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tv   CNN Newsroom With Alisyn Camerota and Victor Blackwell  CNN  March 30, 2022 11:00am-12:00pm PDT

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hello, everyone. welcome to "cnn newsroom." victor is off today. just hours after the kremlin claimed they would quote drastically reduce military activity around kyiv, the russian army is continuing to conduct quote a full scale invasion. russia unleashed more fire power on chernihiv. the mayor calls it a colossal
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attack. a senior official tells cnn there were no areas where a siren didn't go off overnight. in the besieged southern city of mariupol, there have, we have new satellite images that show a warehouse used by the red cross that was clearly marked and it was hit by at least two air strikes. president biden spoke with -- committed to providing millions in direct aid. zelenskyy addressed norway's parliament today and asked for more anti-air and anti-tank weapons and for europe to close its sea ports to russia.
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the options around kyiv, but then of course our correspondents on the ground told us that wasn't. >> as you said, mariupol, the red cross building and beyond kyiv. our teams in the suburbs of kyiv reported they are hearing constant incoming and outstanding shelling there. multiple rocket launch systems were also heard there. so there's no signs really of a drawdown. russian aircraft also continued their relentless attack on mariupol. in addition to that, the warehouse situation you mentioned, entire city blocks in central and eastern mariupol completely flattened and it is just rubble right now. let's go straight to ukraine's capital. christiane amanpour joins us live from there. hello to you. u.s. officials are cautioning
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many times against taking their russians at their word. what do we know about these russian attacks in chernihiv and near kyiv as well? >> well, we certainly know in kyiv because we've been out and about and have been listening with our own ears, seeing with our own eyes, and it has been very, very noisy, as they say. ever since the russians decided to say what they said yesterday, we have not seen a deescalation. in chernihiv, the mayor there has talked about a colossal amount of major sfrtrikes that happened there. when i asked president zelenskyy's chief of staff about this, he said look, we just cannot take them at their word. war is raging and raging and they're particularly concerned, not so much about themselves here in kyiv, but about mariupol, which you've just been talking about. it really resonates as aleppo
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did. all this new video showing in minute detail what has happened. there are more than 100,000 people still trapped in mariupol and some have been able to get out on their own initiative, but still no humanitarian corridors and no aid and that's what they're still trying to figure out. i even spoke to the french foreign minister. all the international community that's arrayed around this crisis is trying to get at the at least, humanitarian corridors to the people who need it the most, don. >> speaking of the inhumanity. i want to show our viewers this graphic and disturbing video that we have showing the full extent of the devastation. this is from a ukrainian ngo. what more do we know about this particular attack? >> look, this, i mean, it is a situation where by the both the
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russian and ukrainian forces have been battling it out around irpin since the beginning of this war. it appears that either all or most of irpin is back in the hands of the ukrainians which is how come this ngo was able to take these pictures and our crews and colleagues have gone and are going to go again tomorrow to check it out for themselves, but yes, the devastation is terrible. the death toll is mounting. it affects women, children, men. not combatants as well as combatants. again, it has the entirely unfortunate, familiar hallmark of what russia does and that is pound civilian targets. we have seen it over and again not just in this war, but since 2008 in georgia, in grosney, in chechnya and aleppo. who knows how this is going to end now.
