secretary blinken told president zelenskyy when they met on sunday that our diplomats would very soon be back in ukraine. that did, in fact, take place today. we had our deputy chief of mission from our embassy in kyiv and a small team go across the border to conduct business in lviv, ukraine. they were able to meet with counterparts from the ministry of foreign affairs. this will continue. it s our goal at the earliest possible opportunity to have that team back in our embassy in kyiv. we look forward to reopening our embassy, to using it as a platform to engage conservatively with our ukrainian partners and the ukrainian people. ned price, appreciate your time. thanks. thanks, anderson. just ahead, as russia makes yet another promise about letting sinz leave peacefully from mariupol, we ll take a look at the battle for a massive steel plant there. fighters and civilians holding out and drawing vladimir putin a much-desired victory. details ahead.
body. so that is why they re doing what they re doing. there are no military objectives to be achieved in this. in fact, i would contend that it s stoking the desire of the ukrainian military and the population to resist this kind of thing. when you read history, when you read some of the most barbarian armies in the world, these are the kinds of things they do, and they always lose in the end. because people understand the value of human life, the value of protecting society and advancing a social system, and the russians seem to be doing exactly the opposite of that. general clark, do you believe that the russians have had the ability to reconstitute their forces, to reequip, to bring new forces to the fight in the east? i m wondering what you make of the russian offensive so far.
in all the new reporting tonight, the atrocities in bucha, another mass grave outside mariupol and all the rest, there s another war crime playing out in the shadows. tens of thousands of ukrainians being taken to russia against their will. cnn s phil black has some of their stories. reporter: war creates powerful connections between people. this man and woman didn t know each other before the russians
people can be, you know, damaged, wounded, killed, raped, and nobody can stand for them there. people don t want russia there. my father is celebrating his 61st birthday today, and he said he s not leaving the land and he s waiting for the ukrainian army to come to kherson to relieve kherson but i understand your fiancé is on the front fighting. how is he doing? he returned several days ago. my fiancé was staying in the south of ukraine. it was important for him to be near kherson. there was heavy fighting and shell and go i was getting this terrible messages from him. you know, it s really very difficult to look at the telephone to understand that there is no connection. he is somewhere there in the shell and go you don t know if he s going to come back, when he s going to come back. but this is even bad to complain
frequently beaten and interrogated for local information. one man says his hands and fingers were cut to the bone by russian soldiers because he couldn t help them. does it make any sense to you that they did this? no, no sense. i don t know exactly what kind of information they could take from these people. reporter: this drone video captures the moment when ukrainian forces attack the industrial site, driving out the russians. a number of those who were still o locked in the room at that time tell us that s when all remaining capives were able to escape. but others, including vladimir harpoon had already been taken elsewhere. a long road trip by belarus in the back of a military truck ended in russia where he was given this military identification document. it says he resisted the special operation conducted by the president of the russian federation. in reality, he was detained while volunteering with the red cross helping people escape the fighting.