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Inside Politics
Russian Forces Press Into Ukraine's Second-Biggest City; Global Protests Condemn Russian Invasion; Biden Nominates Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson To The Supreme Court; UNHCR: 368,000 Plus People Fee Ukraine To Other Nations. Aired 8-9a ET
Aired February 27, 2022 - 08:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[08:00:21]
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST (voice-over): Putin's war. Hundreds dead as the Ukrainians fiercely defend their capital.
PETRO POROSHENKO, FORMER PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE: Now is a decisive moment for my nation.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, I will go and fight. I'm ready to die for my land.
PHILLIP: The West says the Russians will pay a price.
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Putin is the aggressor. Putin chose this war. And now he and his country will bear the consequences.
PHILLIP: And Biden makes history with a barrier breaking pick for the Supreme Court.
JUDGE KETANJI BROWN JACKSON, SUPREME COURT JUSTICE NOMINEE: I am truly humbled by the extraordinary honor of this nomination.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIP: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS SUNDAY. I'm Abby Phillip.
We have breaking news overnight. Russian forces have pressed into Ukraine's second largest city, Kharkiv. There were massive explosions overnight near Kyiv. But the capital is still under government control. In fact, Kyiv's mayor says there are no Russian troops in the capital.
And with the new message this morning, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky appealed to foreign fighters to come and help. And he accused the Russians of committing war crimes.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): They are fighting against everyone. They are fighting against all living beings, against kindergarten, residential buildings, against ambulances. They use rocket artillery, missiles, and city districts where there are not and never where any military facilities.
(END VIDEO CLIP) PHILLIP: The Ukrainian people are showing unbelievable bravery. Look at this video of a civilian trying to block a tank with his body.
And this moment in a bomb shelter, Ukrainians singing their national anthem.
CNN is on the ground covering the story like no other news organization. Nic Robertson is in Moscow. But let's start with Alex Marquardt in Kyiv.
Alex, what is the latest on the ground there. Kyiv is holding but will that last?
ALEXANDER MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Abby, it does appear today, the pace of the explosions that we are hearing is picking up. Certainly, it's louder when this is happening during the day when what we've really seen over the course of the past few days is much of the bombing is happening at night. I just want to point in the general direction of the north and east. That's where we have seen many of the -- we have heard many of the explosions happening in the distance, outside of the city. Some are louder than others.
But then there was a very significant explosion we heard coming from the west. The smoke was very visible. You mentioned the mayor of Kyiv. He says that there are no Russian troops in the city. He says that everybody should stay inside. There's a curfew in effect until tomorrow morning.
The only reason people should be moving around, he says, is to go to those air raid shelters. He also gave an updated death toll for the city. So far, during this Russian invasion, he says that there have been some nine civilians killed and 18 fighters.
Now, there is -- there was overnight two significant explosions. We had been warned that there could have been a wide scale Russian aerial bombardment. That didn't materialize. But there were two very loud blasts in the late night hours just after midnight. One of them hitting near an airport to the southwest of the city, a huge fire starting. We can still see the smoke emanating from that fire.
Now, the fighting is obviously not just taking place here. It's all across the country. In the second biggest city of Kharkiv, in the northeastern part of the country, just across the border from Russia, there is a significant level of fighting. We have Russian troops battling with Ukrainian forces in the streets. Residents of Kharkiv being told to stay inside.
But what is clear is that the Ukrainians are putting up a very good fight. They have impressed foreign officials, military experts with the way they are battling back and keeping the Russians at bay. The Russians, it is very clear, are struggling. We are in day four of this invasion.
They are certainly not where they wanted to be. There had been predictions that this capital could fall in 24 to 48 hours. But as you mentioned, it is very much holding on. The Russians are losing personnel, they're losing equipment, they're losing tanks. Their supply lines are stretched. They are having a hard time getting things like fuel to their forces in the front. But, of course, this is a massive fight for the Ukrainian forces against what is one of the biggest militaries in the world.
[08:05:04]
We have President Zelensky calling not just on Ukrainians to come and help but anybody, he says, who wants to come from abroad. They will also arm to fight the Russians.
President Zelensky dismissing and rejecting the Russian claim they are only targeting military targets, saying that they are going after civilian installations as well. He said last night was brutal and there's not a single target that Russians consider unacceptable. So, while the Ukrainian forces are doing well, while the government is still firmly in control of the capital, it's clear that the Russians are still going about their goal of trying to encircle and take the city -- Abby.