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they seem to be very far apart at the negotiating table, even despite what they say after these meetings. >> you said who knows how it's going to end. the question is really because you know, as part of this deescalation negotiations, ukraine has said that it will not join nato. but is that going to be enough to satisfy putin? >> well, it jolly well should be because that was his first ask and this is what now ukraine has done. basically, they've been forced to because nato doesn't want to have them in despite what a heroic military feat they have performed in the last 35 days now. it is absolutely extraordinary what this country has done against a much more powerful military force. but here's the thing. the united states is trying to figure out whether putin is actually getting accurate information from whoever he talks to and even that's not clear. is he really talking to his
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diplomats and foreign minister about this? is he only talking to his security and defense? are they telling him the truth? we don't know and apparently, the u.s. is trying to figure that out because that will also affect the calculation of when to go to the piece. i have been talking to the french foreign minister and i've been told on background, not by him, but by other officials, that on the phone with president macron, putin shows no sign of changing his tone. even you know, calling the civilians and people in mariupol still extremists. this is very, very, very bad. if he's not being told the truth, or if he actually wants to believe this and actually pursue his war aim through the south and to the east, which is the whole idea of donbas and trying to get a land corridor to crimea then force a de facto fact on the ground that they have annexed and they will keep that territory, he might think he can do that, but the
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international community and certainly ukraine will not accept it. don? >> our chief international anchor, christiane amanpour for us on the ground in kyiv. alisyn, back to you in new york. every day, it just gets worse and worse. you look at the pictures, bodies on the ground. i asked her what was it going to take to end this. when is putin going to accept? at this point, we just don't know. >> no one knows. as she just roeported, he himsef may be getting bad information. don, we'll check back with you momentarily. u.s. officials believe putin is being misinformed by his own add vi advisers. a u.s. official said his senior advisers are quote, too afraid to tell him the truth and that there's a rift between the president and his top officials.
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let's discuss this with mark hurtling. what's the upshot of that? if president putin is getting bad information from his own military advisers, what are the repercussions of that? >> i can only talk about it from the operational or tactical perspective and strategic approach. as a commander on the battlefield, you must give the proper intelligence, the proper information from your subordinates, the guidance of the folks who you surround yourself with. now, whether you accept that or not is up to you as a commander. you may have more information that you say i'm going to discount that, but when you're talking about the subordinates that don't step forward and i think that's probably more of a problem within putin's regime than giving him the information and him ignoring it. if they're not stepping forward for fear of either discipline action and in the russian state, that could mean death or some other factor, that's what we've seen in russia for years.
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for decades. as the commander in europe, i used to get intelligence reports, i won't go into detail, but talking about how ministers and defense officials would tell their boss things then suddenly disappear. there was a ground force commander who was any counterpart who had been in position for about three months and suddenly he was gone. so i don't know what happened to him. he was put in a gu log somewhere, but that's the way they treat subordinates who don't give mr. putin the information he wants. that's the kind of leader he is. he's an authoritarian cleptocrat and has leaders throughout europe and the united states telling him what they're seeing and how he's going to be damaged during this assault. he still isn't believing it. we had the cia director go to europe, blinken go to russia.
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he didn't accept the advice from any of them of what would happen if he conducted this attack. well now he's experiencing it, but must not be getting the right information still. >> your story tells you all you need to know. it's quite a disincentive if you think you're going to be disappeared for telling the truth. i want to talk about yesterday because there was this momentary glimmer of hope that maybe the peace talks had yielded some results. maybe the russian army had seen they weren't making any headway in kyiv. maybe they were going to be pulling back from kyiv and that was short lived because all of our correspondents on the ground said that only intensified the fighting. so if it's not true that there's a deescalation, where does that l leave the ukrainian soldiers and forces? how do they know what to do next? >> they have, ukrainian forces have great direction.
