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U.S. Is Concerned Kyiv Could Fall To Russia Within Days, Sources Familiar With Intel Say; Putin In Televised Remarks To Ukrainian Armed Forces: Take Power Into Your Own Hands; First On CNN: Biden Nominates Ketanji Brown Jackson To Be First Black Woman To Sit On The Supreme Court. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired February 25, 2022 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It was a little bit less today. And I think part of that had to do with the fact that was a massive snowstorm actually, in this region throughout the entire day, which of course, makes it more difficult to operate those rocket launchers or at least have them be accurate.

At the same time, you did still have Russian warplanes flying into the air. One crew member of us who went past the Russian airfield said he saw two fighter jets taking off. And the other thing, John, that we're also seeing is that the Russians still are moving a lot of armor into Ukrainian territory. You know, one of the things that we had seen throughout the course of yesterday is the Russians continuously bringing armor into the final sort of checkpoint that then leads to Kharkiv.

But what we were surprised to see actually is that they still do have a lot of armor and a lot of soldiers out sort of in the rear Echelon still on Russian territory. If you go into some of the little villages, in some places, you will go down the little village street and all of a sudden see five or six howitzer standing there with the crews to man them as well. So it certainly seems as though if Vladimir Putin is running into any sort of problems with his offensive, if he's meeting stiff resistance, he still does have a lot of room to escalate, John.

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Incredibly important reporting for us. Fred Pleitgen, grateful to you and your crew, please stay safe.

Right now, the Pentagon says an amphibious assault is underway in Ukraine, where Russians are putting potentially thousands of naval infantry ashore west of Mariupol. You see it right here on the map. That's in the Sea of Azov. This is according to a senior U.S. official why the official says is unclear. Let's get the latest news from CNN's Barbara Starr. She is live at the Pentagon with more. Barbara?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, to reflect on what Frederik was just talking about, I think the Pentagon is looking at a lot of changing landscape on this battlefield 10,000 troops. Russian infantry moving into this port area for possible amphibious assault, possibly moving up into the east into that disputed Donbass region.

But in addition to this, the senior defense official says that right now they believe that the Russians are slowed down in their momentum to get to the capital city of Kyiv. Now, another official telling us some of the approaches through the north into the capital are very tight, the Russians may be facing bottlenecks there. But as Fred pointed out, the Russians have plenty of weapons, plenty of vehicles to keep moving into Ukraine. And that bottleneck may ease in the coming hours and days. And this assault may get very grim.

Right now, the U.S. believes that the Ukrainian forces still have to a large extent an ability to mean their command -- to maintain their command and control over their forces. And that will be critical for them being able to direct those forces around the country. But critically, also air defense remains disputed. The Ukrainian forces have some but the Russians also have some. John?

KING: Barbara Starr, live in the Pentagon. Barbara, thank you. Let's get more perspective now from CNN military analyst, retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling. General Hertling, grateful for your time. Let's start with the big picture of what you hear Barbara Starr talking about, you know, amphibious activities down here.

Fred Pleitgen, he's up here in Russia watching more arm come across the border. We talked to Matthew Chance earlier, who's hearing shelling again, around Kyiv, and we know Russian troops are advancing.

So the one thing we do know General Hertling without dispute is there initially, some people thought, oh, maybe this would just be about the separatist areas here in southeastern Ukraine. No, this is about all of Ukraine, right?

LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING (RET.), FORMER COMMANDING GENERAL, EUROPE AND SEVENTH ARMY: Yes, I believe we're seeing the Russians attempting to fix Ukrainian forces in place so they can't do the internal movers -- internal moves to address all threats, John. And what we've been seeing in just watching the film, the great film that Fred is, is showing up in the north.

Those seem like a bunch of logistic vehicles to me. So you're talking about the support of the axis of advance from the from the north, in those potential attacks in the south along the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea, when you hear the term naval infantry, that's the Russian equivalent of the Marines.