PHILLIP: Incredibly tense and active situation on the ground in Kyiv. Thank you, Alex. Stay safe out there.
Now to Moscow, Nic Robertson is there.
Russian officials, Nic, have said that they are in Belarus and they want to talk with Ukraine. What is the latest on that?
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yeah. Well, this seems to be a continuation of what Russia said in the buildup to all of this. Essentially back then, threatening an invasion of Ukraine while actually saying that they were ready for diplomacy and ready to talk seriously. But, clearly, things didn't turn out that at all. Now, they are attacking Ukraine.
And the Kremlin is saying it sent representatives of the foreign ministry, of the defense ministry and the Kremlin to Gomel, in the southern side of Belarus, to hold talks with Ukrainian officials. What President Zelensky is saying, look, I'm not going to send anyone to a country that's actively being used to attack us. And the city of Gomel, where they are being invited for talks has one of the biggest concentrations of Russian armor and has been used as a gateway for the invasion into Ukraine.
What President Zelensky is say, choose another European city, Bratislava, Budapest, go to Istanbul, if you like. He said, I'm ready for talks, but not if they're going to be essentially at a barrel of a gun, in a city that we know is hostile. Russian has or the soviet union has a track record of inviting people
for talks and they don't get to come back from those talks. Engaging in that would be a risky business. It just doesn't -- what Russia is proposing doesn't fit the real narrative of what's happening on the ground. And I think Zelenskyy clearly sees that very obvious disconnect the same as the rest of the world does, too.
PHILLIP: Yeah, very much seems to be attempt to mislead the world into thinking that they are pulling back whether they're not. But, Nick, there's been extraordinary move on the part of Western nations to sanction Russia. Some of the toughest sanctions ever imposed on Russia. What's the latest on their reaction to these incredible moves on SWIFT and the central bank of Russia?
ROBERTSON: Yeah, there's nothing yet about SWIFT. I mean, a few days ago when there were lesser sanctions, the Central Bank has said, look, you know, we've got this slush fund. We'll use that to help, you know, staunch the effect of the sanctions that have come so far.
But, I think that the response we have had, so far, at least a couple of days ago, has been really just to reject the notion that sanctions are going to have an affect. The former president, former prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, who is the current deputy chairman on Russia's national security council, he said that. He said, these sanctions are not going to have any effect, and he is one of those senior officials who has personal sanctions on him now.
And what he -- what he went on to say was I think demonstrative of Russia's view and position of the sanctions overall. He said, look, we should just padlock the embassies look at each other through field glasses and rifle scopes. That's pretty much a blatant rejection right there.
PHILLIP: Thank you, Nic Robertson. We'll talk a lot more about those sanctions coming up.
But joining us here in the studio is retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, a CNN military analyst, to break down what is going on on the ground here in Ukraine.
So, Mark, the Russians, if you take a look at this map that we have here, the Russians are basically surrounding Ukraine on maybe two- thirds of its border. What do you see here when you look at the situation that's facing the Ukrainian military?
MARK HERTLING, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, from the very beginning, Abby, I've said that extension of that line, first of all, causes something called exterior lines. They have to compress in and that's challenging for an attacking force.
The other thing is it violates the principles of war like mass, economy of force, and surprise. They're heading from too many directions. And they don't have the support that they need.
I grew up as a tanker. When you start getting older, you start listening not so much to the fellow tankers, but the logisticians. [08:05:01]
They have not listened to the logisticians. They cannot continue to support this operation.
PHILLIP: This is a border you said that's about, what, 800 miles or something to that effect?
HERTLING: Yeah, about that.
From north -- you know, we've been talking about how Ukraine is the size of Texas.
PHILLIP: Yeah.
HERTLING: But let's put this in perspective. From north to south, it's about 400 miles. That's the distance between Baltimore and Boston. From east to west, it's about 800 miles, the distance between Washington, D.C. and Springfield, Illinois.
So you're talking about a huge territory where you not only have to attack into, but you have to re-supply and have continuous re-supply of ammunition and fuel.
PHILLIP: And there is some evidence that the Russians are not prepared for that, were not prepared for that. They're struggling to re-supply troops. I mean, troops that are so distant from each other all across this border.
HERTLING: All trying to be command and controlled by certain generals who have not, it appears, coordinated their actions. They are on multiple axis of advance, that's a military term, how you flow into a country.
And I'm not sure the coordination is very good because they're each attacking cities with huge populations without the force needed to do that. I've said from the beginning they didn't have the force, what the military calls the troop to task requirement.