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they're protecting their homeland. they still have the will to do that. it is a chaotic and traumatic fight for sure where mr. putin is killing civilians and committing war crimes. the photos you showed earlier of a red cross facility being bombed, that's the ultimate in war crimes when you're bombing a building with a red cross on the side of it. everyone knows the geneva convention banned that as its number one priority. you're talking about a leeradern putin who doesn't care. all that hope yesterday that he was coming around and there was a dialogue between him, his surrogates and the ukrainian surrogate, anyone who knows anything about this regime, about putin, knows that on a daily basis, they are filled with lies. they are not going to do what they say they're going to do. and for the first time in a very long time, we have an
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administration who understands that. a u.s. administration and who is dealing with it and you have a ukra ukrainian in mr. zelenskyy who knows. it's constant killing and that's how he's going to try to execute this foreign policy. putin does not care about diplomacy. he obviously does not care about the economic factor. he doesn't care about the meat grinder he's thrown his soldiers into and he doesn't care the world is seeing him as a pariah right now. how do you stop a guy like that? that's for further debate, but i personally can't give an answer as to how you turn this around, but you can't, can't say that what he's going to say at the negotiating table is ever going to come true. >> yeah. there's also some information that his advisers are keeping from him. the gravity of the economic sanctions, that he's not quite aware of how hard those are
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hitting either. but in any event, thank you very much. great to talk to you. as putin continues to oversee his bloody war against ukraine, former president trump is calling on putin to release any damaging information he has about the biden family. and a top u.s. general says there could be intelligence gaps that caused the u.s. to overestimate russia's capabilities and underestimate ukraine. we're going to discuss with the chair of a senate intel committee, next. i don't just play someone brainy on tv - i'm an actual neuroscientist. and i love the science behind neuriva plus. unlike ordinary memory supplements, neuriva plus fuels six key indimore brain performance?ce. yes, please! neuriva. think bigger.
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the russian army continues to conduct a full scale armed aggression against ukraine. russia now says it's quote re-grouping its forces. this is one day after claiming it would deescalate around kyiv and chernihiv. joining us now is democratic senator, mark warner. the chairman of the senate intelligence committee. thanks so much for being here. i know you can't share with us any classified information, but can you characterize how you see where russia is today in its fight against ukraine? >> first, alisyn, i think the american intelligence community was spot on in predicting how extensive putin's invasion would be. i know our european friend, even ukrainian, didn't believe putin would launch this major of an attack. but three things i think have been a bit surprising. one was you know, can't really predict, and i'm no military expert. you can't really predict an
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individual's will to fight until the combat starts and were the ukrainians going to have that will to fight, clearly they've exceeded all expectations and candidly, the russians, in terms of their will to fight has been we've probably overestimated some reports of russian soldiers. second, i don't think anybody could have predicted how poorly the russians planned some of the logistics. that may have been because putin kept the information such close hold that even all of the on the ground commanders may not have known what the full plans were. the fact they sent in these troops oftentimes without enough food and materials to go beyond a few days, so the expectation that they were going to win dramatically. third, again, i'm not military expert, but the whole idea of the age of tank warfare seems to be maybe realtime changing as it
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appears that organized groups of ukrainians with anti-tank missiles and ballistics, often shoulder held, seem to be doing amazing damage against these russian armored corridors. >> senator, i'm interested to hear you say that you think the intelligence is spot on because i think it was just yesterday when the top u.s. general in europe said something different. said that there was an intelligence gap, sort of alluding to what you said. that the russians were overestimated and the ukrainians were underestimated. let me play that for you. >> is there an intelligence gap in our capability that made us overestimate the russians and underestimate the defensive capability of the ukrainians? >> senator, there could be and as we've always done in the past, when this crisis is
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overwith, with will do a review in all departments and find out where our weak areas were and make sure that we can find ways to improve and this could be one of those areas. >> senator, what about that intelligence gap? >> i don't think there's any contradictions. the intelligence community was absolutely spot on with predicting that this was not going to be an invasion only in the east. it wasn't going to be incremental. it was going to be an attempt by putin to take over the whole country. the notion of the will to fight, again, every expert that i have been briefed by said you don't know what the will to fight is until the combat actually starts and the fact that president zelenskyy who has really risen to the occasion but prior to the invasion, we had urged him literally weeks ahead of time to call up all his reserves and the fact he didn't and were then still able to kind of rise to
