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Russian Military Forces Continue Invasion of Ukraine; Ukrainian Forces Say They are Pushing Back Russian Attempts to Encircle Kyiv; Deputy Mayor of Mariupol Sergei Orlov Interviewed on Russian Forces Continuing Assault on His City. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired March 22, 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 I want you to listen to one man who just escaped from Mariupol. He told me this about Vladimir Putin.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): I couldn't have imagined two months ago that something awful like this, such a crime, could take place. How is this even possible? He's a murderer. How can a person feel when this is the only thing left? I have absolutely nothing now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Russia's assault on Mariupol has been relentless. We have drone video that shows an industrial compound there bombed pretty much beyond recognition. In Kherson, several hundred protesters gathered in Freedom Square only to be dispersed violently, aggressively, by Russian troops.

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(GUNFIRE)

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BERMAN: Ukraine's military say the Russians used stun grenades. You can hear the gunfire there. At least one person was wounded.

U.S. defense officials tell CNN that Russian military units across Ukraine, they're in disarray, often competing with each other for resources rather than coordinating their efforts. If there is a top Russian field commander in Ukraine, the Pentagon doesn't even know who it is.

President Biden now warning U.S. business leaders to prepare for Russian cyberattacks.

I want to go straight to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, Frederik Pleitgen is there for us right now. Fred, I do understand you have heard some explosions over the last few minutes.

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we've heard a lot of explosions, John. In fact, there seems to be a full-on battle going on right now, very fierce battle, especially towards the north of the Ukrainian capital.

Of course, we have to mention that there is a curfew that's in place today, John. And one of the reasons why the Ukrainian authorities say they put that in place is they believe that there are people who are collaborating with the Russian forces in possibly giving the locations of Ukrainian fighting positions. That's something they want to suppress.

So we're here, in our location, but from the outside we are hearing some big explosions, some big battles raging as well. And essentially what has been going on, I'd say for two hours now, maybe a little more, is that we heard first air raid sirens and then a massive blast that went off, which may have been outgoing surface-to-air missile fire, because the Ukrainians just a couple of minutes ago told us that they actually shot down a very large Russian missile, and that the remnants of that actually dropped into the Dnieper River. So there were big explosions.

But even right now, we're hearing explosions. We're seeing smoke rising up, especially over the north, northeast, northwest of the city, but also to the east as well. And intermittently, but very often, actually, we are also hearing small arms fire not very far from where we are as well. So there certainly seems to be a full-on ground battle going on. There seem to be bombings going on. There certainly seems to be rocket artillery and artillery fire going on as well, as the battle for Kyiv is one that is very intense at this point in time, John.

BERMAN: I spoke to a member of President Zelenskyy's cabinet, who confirmed the Ukrainian position that this town Makarov, west of Kyiv where you are, the Ukrainian forces have retaken it from the Russians. And he told me the Ukrainian forces will retake more towns and cities in the next few days. Tell us the significance of that.

PLEITGEN: It's extremely significant, and certainly something that comes as a big surprise to a lot of people who have been observing the fighting that has been going on here. If we keep in mind, when all this started, when the war started, the invasion started, many people thought that the Ukrainian forces would fold within days.

And one of the questions that is being asked right now with the fighting that we're hearing and seeing here is whether or not that might be some sort of Ukrainian counteroffensive. It's very difficult to tell, of course, since all we're hearing are the noises and seeing the explosions. But certainly, in the past couple of days, it does seem as though the Ukrainians have made some advances, and Makarov is key for the Ukrainians to take that back, because, on the one hand, it really makes it a lot more difficult for the Russians to try and encircle the city. They're obviously trying that pincer move, where they're moving in both from the northeast and from the northwest. That seems to be halted at best, and being pushed back, if you listen to the Ukrainians. And from what we have seen, some of the videos that we have seen, it

does seem as though the Ukrainian forces are back in Makarov, even though there is large destruction in that town. And there certainly seems to still be some contested areas around there. But from the entire posture of the Ukrainian military over the past couple of days, it certainly seems as though they are holding ground and possibly even trying to win back some ground, especially in the northwest of Kyiv where we have seen multiple rocket launchers in position firing back at the Russians.

