in the past 24 hours. They cost about 6,000 bucks, as opposed to a Hellfire missile that is fired from a Predator, which costs around $150,000.

So if this first shipment of 100 takes, if it really works for the Ukrainian military, I think you'll see more getting shipped in.

BERMAN: These are portable.

DOZIER: Yes.

BERMAN: One person can carry one of them, learn how to use it pretty quickly. It's different than these other drones we've been seeing in use now, these Turkish drones, which have a much -- they're much bigger, first of all, but they have a much longer distance they can operate in.

DOZIER: And these are those unmanned drones that can launch missiles themselves. And the Ukrainians would like more of those, but they had about 36. We don't know how many have been shot down. They're a bit slow moving. So they can get shot out of the air.

But it's easier to get these smaller drones in than it is the larger air frames that the U.S. could make available.

BERMAN: Broadly speaking, when we look at the map here, and we know the destruction that Russia is causing from the air. But it's largely missiles and long-range devices. They're not flying over constantly in planes right now. The Ukrainians, their air defense, how have they been success?

DOZIER: Well, they've had a lot of success with the surface-to-air missile systems they've got. Doesn't seem to be that well tried and tested. While they did well in Syria, those were mostly ones and twos, jets flying together. This is a much bigger, more complex operation. And the Russian air force has been staying mostly in Russian airspace.

You saw their early sorties, they got shot out of the sky time and again.

BERMAN: There's one other development I want to get your take on overnight. And I'm putting up a big map here of the entire Eurasian land mass here. Because that's really what the story is.

Word from Japan that Russian warships seen basically on the move all the way off the coast of Japan. And Japan's thinking is they might be trying to get all the way to Ukraine, basically. I mean, this is the route they would have to take. It is a long, long route to get there. But what does that tell you?

DOZIER: Well, that tracks with what a senior U.S. defense official was telling reporters yesterday, that they have had intercepts of Russian military conversations that they're taking such high casualties they're running out of troops.

The officials said that three-quarters of their combat forces, their ground tactical battalions, are deployed to this fight. And they've taken such high casualties they're running out of people. So they've got to bring them from the rest of Russia.

BERMAN: If those Russian warships really are on their way to Ukraine, it tells you how deep they're having to dig to reinforce here.

Kimberly Dozier, great to have you. Thanks so much.

DOZIER: Thanks.

BERMAN: Breaking news, survivors, we are told, emerging at this moment from the theater targeted by the Russians in Mariupol. We're going to get the latest information we can from the scene.

KEILAR: Plus, high oil prices are not only costing Americans millions at the gas pump. What you should expect when you're booking your next flight.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:28:01]

KEILAR: New this morning, higher oil prices are fueling more than just frustration for drivers. Now, major airlines say that your next flight will take a bigger bite of your wallet.

CNN's Pete Muntean joining us live from Reagan National Airport. Wishing that I'd booked my flight to see my sister sooner right about now, Pete, I will tell you.

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Not a bad idea, Brianna. You know, experts say that ticket prices will shoot up pretty quick, but they can fall like a feather.

You know, here's the admission from Delta Airlines, that the average ticket price of about $200 will go up by about $20, a 10 percent increase, each way. And it's all thanks to rising jet fuel prices.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MUNTEAN (voice-over): Spring break starts at the airport, where people are flying more than ever since the start of the pandemic. And they are already paying more.

(On camera): These are friends of yours.

DELEAH SHARP, TRAVELER: Yes, this is my friend.

MUNTEAN (voice-over): Deleah Sharp of Michigan was about to treat herself for her birthday next month.

SHARP: And I was deciding to go to Aruba. And in two days, it went up $300.

MUNTEAN (on camera): That's a lot.

SHARP: And I missed the 300 less. So I decided not to go.

MUNTEAN (voice-over): Jet fuel has spiked to its higher level in more than two years. A CNN analysis of federal data found filling up a Boeing 737 has shot up $6,800 since the invasion of Ukraine and $13,000 in the last year. Delta, United, and JetBlue all say they will past the cost onto consumers.

DARIUS DOLL, TRAVELER: If it became unreasonable, I think people would forego traveling. It would just depend on how much it would be and how bad you want to go somewhere

MUNTEAN: To conserve costs, airlines like Alaska and Southwest say they will slash some flights from schedules. But airline experts say do not be shocked if carriers get even more creative, charging more for things like WiFi, food, or seat selections.

HENRY HARTEVELDT, ATMOSPHERE RESEARCH: If you're paying 75 percent more than you were a year ago to gas up your car, I think you can relate to the plight airlines are facing when they have to pump tens of thousands of gallons of fuel into every one of their planes.

[06:30:00]