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the occasion, kudos to the ukrainian, but that probably was a bit of a surprise. the notion that russia, which we know was throwing some of its best troops into this invasion, were so inept in the operation of you know, materials, logistics, i guess that would be a surprise. i'm not sure how the intelligence could have prepredicted that since we haven't seen a massive russian use of land forces since their war in afghanistan almost 40 years ago. so you know, if there are lessons learned, i'm going to be anxious to hear from military experts about this whole notion of the viability of tank combat against anti-tank javelins and other tools that seemed to be frankly, again not being a military expert, more effective than even predicted. one of the things i've also got a huge question on, and this is, this is not only my question,
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it's our intel community's question. the fact that russia has not launched a more major cyber attack against ukraine or for that matter, launched a level of cyber attacks against the west of the united states is still, it's kind of like the dog that didn't bark. i'm glad that's not happened, but unlike the russian military operation where they've not been, there's not been battle testing over the last ten or 20 years, we have seen the russian cyber activities because we've seen them attack ukraine and -- in 2017. we've seen russian entities attacks a couple of years ago that caused gas lines around america. we know they've got first rate cyber capabilities and thank goodness we have not seen them launch them to date. >> while i have you, i want to ask you about news we're getting in right now and that is about this trump era policy known at
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title 42. this is what allowed asylum seekers, so migrants who would show up at the border, single adults, to be deported and basically what the trump administration did was say there was a public health emergency during the covid pandemic so they didn't have to go through regular process. they were deported. we're not understanding the biden administration plans to end that policy in may. and according to you know, border patrol, the worst case scenario when they look at the numbers, that could add an additional 18,000 people a day who show up at the border. obviously that can glut the system. that would be hard for them to process. so if the biden administration does in fact end this title 42, what is going to happen to the border? >> first of all, america's a generous nation. we've just been through the process and in virginia, we've been the input spot for
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literally tens and tens and tens of thousands of afghan refugees. i think i know again, americans are going to be welcoming to the hundred thousand ukrainian refugees that president biden has promised to take in, but i would be very reluctant for the administration to end this trump policy until they had a real plan in place. i think you know, we are a generous country, but we have to have, we have to be a country of rule of law. we have processes where we've taken in the afghan refugees, the yukrainian refugees, but i would be worried about this notion that the border would be overwhelmed and i want to hear a specific plan with adequate personnel and frankly, i would like to see the state department do more pressure on some of the country's, particularly the northern triangle countries, to try to stop the flow of some of these economic refugees. >> yeah, have you heard any plan
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like that? >> i have not to date. but i know that my colleagues, two of my democratic colleagues from arizona who are much more on the front line on this are asking for those kind of details and i will join with them in wanting to see those details before you suddenly could have overwhelming numbers come across. overwhelming numbers that aren't going through a legal process. again, i go back to where i started my answer. our country is generous if not more generous than any other nation. and we've seen that by taking in close to 125,000 folks who got out of afghanistan. many of them coming to america and now the effort on the ukrainian refugees. we will do more than our share, but opening the flood gates at the borders would not be the appropriate plan until we have a process to deal with that. frankly, we need strong borders. let me be clear. i am not someone for this any kind of open border process.
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>> we hear you. senator, thank you very much for all the information. >> thank you. so president biden is urging lawmakers to secure more funding for covid-19. his warning, he is warning that this progress could be reversed because if they don't have enough money to fight it. we'll discuss all that, next. nice suits, you guys blend right in. the world needs yoyou back. i'm retired greg, you know this. people have their money just sitting around doing nothing... that's bad, they shohouldn't do that. they're gettining crushed by inflation. well, i feel for them. they're taking financial advice from memes. [baby spits out milk] i'll get my onesies®. ♪ “baby one more time” by britney spears ♪ good to have you back, old friend. yeah, eyes on the road, benny. welcome to a new chapter in investing. [ding] e*trade now from morgan stanley. i'm jonathan lawson here to tell you about life insurance through the colonial penn program. if you're age 50 to 85, and looking to buy life iurance on a fixed budget, remember the three ps.
