day, until may 9th actually and yesterday seen the minister of defense of russia reported to putin that mariupol is totally captured but it s not the truth, actually. because we have still the fightings in the region of the metal plant, asovstad and it s a huge territory, it s like a city in a city and the russian forces, they are trying to take their main forces north to help their main forces to capture another city as we ve said previously, in your stories. listen, and adding, really, insult to the horror being committed by his forces, putin is saying they are liberating mariupol even as they turn it into ruin, but many of the people caught up in this are russian speakers, the ones he claims to be protecting. am i right about that?
the u.s. state department looking at labelling russia a state sponsor of terrorism, president zelenskyy wants that to happen. this is more than just symbolism, correct? don, i think it is. it s it puts russia on a very small list of countries i think only four currently on the list of state sponsored terror and this is not what we normally define as terrorism but certainly from the perspective of the ukrainian populations who are suffering this in mariupol and have suffered this in other cities, you know, it certainly is a form of terrorism. it s not legitimate warfare and as i said, unfortunately, you re seeing it s not an isolated case. you re seeing this in mariupol but atrocities committed else where, you have the report of possible orders to russian military to shoot ukrainian prisoners of war and looks like standard operating procedure for
evacuated from the besieged city of mariupol. but the numbers are very low. they were hoping to evacuate 6,000 people, but have only evacuated 79 civilians. and just our viewers get an understanding of the number we are talking about. to date, more than 100,000 have left mariupol, but still 100,000 remain in the city. we also heard from the ceo of the company that owns that steel plant, and he says in his own words, the situation there is close to catastrophe. don? thank you very much. we appreciate it. we ll get back to ukraine in just a minute. in the studio with us, steve hall and counterterrorism analyst phil mudd. thank you both for joining. steve, the russian losses are piling up. as she was reeling them off there, thousands of troops dead or injured, you were shaking your head and the number of people still trying to get out,
the sinking of that moskva the failure to take kyiv. now vladamir putin is claiming russia liberated mariupol. he has to find some sort of win to give to the russian people are. they buying it though, is the question? you know, at the very least, don, i think putin has to walk away with at least the donbas and perhaps sort of that southern swath if he can convince the people he had a significant victory. he went in saying he was going to take over the whole country. that s a propaganda problem for him. he controls 99% of all the information that russians consume, so that helps. but eventually, truths start to accumulate. the fact that they had to destroy 98% of mariupol. these things get through. the dead young russian soldiers. it will be harder for him to convince russians that this whole endeavor was worth it in the end. phil, you just heard steve.
horrifying news coming out of mariupol tonight, bolstering the claims of ukrainian officials of mass graves outside the city, sickening to think how many innocent civilians are being killed. how do you even process that? actually, we will witness, i think, 10s, thousands of killed people and russians and their occupation of this region, they re trying to hide all this results of their liberation of the city, actually. they re telling us that they organize and restoring the regular life in mariupol but it s totally disinformation and lies. they re trying to tell to the people that are still in mariupol, they re hopeless, they re tired of attacks and weeks of living in shelters and without any houses, without any