Tonight, massive missile attack.
Putin launching
55 missiles across
Ukraine as the Kremlin threatens
the US and its allies.
Putin's top spokesperson
saying sending Abrams and other tanks
is, quote, direct involvement in the war.
As the Pentagon says
that the United States
will be sending an updated
Abrams tank to Ukraine.
The M one, a two, which is fully digital
and allows for commanders
and gunners
to more easily scan and identify targets.
Today's escalation of words
and the barrage of missiles coming in.
CNN is learning
that the war is intensifying
in the South now.
You're looking at new video
from the city of Marinka.
You can see
multiple fires raging, smoke
blanketing the city.
And Fred Pleitgen is OUTFRONT.
He is outside back moved
where some of the fiercest fighting
continues to rage tonight.
Ukraine's
tanks taking aim
at the invading Russians.
Kiev's forces
rallying
to try to halt the massive assault on
the city where there are still some 6000
civilians has become a cauldron of fire.
From this vantage point,
you can both see and hear just how fierce
the fighting is.
You can hear impacts from heavy weapons,
not just every minute,
but literally every second.
The Ukrainians say that the Russians
are pouring
a massive amount of personnel
and weapons into this area
because they seem
to want
to take back mud at nearly any cost.
There are plenty of regular Russian
troops fighting around, but now
but the Ukrainians say it's
still the volunteer
private military company
that's leading the charge
with waves of fighters trying to storm
Ukrainian positions
both north and south of the city,
as well as specialized forces
like these snipers
claiming to have killed
a Ukrainian soldier.
When you on the notion
that all I could see
was a curtained window,
the sniper says
the person who was paired with me
saw a thermal outline
and I just determined where to shoot
Wagner's boss,
Yevgeny Prigozhin, often touts
his militia successes,
but the cost is immense.
This is a Varner cemetery in the crust
no Daraa region of southern Russia.
Row after row of fresh graves.
A disposable force used to take
just a few kilometers of land
Wagner acknowledges
recruiting prisoners straight out of jail
and throwing them on the battlefield
with minimal training
and only slim chances of survival.
That same indifference shown
in Russian strikes
that kill and maim
Ukrainian civilians every day.
These folks are cleaning up
after a Russian missile landed
in their neighborhood near Bermuda.
Unsalable work.
I wish we were getting heating
from the heating plant,
which was hit,
Yuri tells me yesterday at 3:00
it was destroyed.
So now we have no electricity,
no heating.
We have nothing to adjudicate you.
And a few miles away.
One person was killed
in another densely populated area.
Some of the long distance
drones and missiles
that Russia uses to attack
Ukraine come down
right near civilian areas.
This year is only a few yards away
from a kindergarten
However, others are used
to directly target
critical infrastructure, and you'll soon
see more than 50 missiles fired
just on Thursday.
And while many of them were intercepted
by Ukrainian air defenses,
some were not brought down.
Adding to the daily toll of destruction,
the missile terror.
More motivation
for Ukraine soldiers around Bermuda
to stand their ground
and bring Vladimir
Putin's invasion to a standstill.
An air.
And it's
certainly some really brutal fighting
that we witnessed around Obama today.
The Ukrainians say
that the Russians are trying
to encircle that city.
And obviously,
as you can see
there, the Ukrainians themselves
trying to do their best
to stop that from happening.
Meanwhile, the president,
Volodymyr Zelensky,
he came out today
and ripped into those missile strikes
that the Russians once again
conducted calling for more air
defense weapons,
but of course, generally
calling for more modern weapons
from the West.
He also praised the soldiers
from the Ukrainian forces
that are fighting here
in Donetsk in the east of the country,
saying that if they make a stand here,
they could seriously deplete the combat
power that Russia has available
on other fronts as well Erin.
Fred, thank you very much.
From just outside Beirut tonight.
And I want to go down
to the Russian investigative journalist
Andrei Soldatov.
He is the author of The Compatriots,
The Russian Exiles
Who Fought Against the Kremlin.
And Andre, you've got
some new reporting here
as French,
talking about the blog Inner Group
and then and still playing that central
and kind of tip of the spear roll in
your commute,
your reporting it's not just Bognor
that's recruiting prisoners
to aid in the Russian war effort
that this now goes
much deeper, that
the official Russian state
is doing this as well.
What did you discover
Yes, it looks like the Russian
military factories are suffering
from acute shortages and workforce
even by Gonzales, which is the largest
tank factory in the country,
reported a lot of employees.
So now they're going to use
Russian convicts and Russian convicts
are already fighting on the battlefield
in Ukraine.
So now
they're going to have to manufacture
all base tanks and weaponry
so that the formal state,
the Russian state
recruiting convicts to build the tanks.
And now to this point of your reporting,
I want to play something
that Putin said recently
that speaks to what you're saying about
the terrible state
of the Russian defense industry
right now. Here he is
But when you
given that the
defense industry is now overburdened.
And given that you work in three shifts
and there is a high demand
for military industrial products,
we are now considering the possibility
of granting deferment
also to those
who must be called up for
compulsory military service.
So that looks sounds like
from what he's saying,
they've offered anybody,
you're going to come help us
build the tanks
and fix the defense supply problem.
Will defer your military service.
But what you're reporting is
that's not enough.
They're still not able to get people
to do it.
Yes, absolutely.
Actually,
that started promising
and protection from mobilization
to service in the Army
already in October.
They also promised that pensions some
some good
benefits, employment
for the whole families in some cases.
All of that fell.
They failed to find enough people
to work on its factories.
So now they think that only prison
population of the country may help.
And, of course, it's
a sign of desperation.
Just think how reliable
all of these tanks
and all these weaponry could be
if they will be manufactured
by completely unskilled workforce
straight out of the prison,
straight out of the prison.
And that they're emptying the prisons
to do this
and to fight on the front lines
is absolutely stunning.
Andre, thank you so much for sharing
your latest reporting.