How many troops do you need to accomplish so many tasks? They've never had it.
PHILLIP: And here's the X-factor. We have Ukrainian people, Molotov cocktail parties, like this couple that went viral over the weekend. They got married early then they suited up for war.
What is the impact of the fact that you have thousands and thousands -- you see them there getting married just before this invasion -- thousands and thousands of regular Ukrainians getting in the streets and fighting? Is Russia -- is that going to make a difference at the earned of the day?
HERTLING: It certainly is. I'm going to throw -- I know it's early on a Sunday morning, but I'm going to throw a Napoleon quote at you. Napoleon once said morale is to physical as three to one. The Ukrainians have the morale. They have the leadership in the
government level. They have the support of the people. They now have the support of the populations on the world stage, and they have people that want to fight for their freedom.
On the other hand, you have Russia. They do not have good leadership. Putin's hubris is going to destroy them. Their operational capacity of their generals is mixed with incompetence and the tactical training of the troops are -- they're seeing how bad things can be. So their morale is plummeting since they don't have fuel, ammunition or food.
PHILLIP: Ukraine is holding the line and you're seeing countries like Germany and the United States trying to urgently get lethal aid into Ukraine. What more can European and Western nations do to help militarily? And people are talking about a no-fly zone. Is that realistic?
HERTLING: Well, first, on the equipment. Equipment will flow. We will find ways to get it in. In fact, that's already happening right now in very covert ways.
But in terms of the no-fly zone, I'm adamantly opposed to that because you're talking about taking a regional conflict as dirty as it is, and as catastrophic as it is right now, and if you have a no-fly zone, you suddenly put superpowers against each other and it goes from a regional conflict to a global war. And that could be very dangerous.
You know, not just the no-fly zone because in order to execute a no- fly zone, you have to take action. The first action you have to take is shooting down a plane that violates it. So if a NATO plane shoots down a Russian plane, you've just skyrocketed what's going on there.
PHILLIP: That's the fear, that's been the fear all along.
HERTLING: You're talking about a nuclear power in that case.
PHILLIP: Exactly.
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, thank you for being with us this morning.
And coming up next for us, what is Vladimir Putin's end game?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:16:43]
PHILLIP: The world seems almost completely united in condemning Vladimir Putin's unprovoked attack on Ukraine. Protesters from Tel Aviv to Tokyo to Munich to New York City waved flags and signs, some singing Ukraine's national anthem.
But Putin may not care much about global public opinion, but this might matter. The U.S. and Europe will expel certain Russian banks from SWIFT, the system that has basically allowed banks to talk to each other and process payments. They are also discussing targeting the Russian central bank, and you can expect the value of the ruble to crash tomorrow.
Joining us with their reporting and insights is Julia Ioffe of Puck News, and David Sanger of "The New York Times."
So, David, a major about face on the part of European nations that had kind of resisted making this move on SWIFT. It's sort of like, you know, it's kind of a panic button when it comes to Russian money.
What change and will that start to matter along with the central bank moves, will that start to matter to Putin?
DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, what changed was public opinion in Germany, Italy, other places that are big gas users, very dependent on Russian gas, as they saw the pictures of the brutality of this unprovoked war. And we heard Olaf Scholz, the new chancellor of Germany, just give a pretty fulsome account of exactly what's going on and saying this is Germany's moment, given its history.
PHILLIP: It's really extraordinary to hear him say that. I mean, Germany has been -- former President Trump used Germany as a wedge, basically saying you guys are dependent on Russia, and now they're changing their tune.
SANGER: I was there a week ago at the Munich Security Conference when Zelenskyy came in and spoke. There were only hints at that moment the Germans were ready to move. The SWIFT one left me less impressed because it still allows Germany, Italy, other European countries to be buying gas from Gazprom, and that's the revenue flow that will get Putin's attention.
The one that is impressive is the central bank move because if they can't support the ruble and the ruble crashes, inflation is going to take off.
PHILLIP: Does the money matter to Putin at this point?
JULIA IOFFE, WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT & FOUNDING PARTNER, PUCK NEWS: I don't think it really matters to him personally. I think things like sanctioning Putin personally are more symbolic than they are effective. The ruble, by the way, is already starting to crash. It's been sliding ever since the very first invasion of Ukraine in 2014.
And I think the issue is that Russians are going to suffer, the average Russians, even people who are deeply against the war. You also saw protests, for example, in St. Petersburg and in Moscow where protesting has become extremely dangerous. There was an 18-year-old woman who was arrested in Moscow simply for hanging a bed sheet with the words "no to war" from her balcony.