So these are folks that are about to do an amphibious invasion. We have anticipated that for a very long time. But at the same time, I'll just go back to my initial thought they are trying -- the Russians are trying to fix meaning, make sure there's no maneuver of those Ukrainian forces that are defend -- that have been defending along the Donbass. They're not allowing them to move around and maneuver against different threats.

KING: And so let's continue the conversation. I just want to move in here. This is a close up of Kyiv area. Matthew Chance went out to this Antonov Airport yesterday and encountered Russians. The Russian defense ministry now saying Russia has full control of this airport. It's to the northwest of the capital of Kyiv.

It has long enough air strips to land military transport planes. What is the significance if you're thinking about regime change, if you're thinking about encircling, and trying to pressure the Capitol, if the Russians have control of that airport?

HERTLING: Well, there's two airports in Kyiv, John. The first one is Antonov and the other one is Boryspil. I've been to both of them. The Antonov Airport is more of a military field. It's outside the city, which would allow for some security if another force moved in there. So you're seeing the potential of seizing the initial ground and the airfield which would allow the Russian forces to bring other forces in through landing craft or even a parachute drop, I don't know.

[12:35:25]

But we're talking about not only establishing a facility where they could do a full word, assembly area, attack position, but it would also allow them again to bring in logistics and supplies. You know, one of the things that they teach higher ranking officials in any army is nothing is possible without the logistics approach.

So it's great to have all these folks coming in from different directions. But if you can't support them for the long term, it's going to be very difficult. That is the requirement and the need for airfields, just to bring in resupplies and more forces.

KING: So what is your biggest question right now, as you hear the Pentagon saying it believes that the Russians are facing a bit more resistance than they might have anticipated? What is your question? What would you be looking for in the next 24 hours?

HERTLING: Yes, I've said that all along that I didn't think the Russians had enough forces to do the kinds of things that many people were anticipating they would do. One hundred ninety thousand forces around the border of Ukraine sounds like an awful lot. But again, I'll repeat, this is a country the size of Texas, 40 million people. If they were to even put in the capital city of Kyiv, the ability to maintain and seize that city for political purposes later on, would literally take tens of thousands of people.

You know, you're talking about a city of a couple of million population, of course, some of them have already gone -- left and gone to Poland. But you see the President of Ukraine Zelensky saying everyone should take up arms, start building Molotov cocktails, wouldn't that be ironic.

But you're still seeing the potential in the will of the Ukrainian people to fight back. I still am convinced the Russians do not have enough force, even if it was a well-trained, well-supplied, well- gripped -- and well-equipped, and well-led force, that 190,000 is not enough to seize key territory throughout Ukraine and to make sure that they do the kinds of things they want to do.

KING: Important to keep an eye on in the next 24 to 36 hours. Again, General Hertling, as always, thank you, Sir. HERTLING: Thank you, John.

KING: Up next, reading Vladimir Putin. Russia's president scoffs at new sanctions and vows to expand his reach and his power.

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[12:42:30]

KING: Mixed messages today from the Kremlin. On the one hand Russia says it is willing to talk that in response to an appeal from Ukraine's president. Yet, Russian military activities are accelerating. And President Putin used to televise address today to urge Ukraine's military and its citizens to reject their government saying Putin's words it was full of Neo Nazis and drug addicts. So what is Putin's endgame here?

Angela Stent is the author of Putin's World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest. She's also a former National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council and professor of government service at Georgetown University. Angela Stent, grateful for your time today.

Putin's address today, Nic Robertson, our correspondent in Moscow, was talking about not only just the aggressive language, but the aggressive physical posture. What do you make? What is Putin looking for here? What is the end game?

ANGELA STENT, DIRECTOR, CTR. FOR EURASIAN, RUSSIAN & EAST EUROPEAN STUDIES, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY: Well, the endgame for him at the moment is to have a subservient Ukraine is to essentially conquer Ukraine and install a government that is pro-Russian that will reject any attempts to move westward and will essentially do what a Moscow was telling it to do. That's what he wants.