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president biden is warning that without additional money, the progress against the pandemic could be in jeopardy. >> congress has to provide the funding america needs to continue to fight covid-19. if we fail on this, we leave ourselves vulnerable if another wave of the virus hits. >> okay, let's bring in kaitlan collins, lauren fox and our cnn medical analyst. lauren, where is congress on this funding? how much are they willing to give? >> right now, they're talking about $15.6 billion. the hang up has been how exactly you off set the cost of that huge sum of money. so one of the discussions they are having in majority leader schumer's office with two top republicans, romney as well as richard burr who's the top
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republican on the health committee, is how do off set that money. is there a way that democrats and republicans can agree to actually finance this package. now, if you remember, a couple of weeks ago, democratis had struck a deal, but it was actually house democrats who had significant issues with how they were going to be paying for it and in the end, nancy pelosi, the house speaker, actually had to pull covid relief out of that government funding bill and that has really set these negotiations backwards. so they're kind of starting these negotiations anew, although schumer has said he's hopeful they could reach a deal and pass it on the floor before the easter recess. obviously, not a lot of time ahead to do that. but that is the goal the majority leader has set. >> doctor, i had some medical questions about the booster. we watched president biden get his second booster shot and the fda has now approved this fourth covid shot for people 50 and
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older. so basically four months ago, t -- >> this is so important to clarify because people need to know the vaccine plus the first booster continue to be extremely effective at preventing severe disease. there are people over the age of 65 who have not even gotten their initial booster so we have to make sure people get their three doses first. of course people who are unvaccinated have to get vaccinated. that protection is not really waning. there are some people who might benefit from a fourth dose and those individuals are people over the age of 65 or if you're over 50 and you have chronic medical conditions, you might want to have an additional level of protection with a second booster. but i think that's something that should be a choice just like it's a choice for people to keep on masking or to do testing
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before getting together indoors. it's an added level of protection that not everyone needs at this time, but if you're immunocompromised, over 60 with chronic medical issues, it's wise to get the booster now. >> that's really helpful. thank you for clarifying that. i wanted to ask you about title 42. the trump era policy. it was declared during covid because of the pandemic. there was this emergency medical announcement that people seeking asylum could be deported. so i know you have new reporting on that. >> yeah. that's a policy that as you noted, it was put in place during the trump administration but has remained in place during the biden administration. they often refer to the cdc on that. president biden just told us they will have an announcement on that soon and we are told that a decision is in the works
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and the cdc could announce it this week and that decision is going to be to lift that policy by the end of late may. of course this is the policy that allowed the government to turn away migrants at the southern border almost immediately upon arrival because of the covid-19 pandemic and the white house said this is the decision they're making in coordination with the cdc. deferring to them really on a lot of this. we are told they are expected to announce this week they will be lifting it by late may. then they can implement the processes to change how that work, what it looks like given it has been in place for so long now. that is significant news coming from president biden from the white house today. >> okay, kaitlan collins, lauren fox, dr. wynn, thank you all. we have new satellite images out of the ukrainian city of mariupol and these show entire city blocks obliterated and among the most heartbreaking devastation, an attack on a theatre turned bomb shelter.
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it has left hundreds of people dead. we're going to hear from a woman who narrowly missed being a victim of that bombing, next. lavender baths calmed him. so we made a plan to turnn bath time into a business. ♪ ♪ find a northwestern mutual advisor at nm.com
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john kirby is taking questions on the war in ukraine. let's listen. >> so on the withdrawal, we have
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seen over the last 24 hours the repositioning of a small percentage of the troops that and the bgroups russia had against kyiv. probably in the neighborhood of 20% of what they had. they are beginning to reposition. some of those troops we assess a repositioning into belarus. we don't have an exact number for you, but that's our early assessments. none of them, we have seen none of them reposition to their home garrison. that's not a small point. if the russians are serious about deescalating because their claim here, then they should send them home. but they're not doing that. at least not yet. so that's not what we're seeing. and i don't know, you know, our assessment would be as we said yesterday, that they're going to