Those people are going to suffer anyway. Inflation has been going up since 2014. The ruble has been crashing. But Putin doesn't care.
It's not about them. It's not the well-being of his citizens. The citizens exist to make the state great and to serve his imperial ambitions. PHILLIP: Yeah, I mean, you do have to wonder what the point of the
sanctions are at this point.
[08:20:00]
Making the statement is important, though.
But you are also seeing on the ground as we were just discussing in the previous block, an enormous amount of resistance in Ukraine. This has been tough for the Russian military. And then the global condemnation has also been extraordinary. Does that have an effect on the dynamics here?
SANGER: I don't believe at this point that Putin is particularly attuned to any of those. One of the really interesting questions which we've all been debating and I think are going to become more urgent, two of them, I think, are in his increasing isolation, does he care about anything other than the ambitions you referred to.
And second, where is this headed? I mean, do we believe that this is over at Ukraine? The evidence that he would stop at Ukraine's borders is pretty slim at this moment.
PHILLIP: Yeah, I mean, where does this end?
IOFFE: Well, I think before we even go past Ukraine's borders, what I'm worried about, what most Russia watchers are worried about, what my sources in the U.S. government and in European governments are telling me, they're worried that because the Russian invasion is not going to plan, because they have yet to take a major city after three days of fighting, because Ukrainians did not greet the Russians as liberators, as Putin thought they would, that they're just going to switch to carpet bombing the way they did in Chechnya. That Putin will take a loss, and that he will win by any means.
PHILLIP: I want to pull up a tweet from Marco Rubio, ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He wrote, I wish I could share more for now, but something is off with Putin. He says, it would be a mistake to assume that this Putin would react the same way he would have five years ago.
I don't know what to make of it, but it's ominous. I mean, do you have any sense of what he's referring to?
SANGER: Well, there have been a large number of psychological profiles, American intelligence agencies have been doing of him. They've tried to look at his isolation prior to COVID and his isolation during COVID. During COVID, he was down to a very small number of very hard line advisers who are not going to bring him bad news.
But they also may not bring him news of what -- the kind of retaliations for his actions would be. And if he is surprised, there is the possibility here that he feels cornered. And that's why there is so much concern that having attacked his financial stability in the country, that he's going to turn to cyber to go after Europe or the United States, thinking he can't do anything to the central banks the way the United States and the Europeans can, but he sure can disrupt our financial systems, our infrastructure exactly what he met President Biden about in Geneva.
PHILLIP: Is it time, though, to start treating Putin, the way he's acting, effectively, as a rogue actor, in the way that we talk about Iran and North Korea? I mean, it seems he has crossed that line.
IOFFE: Yeah. Well, it seems that we are and the international community is responding in a way that is totally unprecedented. Going back to Germany's response to this, it is an about face to what their policy was a week ago. The fact that they're now sending loads of lethal weapons to Ukraine when they were reluctant to do that for obvious historical reasons, with the message being essentially kill as many Russians as possible.
As for Putin, and what has changed in the last five years, I think we need to remember he's a person. He's a human being with flaws and weird psychological kind of quirks. He has been hardening over the last ten years. It's not just the last five years. He's been -- and generally with Putin, what he starts at home he exports abroad. No coincidence this is happening after a year spent completely annihilating the Russian opposition, and cracking down in an unprecedented way.
PHILLIP: I do want to make a mention of Volodymyr Zelenskyy who has just become this unlikely, you know, I guess you could say hero on the world stage, someone who was a comedian, actor, and is now actually leading. I mean, what do you make of his leadership in this moment?
SANGER: It's been remarkable. I saw a big change just last week ago Saturday when he gave a really impassioned, and I thought quite good speech at Munich about how the world had fundamentally misjudged and abandoned him.
He's made some mistakes. By underestimating what was going on here, he did not prepare his military. His leadership in the past week has been quite good. But what's really critical for the United States right now is to keep him alive.
PHILLIP: Yeah.
SANGER: Because if the Russians actually do grab him or worse in Kyiv, then -- and they do decapitate the government, which seems to be their objective here, then they will install a government and say, we did this to end the chaos.
[08:25:16]
If they can get Zelenskyy out into a government in exile, at least the West can say this is the democratically elected government of Ukraine and it's got to go back in.
PHILLIP: The threats to his life are very, very serious and he's been up front about it.
Julia and David, thank you both for being here. Julia, we'll see you a little bit later.