KING: So the European Union ratcheted up the sanctions today, personally targeting Putin, personally targeting the foreign minister, a key Putin, Deputy Sergey Lavrov. The Russians just repeatedly wave off sanctions. I almost laugh at the sanction saying we're built against them. Is there a philosophical difference here and how we in the West approach this and how Putin addresses.

I asked in the context, we can just show just over the last 14 years or so, back in 2008, Russia launches what it called a peace enforcement operation to obviously to try and take a bite, take a piece of Georgia. In 2014, we use the word annexation, it took Crimea from Ukraine. And now you have the invasion of Ukraine launching. Putin plays this long game and so after eight or 10 or 12 years, he wants to have Ukraine. Does the West need to reorient how it thinks about him?

STENT: Oh, I think we definitely do. I think that we underestimated what he was going to do. Nobody imagined that in 2022 you have the outbreak of a war in the heart of Europe. We haven't seen that for 77 years. The Russians discount the sanctions. They say that they will survive without them. And Putin has been

turning Russia more and more towards autarky towards less dependence on the global economy. And one of the reasons for that is because he knows that waves of sanctions will follow these moves.

KING: And so one question is if he gets Ukraine, the President of the United States, the other Western leader saying they will make that very painful, they will make him retreat. That is their take. I want you to listen to Chuck Hagel, you know, well the former Defense Secretary on CNN yesterday saying if Putin gets Ukraine then he looks for more.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[12:45:08]

CHUCK HAGEL, FORMER DEFENSE SECRETARY: I think that Mr. Putin wants more than just Kyiv and Ukraine, as he said in his demands of NATO, all those countries, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, the Baltic States, I don't I don't want them as a NATO country close to my border and threatening me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Not that a Putin would take Ukraine and then quickly take on NATO. No one is suggesting that. But again, in the 10-year, 15-year mindset is Vladimir Putin want Ukraine to then look across the border and say, whether it's disrupting elections, whether it's cyberattacks, whether it's, you know, supporting, quote unquote, separatists. Does he move beyond that? Or is he want Ukraine to say, I've expanded Russia, I'm done.

STENT: Oh, he's -- I don't think he thinks he's done. And in the treaties and Secretary Hagel referred to that explicitly, Russia has demanded that NATO retreat to where it was in May of 1999, which is before the enlargement began. So he has set his sights on restoring a sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space.

But apparently beyond that, and a few weeks ago, the foreign minister said that when the Warsaw Pact broke out, Central and Eastern Europe were orphaned, imagine that image. So it's as if Russia believes that those countries should also be in its sphere of influence again.

KING: Well, hopefully we can keep our attention focused on that as we move forward. Angela Stent, grateful for your time today. We'll continue this conversation obviously.

And still to come for us, how divided Senate now reacting to President Biden's pick, his historic pick for the Supreme Court.

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[12:50:27]

KING: A little more than an hour from now, the President of the United States will make history nominating the first black woman to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. Then comes a confirmation process, and that's the big question. The Senate is divided 50-50. We are in a midterm election year. The Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has a history with Supreme Court nominations.

Let's get some important reporting and insights. With me right now, our senior political correspondent Abby Phillip, our chief national affairs correspondent Jeff Zeleny, and our chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju. I'm going to start with you, sir, since you are the Capitol Hill correspondent, this goes straight up.

So you're looking for the first, we're going to hear from Judge Jackson. We're going to hear the President. She's going to start meeting with senators next week. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, says the Senate must conduct a rigorous, exhaustive review of Judge Jackson's nomination.

Jackson was the favored choice of the far-left dark-money groups that have spent years attacking the legitimacy and structure of the Court itself. That's what Mitch McConnell says, which sounds like he's criticizing and yet he's not criticizing her. He's criticizing the process, which tells me something.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right. And it's interesting to hear him say, slow down this process. He's the guy who pushed through Amy Coney Barrett in about a month's time, just days before the 2020 election and got her confirmed to the polls. Don't expect Mitch McConnell to vote for her, expect Republicans mostly to be opposed to her, make their political points.