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refit these troops, resupply them and then probably employ them elsewhere in ukraine. but i don't believe that at this stage, we've seen the refitting going on, you know, with any specificity. on the reports of putin not being advised. i'm going to be careful not to get into any intelligence, but we would concur with the conclusion that mr. putin has not been fully informed by his ministry of defense at every turn over the last month. now i want to caveat that. we don't have access to every bit of information that he's been given or every conversation that he's had. i'm going to be very careful here not getting into too much more detail on this, but i've seen these press reports attributed to a u.s. official
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and we would concur with the basic finding. but i'm not going to get any more specific than that. okay. court. >> can you, i just want to be clear on the repositioning the 20%. you're not saying that all of those have gone to belarus. >> i said less than 20%. >> less than 20% of what's been a raid around kyiv has now moved out. but all of those -- >> they've started to reposition. i don't know that i'd say all of them moved out. we've seen them begin to reposition less than 20%. our assessment today, and we think some of them, not all, but some of them have already moved into belarus. >> what do you mean by reposition then? they're moving further away from kyiv? >> they're leaving kyiv and heading more towards the north. away from the city. >> and are they continuing as they move away, to launch attacks on the city? are they launching artillery
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from further away still? >> i think the troops we're seeing must've away, that's their focus is moving away, but we still assess as we did yesterday that kyiv is still being attacked by bombardment. artillery fire as well as air strikes. they're still, as i said yesterday, there's still a majority of the forces that mr. putin put around kyiv are still there. now as i've said couple of days ago, they're largely in defensive positions. several days ago we stopped seeing any advancement on their part. they weren't moving closer to the city. from a ground effort, there was no more advancing on kyiv but the air strikes have not stopped. not at all. so kyiv as i said yesterday is still very much under threat. >> how much total btgs there were around kyiv? >> we never actually gave a number of the total and i want to be careful about that. but again, our best assessment
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is less than 20% over the last 24 hours now that we seem to start to reposition. and i want to hit it again because i think it's an important point. if the russians were serious about deescalating and the way they spun this yesterday that they're trying to take the pressure off, then send them home. that's not what they're doing. at least not yet. >> so just to be clear on the, what troops you're talking about here, they were basically three lines of advance on kyiv. northwest, northeast, and -- >> i would say from the north and northwest. those groupings are the ones that they're drawing from now. >> does that include chernihiv? >> yeah. it does. it -- we do think some troops that were against chernihiv also have been part of this repositioning and as well to the further to the east, there's a town called sumy, s-u-m-y, and
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we think some of those troops have repositioned into belarus. >> so is it wrong to say that, you're using the word reposition. is it wrong to say that russia withdrew some of its forces from around kyiv? >> they have beginning to move some forces away from kyiv. if you want to call it withdrawal. i'm not going to argue with the verb. i'm using reposition on purpose because the way it's being spun by the ministry of defense that they're pulling back, trying to deescalate and depressurize the situation, we haven't seen any evidence of that. >> clearly you're saying there's still bombardment. they're using missiles and artillery. not necessarily center of the city, but kyiv. >> i don't know where they are in their landing. >> this is according to own reporting. but the forces, regardless of the escalation, russia is withdrawing some of its troops away from kyiv.
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>> they are repositioning some of their troops away from kyiv, yes. >> do you see more troops going in the direction of donbas as they say they would refocus on donbas? >> again, we haven't seen of the small percentage of troops that we have observed that they are repositioning, we haven't seen any of them go elsewhere inside ukraine. all i would tell you is that the russians have said themselves they're going to prioritize the donbas region. we have seen them become much more active there in the last few days. for instance, we think that vogner group has about 1,000 people dedicated to the donbas. we have seen an increase, i shouldn't say an increase. we have seen them prioritize air strikes in the donbas area. so if you look at, again, i'm
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not, i can't count every single, and i'm not going to count every single artillery shell or missile strike because they continue to bombard population centers through the air. that's mariupol. that's chernihiv. it's kharkiv. it certainly is kyiv. but generally where we see them it's in the north. it's largely in the north. it's kyiv, it's still kharkiv and it's in the donbas. we know they added private military contractors. we know they are prioritizing some of their air strike activity there in ways they weren't doing before. we know they are considering other ways of reenforcement. as well as we can see them make a concerted effort to try to occupy more territory in the
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donbas. >> can you explain the concerns the u.s. would have about them sending the private troops to the donbsa region and the reasons for doing it. >> a couple of things. they are used contractors in the donbas over the last eight years. it's not a surprise they were trying to use private military contractors there. we think it's a reflection of the fighting that continues to go on in the donbas.