But, coming up next for us, has President Biden transformed himself into a Cold War president?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: President Biden was expecting a State of the Union Address on Tuesday to focus on the fight on inflation and COVID here at home.
But Vladimir Putin has put foreign policy at the top of the agenda. And now, the fight between democracy and autocracy that Biden in many ways predicted has become very real.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: Liberty, democracy, human dignity, these are the forces far more powerful than fear and oppression. They cannot be extinguished by tyrants like Putin and his armies. They endure. In the contest between democracy and autocracy, between sovereignty and subjugation, make no mistake, freedom will prevail.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Julia Ioffe of Puck News is still with us, and we are also joined by Molly Ball of "Time Magazine", CNN's Jeff Zeleny, and "Washington Post's" Seung Min Kim.
And, Jeff, as you know, President Biden is in some ways obsessed with this idea that this is the United States' moment to confront autocracy, a big existential crisis that has become very real, very present for him to deal with.
JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: He has been talking about it a long time. He is of the age of the cold war. He understands the history of this. He understands the moves of this.
He does not have to be briefed on Vladimir Putin. He is the fifth American president to deal with him. He knows all well what is going on here.
It's been really interesting to watch this week. We do not know how history will ultimately judge this for the Biden presidency. It is far too early to know if he acted too late. It's far too early to know if this is going to have far-reaching consequences for his presidency.
But we do know in the last couple days, I've been struck by how Europe and other leaders have followed President Biden.
PHILLIP: Yes.
ZELENY: It was just on Thursday at the White House when he said, the E.U. is not there yet on the SWIFT sanctions and other matters. And then Germany suddenly is reversing its law to send weapons into Ukraine.
PHILLIP: And to increase their GDP spending above that 2 percent mark. ZELENY: Exactly.
PHILLIP: I mean that's extraordinary.
ZELENY: This is something President Biden is -- you know, people are following him. So I think one thing is clear out of all this. The western alliance is more unified than it was a couple of weeks ago going into this. But we still, you know, don't know if he will have a stable relationship with Biden -- with President Putin as he said in Geneva. That's not going to happen.
PHILLIP: I feel like stability -- I feel like stability may be off the table at this point. 0
ZELENY: But I think Biden looks better now than he looked a couple of weeks ago on this because there's more unity at this point.
PHILLIP: Yes. I mean this could be -- some people are talking about Cold War part two. And the idea that President Biden would be the one to usher that in, I mean what does that even mean for him?
IOFFE: Well, it's interesting, because during the Cold War, the Soviet Union and Cold War foreign policy were pretty bipartisan ones, right. It was politics stopped at the water's edge.
And what's remarkable to me is watching the Republican Party attack President Biden for pretty much everything he does on this issue. There's a total lack of unity. You see both on the left and the right a total divergence in terms of, you know, how they view Russia.
There's a lot of defending on the left saying, we didn't take Russia's security concerns seriously enough. We should have never invited NATO in.
And on the right, you have this, you know, defending of Putin because they see -- because there's a long history of the American right wing and Russia working together. But seeing him as a -- the leader of a white Christian conservative nation that they would like to be like.
PHILLIP: That's amazing.
MOLLY BALL, TIME MAGAZINE: I think you do see that.
PHILLIP: And not in a good way.
BALL: But I do think that we have seen a pretty -- a pretty unifying moment, at least in the official political sort of political precincts, right. Certainly not former President Trump, not, you know, Tucker Carlson, voices like that.
And there has been certainly some criticism from Republicans for how Biden has handled this but really not much questioning of sort of which side America is on, right. And how we orient ourselves and how we rally the world around us.
And in that sense, it has been interesting to see, I mean you saw even last night Trump at CPAC sort of dialing back his enthusiasm for Russia, at least a little bit.
IOFFE: Not calling him a genius anymore?
BALL: Because it seems clear that the American people have been tremendously galvanized by this, tremendously moved by this and tremendously convinced, I think, by the frame that as you said, President Biden has been talking about since his inaugural address.
And I think his strongest speeches have been on this theme. Whether it was his inauguration, the January 6 speech and this now, you know, is as you said just a real dramatization of that world conflict between democracy and autocracy that he has been talking about since the beginning.
PHILLIP: Right. I mean this is bigger than politics in this moment. But he is confronting the politics of the situation in part because of what Julia was describing.
Republicans like Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz are saying, Biden showed that he was weak in Afghanistan, that is why we are here. And to what extent, I mean, do you think that, you know, that the Afghanistan situation is still hovering over what Biden needs to do in terms of convincing the American public that this is being handled the right way?