But one thing to watch out for is that don't expect really a knockdown drag out fight. I mean, some on the right potentially will push for that for agitate for that. But the leadership does not want that. They know that she will likely get confirmed. They know she's not going to change the ideological balance of the court. So watch for that, because they believe the midterm election should be fought on other grounds inflation, the Biden economy and the like.

So when the process kicks off, it will start in earnest next week, that's when the -- she'll be up on the Hill meeting with senators. They'll get a confirmation hearing in a few weeks time. Democrats want to get this done by the Easter recess, April 11th, maybe they'll get one or two, maybe three Republicans, we'll see.

KING: Well, you say maybe three. Just shy of a year ago, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson got three Republican votes. One of them was Susan Collins of Maine. This was when she was confirmed to the appeals court, where she now says Ketanji Brown Jackson is an experienced federal judge with impressive academic and legal credentials, I will conduct a thorough vetting of Judge Jackson's nomination.

I read that as Susan Collins telling fellow Republicans, President Biden made a good pick here. Let's not -- let's just go about our business. Let's be thorough. Let's ask the right questions. But if nothing comes up, move on.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, there are always going to be the agitators, right, the people who are spending a lot of time trying to get kudos from the conservative base, the Trumpest base. But then there are people like Senator Collins who voted for Ketanji Brown Jackson and two other Republicans who did the same not too long ago, who basically knew at the time that she was a shortlist candidate for the Supreme Court.

So it's not like their vote at the time was sort of in a vacuum. Her name has been out there as a potential Supreme Court pick. And so if you cast a vote for her then, you knew that this vote could come up later. And those Republicans will all have to answer for that. And I think that there's a signal being sent by some moderates to say, don't make this a circus. This is not the ground to fight on. We have other problems, maybe bigger fish to fry in their view going into 2022.

KING: And this is a President who for a long time was the Senate Judiciary Committee member, including Chairman. So he has a personal interest in experience in this process. Why Judge Jackson, how do we get here?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: I mean, one of the reasons is just she has been on this a rise. I mean, really starting on the let's say a Federal Public Defender, you know, now she's on the District of Columbia Federal Appeals Court. So she's 51 years old. But really, you know, all the politics of this, yes, it's important.

But let's pause for a moment. This is history. And it's, you know, a moment of a coincidence, actually coming two years to the day that Joe Biden then his candidacy was on the ropes in South Carolina at a debate, saying I'm going to put the first African American woman on the Supreme Court.

And today he is starting that process to do that. But he's been reading her writings and opinions as well as others candidates for the last year. Throughout the transition process I was told when he was in Wilmington, he was thinking about this already. This is one of the aspects of the job that Joe Biden loves. You said he served on the Committee on the Judiciary Committee.

So that is why but he was struck also in his interview with her I'm told which was earlier in the month, actually, which flew under the radar of everyone, at least a couple of weeks ago we believe that he really had a connection with her and likes her story and her character and her legal mind. And he believes that, you know, she will change the face of the court not the ideology per se, but certainly her image on the court that's important.

[12:55:00]

KING: Senator John Cornyn says Judge Jackson will be given the dignity and respect she deserves. Senator Ben Sasse says sometimes there are a lot of people who like to screen for the cameras at these hearings. So many -- you have many Republicans saying let's be calm. Take 10 seconds, name one or two we should watch.

RAJU: I mean, we'll watch Cruz and Hawley who clearly are looking to run for president potentially in 2024. But also we'll look, Chuck Grassley, the ranking member of that committee do. Will he go as far as those on the right want him to go or will he say members should show up vote, not boycott a committee vote, deny a quorum, he's signaling he's not going to go that extreme route but he will likely oppose as well.

KING: Important days ahead. The President's announcement coming up in the next hour.

Thanks for your time on INSIDE POLITICS today. Don't forget you can also listen to our podcast download Inside Politics, excuse me, wherever you get your podcasts. Dana Bash picks up our coverage after a quick break. Have a good weekend.

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