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>> the department has released its budget and now we're in budget season. we go into the hill justifying what you want to do, annual budget. i'm sure lawmakers will want to know what the department is doing with the reality of russia invading ukraine. what will be the department's response to congress? how will it describe what it's doing to counter this new reality with russia? >> i think if you look at the budget itself, the reason why we wanted to do a national defense strategy in concert with the budget was to show that the budget is strategically aligned where what we're trying to do in this department and china remains the pacing challenge, the number one concern for the department. there's no doubt about that.
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if you look at the budget and the investments we're making in research and development, 130 billion dollar go the highest water mark ever for this department in terms of rnd investments. a lot of those capabilities, cyber, space, 5g, artificial intelligence, hyper sonics, you look at that stuff and it will help us against the facing challenge of china but will help us what we consider the acute threat of russia. let me go to phones here. >> with the movement, are you seeing a movement of artillery
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as it just personnel that is departing? thank you. >> no, we're seeing units go. it's our assessment they are also bringing much of their equipment with them for refit and repurposing for future operations inside ukraine. i can't count every vehicle, everything they are moving with them but it's our assessment that their intention is to reposition these units so they can refit them for future operations. >> given the destruction you're seeing there, would you characterize that as the russians carpet bombing the city or constructing a scorched earth campaign there or would do you not use that terminology? >> it's devastating what we're seeing. i'll let experts decide how they
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want to characterize it or label it. it is devastating. the devastating effects it's had on what can be described as the civilian infrastructure, residential buildings, hospitals. recreation parks, everything. the place is just being decimated from a structural perspective by the onslaught of russian air strikes. caitlin, stars and stripes. >> don, i'm just trying to break down some of the jargon. can you describe what is the
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difference between an acute threat and pacing threat. >> we call china a facing challenge. in many of the military capabilities that we know we are going to need to respopdnd to increasingly aggressive china and the potential threats that those capabilities mean for us that we're going to have to -- we're going to have to stay ahead of those capabilities. again, you look at the budget, you can see the capabilities that we're investing in for the future to make sure we are not just keeping up pace with china ease military modernization but we're staying ahead of it. we need to stay ahead of it. as for an acute threat, what we're talking about here with
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russia is a military that remains potent. if you want proof of being an acute threat sh, a specific thr, look at places like mariupol. you can see it for yourself. they are very much clposing a threat right now in this time frame, acutely on the european continent. that's what we refer to. megan. >> there needs to be repositioning of permanent -- he said he can talk to lawmakers about it. the pentagon have a discussion. is that part of the posture review that was completed last
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year. w can we expect any announcements about moving permanent bases around. >> i'm not going to get ahead in decisions that haven't been made. it's safe to assume that given what russia has done and the ways in which the security environment have changed and i use that as past tense, not present tense, you can bet that senior leader share at the department will take a look at our european posture going forward. again, i can't tell you when the decision will be made one way or the other or what that will look like. the secretary wants to keep an open mind about european posture going forward. clearly because of the acute threat of russia and the way the security environment in europe has changed. could it mean more troops, more permanently based if europe, it could. no decision vs been made right now.
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>> we've been listening to john kirby. obviously the situation on the ground changes every day. he's giving us information about what we're seeing now. it was interesting to hear john kirby explain in terms of repositioning. they are seeing russian troops move out of kyiv but not seeing them go to their home bases. what did you hear? >> that does not surprise me at all. there's procedures like
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withdrawal. it does not substantiate that they are moving them out. john's answer was we don't know yet. we'll show to russian controlled area, is about 500 miles. wiggle their nose and they reappear somewhere else. it will take time to have them go back to their home bases which john alluded to and it will take a lot more time to have those units who have been

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