The Ukrainians, of course, also using some of the equipment that they're capturing from the Russian military to then turn that around, repurpose that, and fire that back at the Russian military. And the Russians, we've talked about this in the past, John, certainly seemed to have some pretty big problems with their logistics, resupplying their troops.

[08:05:03]

And quite frankly, outside of Kyiv, they are pretty exposed in some of those positions while the Ukrainians, of course, very much here entrenched on the outskirts of the city, John.

BERMAN: Frederik Pleitgen for us this morning in Kyiv, a city under curfew. Fred, thanks so much for your reporting.

Joining us now is the deputy mayor of Mariupol, Sergei Orlov. Deputy Mayor, if you can hear me, I know how difficult it has been in your city, President Zelenskyy has said it has been reduced to ashes. Tell me what it's like there right now.

DEPUTY MAYOR SERGEI ORLOV, MARIUPOL, UKRAINE: Hello. In the moment, each day Mariupol is destroyed more and more. Until now, in our estimation, about 90 percent of our infrastructure is damaged and destroyed, and at least one-third of them could not be repaired anymore. This just new building in future cities. And for blockade, city does not receive any humanitarian aid, city without food, electricity, water, energy supplies, city is under continuous bombing, from 50 bombs to 100 bombs Russian aircraft drops each day. So we should understand at least each 15 or 20 minutes bomb dropped to my city.

A lot of death, a lot of crying, a lot of awful war crimes. And latest of them was a bombing of art school, and there was about 400 citizens in bomb shelter. And so a lot of war crimes and cases of genocide Putin and his army makes day by day, hour by hour.

BERMAN: The Russian military demanded that you surrender. That deadline came and went. Do you still stand by that position?

ORLOV: I cannot comment, the war itself and this war action between Ukraine army and Russian army, but I know that Ukrainian army is strong and will defend our city up to the last bullet. But we should understand that over the city we have three battles, 10 battles, and Ukrainian army continues to defend our city and our citizens. BERMAN: I just spoke to a woman and her elderly parents who managed

to escape over the last few days, and they described the same situation you do, just horrible, bodies being buried in lawns and along the streets. We're so sorry that you are suffering this right now. How do you find hope? Where do you find hope?

ORLOV: There is no common answer to this question. So some of them -- some of us, some of our citizens, some of people who had possibility to leave the city, just raise, some of them find any possibility to survive. Some of them do their best to share all they have, to share some water, to share some food, some of them do not have only possibility to be in bomb shelter for 20, 22 days without any utility. So there is no common answer. Some people, and a lot of people just try to survive, and they pray to find some solution or to find some help because we see this awful war crimes and cases of genocide.

BERMAN: Where do you find hope right now?

ORLOV: I cannot comment, excuse me.

BERMAN: Do you worry about starvation in your city?

ORLOV: Sure. Me personally see, me personally know all this awful acts, me personally, and all our team do our best to help people who try to leave. Citizens and Russia does not allow to provide any humanitarian help and to solve any humanitarian issue. But we do our best each day, each hour to help our citizens.

BERMAN: Do you have a count of how many people in Mariupol have been killed?

ORLOV: Our latest official statistic was 2,358. But we should understand that this number is a week ago. It's terrible.

[08:10:11]

BERMAN: Deputy mayor, if you can -- deputy mayor, can you hear me? I think we lost the connection. I want to give it one more second. Any chance we can reestablish? That was the deputy mayor of Mariupol Sergei Orlov telling us that the official death count was 2,300, but that was a week ago. It is almost certainly much higher than that at this point. He does say the bombs are falling every 10 to 15 minutes there, describes the situation where a lot of people are having a hard time finding hope and doesn't know what the future will hold at this point.

I should also note that I was about to ask him, when we had spoken to him last, the deputy mayor hasn't been able to contact his own parents for weeks at this point. And that's the situation with so many people in that city living under currently.

So President Biden says that Vladimir Putin's back is against the wall. What the White House is now warning U.S. companies to prepare for.

