tonight, a senior u.s. defense official warning that russian forces have shown a willingness to hit civilian targets on purpose. the mayor of kharkiv, ukraine crease second largest city, telling me putin is intentionally killing civilians. on russian state media, though, wow. it is a totally different picture. it is like a humanitarian effort down there. nic robertson is out front with this report from moscow. reporter: on russia state tv, audiences are only being told what the kremlin wants them to know about the war in ukraine. this new russian army video shows troops handing out humanitarian aid. think claim russian forces are giving civilians safe passage from the fighting. a message reinforced in president putin s latest state-tv speech. translator: our military have provided corridors in all areas of combat action.
been warning about. this happened overnight. president putin got on state television at one 5:45 in the morning to announce a special operation. he did not use the word war. we are talking about what appears to be a full scale operation. he did not necessarily get that from the speech of vladimir putin. but you may be able to infer that from the rhetoric we are seeing and that we saw there. that message is being played, essentially, on a loop, on russian state media, interspersed with reports from state media. correspondents in the field, in donetsk, at the moment, assuring the audience of things that civilians are not being targeted, using words like liberation. that this is being conducted as kind of an operation to free the ukrainian brotherly people from a fascist regime in kyiv,
on russian state media, these were the scenes in donetsk where news filtered back moscow had recognized the territory as an independent state. russian flags and fireworks set to a blaring national anthem. for the u.s. and its allies, this is yet another unilateral russian violation of ukrainian sovereignty to be punished. reporter: wolf, so far tonight the ukrainian leader has spoken to president back-iden a confirmed what the possible response could be. but events on the ground as we ve been hearing are moving very quickly indeed and there are renewed concerns tonight about what more an increasingly belligerent kremlin is likely to do. matthew, i want to you stand by. i want to bring in jim sciutto
false claims of a possible ukrainian offensive against us territory. we ve heard over the past several days the separatist leaders basically trying to create a scenario that makes it look like ukraine is the aggressor appeared remember how this started out. these two leaders basically prerecorded videos to make it look like they were on live television announcing the immediate evacuation of women and children from these areas, saying that he ukrainian offensive would be taking place shortly, and then that night, we saw all of these claims on russian state media and the internet basically saying that the ukrainians were trying to sabotage this area and targeting power grids and water supplies and even as recently as this morning, reports by the russians and the russian military saying that two ukrainian vehicles were inside russian territory, and they don t provide any evidence for these claims. sandra: okay, so vladimir putin reportedly said a couple of minutes ago that he is still g
in 2014 in ukraine, and in 2018 in london again when it was another attempt to poison. it is every time was very strong message. this is a very brutal dictator who can do anything. and now we have what happened in ukraine. it is absolutely devastating. and i want to get youaction d on russian state media this week about people he describes as traitolisten to this. translator: any people, the russian people especially are able to distinguish true patriots from bastards and tray tors, will spit them out like a gnat that flew in their mouth. i am certain this natural cleaning of our society will only strengthen our country, our