SEUNG MIN KIM, WASHINGTON POST: Well, I think first of all that's -- look one of the reasons (INAUDIBLE) our two-decade entanglement in Afghanistan -- I think that's partly one of the reasons why the White House, whether it's President Biden or the press secretary keep saying over and over, he does not plan to send troops directly into Ukraine. That is something that he is considering, obviously we have NATO obligations should Russia go into the other NATO member countries.
But into Ukraine proper, that is something that the president -- President Biden has made very clear, much to the chagrin of some others in this debate, that he is not going to do.
But certainly Afghanistan hovers. And the lessons and the mistakes of that hovers over it. Republicans are constantly reminding the public of why they are hitting him so hard on foreign policy. They believe that President Biden on this front has struggled. And they are trying to make that case.
But going back to some of the points earlier, I did find sort of this -- the broader support that Molly mentioned in terms of the -- in terms of the public action and antipathy towards Russia.
[08:34:47]
KIM: I think you see that aligning in public polling definitely. We had -- the "Post" had a poll out a few days ago saying that 67 percent of Americans do support economic sanctions on Russia.
But if you look at Biden himself and if you ask the public, you know, what do you approve of President Biden's handling of Ukraine, only 33 percent approve. But looking at the actions of the administration and what they have done and looking at the man himself, there's certainly still a major partisan divide.
ZELENY: But to suggest that Vladimir Putin decided to be aggressive and invade Ukraine because of Biden's Afghanistan policy is just simply a misreading of connecting all of the dots between this.
PHILLIP: Yes.
ZELENY: I mean that's simply just not --
PHILLIP: I mean this as well goes with that.
IOFFE: I would say that actually the pullout from Afghanistan was I think a major factor in Putin's decision to move now as opposed to later or earlier.
ZELENY: Maybe to move now but these designs he has been thinking about this throughout the pandemic. He's isolated as you know better than us. And I think that this is, you know, the end of his legacy here.
And you know, the Afghanistan thing --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: But the timing is a factor.
IOFFE: I think it definitely led to this happening now, because I think Russia saw it as weak. And understood that after Afghanistan, as Seung Min said, there -- the U.S. would be very reluctant, if not completely, you know, completely averse to sending troops and putting boots on the ground in Ukraine which I think --
ZELENY: Which they would have been in the previous presidents, though, too.
(CROSSTALK)
IOFFE: -- for actually one second.
And then the other thing I would say is that, you know, talking to people in the administration, Afghanistan very much haunts their decision making process.
So for example, all the news you saw in the lead-up to this of them saying if you're an American in Ukraine, get out now.
PHILLIP: Right.
IOFFE: We're going to move the embassy to Lviv because they really didn't want a repeat of the situation that we saw in August in Kabul where you had special operations forces going in to Kabul to retrieve Americans from enemy territory.
PHILLIP: Right. Yes, yes. I mean there's no question, it hovers over the whole idea of what is going on right now. but I mean to just point, this is what Putin has wanted for a long time. The question, is, when did he decide to pull the trigger? Coming up next for us, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is poised to make
history. Listen to the moment President Biden told her he's nominating her to the Supreme Court.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JUDGE KETANJI BROWN JACKSON, SUPREME COURT JUSTICE NOMINEE: Hello.
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Judge Jackson.
JACKSON: Yes.
BIDEN: This is Joe Biden. How are you?
JACKSON: I am wonderful. How are you, Mr. President?
BIDEN: Well, you're going to be more wonderful. I would like you to go to the Supreme Court. How about that?
JACKSON: Sir, I would be so honored.
BIDEN: I'm honored to nominate you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[08:37:25]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: On Friday, two years to the day after his famous campaign promise, President Biden announced his pick for the Supreme Court -- Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JACKSON: If I'm fortunate enough to be confirmed as the next associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, I can only hope that my life and career, my love of this country and the constitution, and my commitment to upholding the rule of law and the sacred principles upon which this great nation was founded will inspire future generations of Americans.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: CNN senior legal analyst Laura Coates joins the conversation. And Laura, you know well as an attorney, as a former prosecutor, the impact that this has on people like you, but as a black women as well, what does this moment mean?
LAURA COATES, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: You know, it is almost surreal. Surreal in the fact you've got this extraordinarily qualified black woman who really has an embarrassment of riches. Her resume reads like every first year law student's dream scenario, right. I mean everything --
PHILLIP: She was the ideal student. COATES: I mean I don't even know if people are a student any longer.