A Russian tabloid reports and then deletes a Ministry of Defense account of almost 10,000 Russian soldiers dead in Ukraine. What to make of that statistic.

Plus, tornado threats increasing across the southern United States this morning. And just in, stunning new video of a truck flipping over during a storm in Texas. Wait until you see what happens next.

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[08:15:14]

BERMAN: New reports that U.S. defense officials have been unable to identify Russian top military commanders in Ukraine. I spoke with Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby about that moments ago.

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JOHN KIRBY, PENTAGON PRESS SECRETARY: We know they have been frustrated, John. They are running out of fuel. They are running out of food. They are not integrating their operations in a joint manner the way you would think a modern military would.

Their commanders aren't necessarily talking to one another, and coordinating air to ground. We have seen tension between the air forces and the ground forces about how well or how poorly they're supporting one another. The same could go with the maritime environment and they're having trouble now with what they call command and control. They're having trouble talking to one another, physically talking to one another, resorting to the use of cell phones in some cases.

So they're definitely struggling. That's why we have seen no real major progress by the Russians on the ground, except for in the south, where they had shorter supply lines coming out of Crimea than they do in the north.

So, they're struggling. We're seeing that -- they're going to try to regroup. We can expect them to try to fix the problems and try to overwhelm the Ukrainian resistance, which is why again we're working so hard to get the Ukrainians what they need as quickly as possible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR; Let's take a closer look now at what is happening in Ukraine, with retired Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the former assistant secretary of state for political and military affairs.

Sir, we just had the deputy mayor of Mariupol on, speaking to John Berman, and he said 90 percent of the infrastructure is now destroyed in the city.

Can you put this into context, also how it relates to Kyiv and the differences here?

BRIGADIER GENERAL MARK KIMMITT, U.S. ARMY (RET): Sure. I think we have got to look at Mariupol as sort of a preview of coming attractions for what we're going to see in Kyiv. What is important to understand is they have not put a significant

number of troops into Mariupol, what they have been depending on more than anything else is the artillery, the rockets, and the missiles that are just raining terror down on the city.

KEILAR: They're just coming in from outside.

KIMMITT: They're just shooting from outside. They're dunking artillery into the city. They don't want to fight inside the city. What they want to do is cause the city to surrender, so they don't have to get -- they the Russians don't have to get any of their soldiers killed.

And thus far you can see that the surrender that is being demanded is being rejected. One has to wonder when the Russians start sending the troops in, will that -- will the surrender terms get tougher and will the fighting get bloodier.

KEILAR: Because don't they ultimately, if they want to control the city, have to go in and control it? And what would that look like?

KIMMITT: Well, if the city surrenders, they would put people in there, change how the government is so on and so forth. They would be much less than trying to put soldiers in there fighting from block to block. Here's an example. Imagine being a platoon of 30 or 40 guys trying to fight through this area, where if this was just a normal parking lot, it would be man to man.

But the fighters there have the advantage. They're using down here a sniper position, appear sniper positions, they're probably dropping Molotov cocktails from here down on you. So, it's just this ugly bloody fighting. This is one building in one street, can you imagine having to do that in a city the size of Kyiv or even Mariupol, which is 90 square miles? And Kyiv is three times the size of that.

KEILAR: It is huge. Do you think the Russian forces have the capability to do that?

KIMMITT: They have done it historically. They have had a lot of experience doing this kind of fighting. They have done this in Stalingrad, in Leningrad, more recently, they have done this in Grozny. That's what we're seeing. People are talking such as -- like there is a stalemate going on right now.

There is no stalemate going on right now. They're moving their forces into position, around Kyiv, trying to encircle, get around it, but while they're doing that, again, they're firing the artillery from back here, and what we call they're preparing the city, they're rumbling the city ahead of town, softening it up, because they want to get Kyiv to surrender and the generals are doing everything they can.

KEILAR: Speaking of, who is in charge here? It appears there is some confusion about who the top commander is in the field.

KIMMITT: Let me be true, we do know that each of these areas have about three or four different units, and I would suspect that our intelligence people have identified those commanders for each of those subordinate units.

