ukraine is preparing to defend the birthplace of its democracy to the bitter end. sam kiley, cnn, kyiv. thank you for being with us this hour. i m john vause. we will be back live in lviv, ukraine, with hala gorani in a moment. but we leave you this hour with 7-year-old amelia. you may remember her performance earlier this month let it go from inside a kyiv bomb shelter. it was heard around the world. well, amelia has now since made it safely to poland. she performed the ukrainian national anthem at a charity concert over the weekend. here s some of it. [ singing in foreign language ]
and holding the big cities. they re really having to use crude weapons in order to terrify the civilian population into leaving, like in mariupol. talk to us a little bit about i mean the ultimate, i imagine, target for vladimir putin would be kyiv. so far, though, the city has resisted. absolutely. they tried to take cities, but they cannot enter and take control over ukrainian cities. they did it in kherson, but keep protesting. people keep resisting, and they basically russians don t know what to do with them. and the same with mariupol and kharkiv and kyiv, of course. they can shell. they can kill civilians, but they cannot take control over these cities. and as you said, the ultimate goal is, of course, kyiv. but now kyiv is a fortress. it will be very, very difficult, if not impossible, to take the
america does not accept refugees for now. the biden administration looking for ways to speed up applications. for now, world vision is helping these refugees and tens of thousands more in romania alone. their needs deepening. the people that are coming now, these people really, really need help, and there are a lot of people. we were at the border, and i was at the border and talked to a lot of people that didn t have any money, any plan. reporter: julia and her 8-year-old son david, named for david beckham, from kyiv, arrived two weeks ago. when you decided to leave, how long did you have to pack? well, i had around three hours. three hours? yes, yes, yes. reporter: a few bags, documents, and family photos. who is this? it s me and my husband ten years ago. reporter: she calls her
ukrainian officer. president volodymyr zelenskyy said on monday that mariupol is being, quote, reduced to ashes but that it will survive. the eu foreign policy chief calls this bombardment a massive war crime. the russian defense ministry, meanwhile, claims more than 62,000 mariupol residents have evacuated to russia in, quote, complete safety. but the city council says that thousands were, in fact, taken against their will. in kyiv, authorities say a recent missile strike on a shopping mall has killed at least eight people, and they warn that number could rise. eight people. russia says it attacked the mall because ukrainian troops were using it to hide rocket launchers. now, russia s defense ministry released this drone video that appears to show some sort of weapons system and accuses ukraine of using social facilities as human shields. ukraine denies this. this is the aftermath, though, of the strike on the mall.
mother in kyiv every morning. it s like, hello, mom. are you okay? and we talk and talk, and she s saying, yes, it seems like it s been quiet night. and then i m speaking to my husband and my friends. it s like a full-time job. not full-time job, but you have you have to be sure that everyone is okay because it s nothing for sure now. nothing. reporter: she wants to go home, but when? when do you think you can go home? oh, god knows when. nobody knows. reporter: miguel marquez, cnn, bucharest. still to come, oil prices are climbing as the eu considers sanctions on russian energy imports. we ll bring you that story, and we will explain the risks involved in delivering humanitarian aid to ukraine as