We are all her students at this point in time. But it's also surreal in that it's the first time it's happening because there has been, as you can imagine across the history of America, extraordinary black women who could have been nominated even before her.
She recognizes on whose shoulders she stands on. She referenced Constance Baker Motley as well. And it's a shame that in this society, one of the few people you can look to and say, well, who was a black women we associate with the confirmation of a Supreme Court justice, we think about Anita Hill, who in her own right has been robbed of her legacy as an extraordinary lawyer because of her testimony about the now-seated Clarence Thomas.
But she not only is somebody who I think will be extraordinary as a nominee, a federal public defender on the Supreme Court bench would be something that would really be a testament to a representative Supreme Court because the overwhelming number of cases we're talking about -- not just the headlines but there are a lot that deal with having to have somebody with the perspective, the wherewithal of nearly every facet of our legal system. And she brings a wealth of experience in that capacity.
PHILLIP: She has -- to Laura's point, a resume that checks all the boxes. Did President Biden basically just end up where he may have started, at the beginning?
KIM: Right. I think no one expected President Biden to go any other way than Ketanji Brown Jackson. I think that shows just how much of a frontrunner she was in this whole conversation. She has been talked about for a potential Supreme Court since at least 2016, President Barack Obama did interview her for that vacancy when Justice Scalia passed away.
But since the transition, since we knew that President Biden had won the presidential election, she had certainly been in the conversation for some time. But we have some reporting in the "Washington Post" this morning about just precisely how President Biden landed on her.
And he was really drawn to just that she was in the mold of the person that she would replace, Justice Breyer. She was obviously Justice Breyer's clerk. She served on the sentencing commission like Justice Breyer did. And all that experience really kind of gave her firsthand insight into Breyer's sort of legacy and reputation of being able to build a consensus.
And President Biden also really liked that she just really had personal firsthand insight into the consequences of legal decisions. And I think all of that played a really big factor in his choice.
PHILLIP: Presidents love that kind of symmetry, of, you know, the clerk becoming the nominee.
But Republicans are reacting already. And we see a through line in what they are saying. You've got Mitch McConnell saying the favorite choice of the far left dark money groups. Lindsey Graham saying the radical left has won, President Biden over. Marsha Blackburn, we must not blindly confirm a Justice that will be a rubber stamp for radical progressive agenda.
Does that say more about what they are not saying than what they are saying?
ZELENY: Yes. And those are pre-printed statements that really would have been issued regardless of who President Biden decided to nominate. They are not about Judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson. They're not about her credentials, her experience, her writings.
[08:44:53]
ZELENY: Some of that will come out of course in the course of the meetings with senators, which I'm told are starting this coming week, and as well as the confirmation hearings which could come as -- in about three weeks or so. But that's all about the court.
So I think Republicans are likely not going to vote for her en masse. We are probably counting two, maybe three at the outside Republicans, which just shows the dramatic partisanship here. But no one is questioning her credentials here.
But one thing that also I'm told led President Biden to her, she has been confirmed three times. And just last summer, there were three Republicans who voted. That's one difference in 2016 when she was interviewed by President Biden -- or President Obama, excuse me. Three Republicans voted for her -- Lindsey Graham, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski. Lindsey Graham will not now but perhaps maybe one of the retiring Republicans will.
PHILLIP: There are some very interesting cases in her background. She's been involved in the ruling on the White House counsel Don McGahn. She's been involved in rulings on the Trump era deportation programs. She defended Guantanamo Bay prisoners as a public defender and ruled on buffer zones over abortion.
And you can easily see that some of these things are going to play in the confirmation hearings at the least.
BALL: Yes, for sure. I mean she'll be asked about all of those. But I think, you know, as Jeff was saying, you know, the objections are ideological and fundamentally partisan. And you know, there hasn't been that much drama around this whole nomination process from the beginning because we all knew a Democratic president is going to nominate a left of center jurist.
And that that person will not change the balance of ideologies on the court. And that there will not be much question, barring some really severe surprise, about whether that person is going to be confirmed by a Democratic Senate.
And Laura -- there is a going through the motions quality about it.
PHILLIP: Yes. and there's also going to be the attack that she (INAUDIBLE) some time. COATES: Yes. there's going to be an obvious one. And one of the things
she tried to head off by even addressing the Fraternal Order of Police' support of her -- her law enforcement family, also has been pardoned, or getting clemency.