[08:20:13]

And I think that's an important question to ask, because we seem to focus all of our concern at Putin and the war crimes that he is committing. But, look, Putin is just telling the generals what to do. Go take Ukraine.

How they do it, the tactics they use, the brutality that we're seeing, those are the decisions of the generals. They're the ones that are saying use rockets, artillery, missiles against these cities and rubble it. They should be held responsible as well as Putin.

KEILAR: Yeah, they are responsible.

General, thank you so much. Really, really appreciate that.

Coming up, a 96-year-old holocaust survivor who lived through four Nazi concentration camps killed by Russian bombing, killed in a war that Vladimir Putin claimed is intended to denazify Ukraine, his quote. We'll have that man's story ahead.

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[08:25:10]

BERMAN: Welcome back.

John Berman in Lviv, in western Ukraine. A 96-year-old holocaust survivor was killed in the Russian bombing of this country. During World War II, Borys Romanchenko survived four different Nazi concentration camps. According to the Buchenwald Memorial Institute, Romanchenko was living in an apartment in Kharkiv that was bombed by the Russians last Friday. He was killed.

This is what Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said reacting to the horrible news.

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PRESIDNET VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINE (through translator): Please think about how much he's been through, he survived Buchenwald, the conveyers of death created by the Hitler ranks. He was killed by a Russian strike, which struck an ordinary Kharkiv multistory building. With each day of this war, it becomes more obvious what denazification means to them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Former State Department Middle East negotiator Aaron David Miller tweeted this out. He wrote, never again is ever, ever again. The international community has failed to even try to prevent any of the planet's genocide mass killings over the past 100 years, Armenians, Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda, Congo, Sudan, Darfur, Myanmar, Uyghurs, Syria. Aaron David Miller writes, ever ask yourself why.

And he joins us now, also a CNN global affairs analyst.

Listen, as you said, the world has a terrible record preventing genocide, preventing mass killings, that it sees happening. Why?

AARON DAVID MILLER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: You know, it is no coincidence that USAID administrator Sam Powers book is called "The Problem From Hell". I wrote that tweet and twitter clearly is not the best venue for medium to express views out of frustration and sadness, largely around Mariupol, which is destined, I'm afraid to become one of the great destroyed cities, Grozny and Aleppo, both of which are largely a product of Vladimir Putin's savagery and brutality.

Look, John, the gap between our actions and words when it comes to prevention of genocide or intervention to stop mass killings. There have been exceptions. Over the years, it has been over the years it has been really bad. The analysis, and, again, I -- it is easy to criticize from the outside, if I see a house on fire, and there is no chance that the fire department is going to come and rescue the people inside, I have a moral decision to make.

Do I risk my own life to save those people inside?

A president of the United States weighing the consequences of humanitarian intervention, in the case of Ukraine, has more than just moral factors to take into account, and the consequences of an intervention or not intervention at least for American interests affects -- could affect millions of humans in the United States and in Ukraine. So it is a moral hazard, it is extremely difficult problem.

And, frankly, I think Ukraine is going to be another example of confirmation of the rule. I wish it could and would be an exception, but I just don't see the vaunted international community, largely a coalition of the unwilling, or the United States being prepared for understandable reasons, despite what President Zelenskyy, his courage and fortitude, would like to see happen.

BERMAN: Does the international community need to be this helpless or impotent?

MILLER: You know, the test is coming. I guess the answer to your question is you have to identify practical mechanisms in this case that could somehow prevent Vladimir Putin, who is using largely long range artillery, cruise missiles and rockets, to savage the Ukrainian population.

So you have to ask yourself the question how do you prevent that? There have been any number of suggestions that have been raised, a no- fly zone, a limited humanitarian zone in western Ukraine, maybe sponsored by the U.N., all of these court a good deal of complications and problems.

No-fly zone would have to be defended. You end up having to attack Russian launch sites in Russia proper, not to mention in Ukraine. And, again, if you put in peacekeepers, which the Poles are now proposing and will propose at NATO, the administration has been very lukewarm if not opposed to that idea, you're going to have to figure out a way. [08:30:00]