But all these notions reflect what Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Josh Hawley recently did with an Innocence Project judicial nominee to suggest that somebody who is pro defense is somehow soft on crime. There's never been a public defender who is anti-justice. They are hard on injustice, which is exactly where the Supreme Court of the United States ought to be.
And frankly, there's a symbiotic relationship between a prosecutor and defense attorney, because we are both trying to promote that justice will be served. And the Supreme Court should be the ideal forum for that.
PHILLIP: Contrary to what you hear in the political sphere, defense attorneys are part of our system of justice.
COATES: Of course.
PHILLIP: We need them in order to have a fair judicial system. Laura Coates, thanks for joining us for this one.
And coming up next for us, the growing refugee crisis caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
[08:47:50]
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PHILLIP: Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are trying to get to safety as the violence picks up. Roads and train stations have been swamped with people. Many are women and children leaving husbands, fathers, sons and brothers behind to fight the Russian assault. The latest count puts the number of people who have fled at more than 368,000.
And CNN's Arwa Damon is in Poland near the border.
Arwa, what are you seeing there? I see behind you swarms of people. What are you hearing from them as they try to make this journey?
ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we're at the train station now. and these are people who have basically just arrived. And what you see around us is a combination of individuals and families who now find themselves refugees, and you also have this army of volunteers.
It is especially difficult for the young mothers who have come with children, mothers of any age who have come with children, actually, because they are by and large having to make this journey alone.
The husbands have stayed behind, men between the ages of 18 and 60 are not really being permitted to leave Ukraine. And when you speak to these mothers as we have been doing and try to ask how they're explaining this to their children, they say that they really can't. And they've been telling their children that daddy is going to be coming soon.
The thing is, Abby, they don't actually know if they're telling the truth to their children or if they're inadvertently lying to them because they don't know if or when they're actually going to be seeing their husbands again. You see all of these products in the back. This is free for anyone who's coming through to take. There are a number of people who are holding signs up.
And those signs are basically advertising free rides, free lodging. You really do have this very big community effort that is taking place here.
It's also worth noting that it's obviously not just Ukrainians who are stuck trying to get out of Ukraine. You have a number of other foreign nationals there. And actually earlier when we were at the border crossing where people have to cross on foot, their stories are absolutely horrific because that border crossing is so backlogged, people are having to wait there for up to 48 hours if not even longer, out in the cold, no food, no water, nowhere to actually sleep except for out in the open.
And by the time they're able to finally get across, they are completely emotionally and psychologically wrecked. We actually while we were out there met a family that was from Afghanistan. And they had fled from Afghanistan back in May, gotten asylum in Ukraine and now they're having to flee again.
A number of the Ukrainians that we've been meeting, some are from the Donbas area, that area that was partially controlled by the separatists. They fled from there in 2014 now are finding themselves having to flee again.
This war has torn families apart. So many people here telling us about how they had to leave their elderly relatives behind. That is, of course, absolutely terrifying.
[08:54:42]
DAMON: And the more time you spend talking to people, the more you realize the depth of the shock and the trauma of all of this because nobody thought that Russia would actually go through with it, especially not to the degree of violence, the intensity of the assault that has been taking place inside.
The other big issue here is that it's not sufficiently organized. And I'm not talking about on this side. I'm talking about inside Ukraine. People are shoving themselves to try to get on these trains to get out.
At the border itself, it's apparently something of a free-for-all where people are so desperate to cross, they're just pushing through, they're throwing suitcases. They're dragging their children along. And everyone is saying something needs to happen for it to be more organized, more coordinated. We need more information while we're waiting to come across about where to go and what to do. In many ways we're just at the beginning of this.
If this continues, millions are expected to be trying to flee and the system that's currently in place to help them get to safety, it's not working all that well.
PHILLIP: Thank you so much, Arwa. Thanks for being there.
And that's it for INSIDE POLITICS SUNDAY. Thank you for joining us.
"STATE OF THE UNION" is next.
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DANA BASH, CNN HOST: Hello. I'm Dana Bash in Washington where the state of our union is watching with horror, but also admiration.
We have breaking news this morning. Ukraine has agreed to talks with Russia as Russian forces continue their assault on Ukraine's largest cities. The talks could come as soon as today and they will be held at the Belarusian border. That's according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's office.
The news comes as Russians advance into Ukraine's second largest city, Kharkiv where street fighting broke out as Ukrainian forces tried to hold back the invasion.
[08:59:56]
BASH: In Ukraine's largest city, the capital of Kyiv, the mayor said this morning, there was no Russian presence in the city. After massive explosions overnight near Kyiv, citizens there remain under curfew.
