you were held captive by russians for five weeks. can you tell us how you were treated and what your conditions were like? at first we were taken to sebastapol, there were lots of cameras filming us and saying look how well we re treating you. and so we stayed there in the barracks for about a day and a half, a week and a half, two weeks, and then we were put on a bus and we were taken by bus to an air field, and put on a transport plane, russian transport plane, we were taken in an unknown direction. when we landed, and we came out of the plane, we realized that this wasn t ukraine anymore because it was very, very cold. it was snowing. and well, it was a lot warmer in crimea. and we were put in a prison van and treated like criminal
u.n. speaking about a figure of 15,000 russian troops now inside ukraine, including crimea. yesterday we saw some pictures of russian helicopters flying over. those were on youtube. we saw some pictures of some tanks, a handful of tanks. have you seen anything, any evidence to support a figure that high, 15,000 russian troops? reporter: no. and i think we have to be very careful with all of this. even those tanks, we re not entirely sure that they are russian. there are significant numbers of unidentifiable gunmen on the streets of the capitals here. they are not wearing any kind of military insignia. but they number in the hundreds as far as i ve seen. of course, i haven t been down to the naval base of sebastapol. i don t know if the streets around there are filled with troops also. but it is not as though you have large vehicle movements containing thousands of troops who are patrolling and crawling the streets of this crimean region, no. so 15,000 troops to me would
of russian troops might have risen as high as 15,000. do you see any evidence, one, of russian forces and of russian forces in numbers like that? reporter: well, there certainly seems to be a very heavy military presence at this capital of crimea. troops in going fatigues, heavily armed and in control of the government facilities, patrolling the streets. they are all over the place. it is difficult to believe that they are anything other than russian, but they do not wear any kind of military insignia. they are trying their best to hide their identities. that said, jim, i did manage to get an answer from one of them, a young guy who i spoke to today. and i said, where are you from? he said, i m from russia. so take that for what you will. the russian president says that there are no russian boots on the ground outside of russia s military bases in sebastapol.
sebastapol is the only warm water port russian ye owns now. everything else is covered with ice. and russia will never allow that thing to get in extremis if you will this. activity clearly is design to ensure that overall ukraine is not going to spin in a direction that they d prefer it not to and to ensure that what they have in sebastapol remains intact. all right, general marks, fran townsend, appreciate your perspectives. let us know what you think. follow me on twitt twitter @andersoncooper. coming up why yuksz mukrain matters. also ahead, torrential rain soaking southern california. evacuations are under way and growing fears the mudslide and flash flooding. get a live update and tell you where the weather is headed next in the use. [ male announcer ] you ve never watched her like this before.
and spread what happened to this region. we heard reports last night which were also brought up by the russian ambassador to the u.n. just now that there was an attack at the interior ministry here in this city overnight by these so-called ukranian ultramarb ultranationals who have come here to cement trouble. we found no evidence of that. we tried to dig in a little bit more into what had happened and we couldn t find any evidence that anything had happened at the interior ministry last night. so there s a lot of fact and fiction that is flying around here. also we heard from the u.s. ambassador to the u.n. an accusation against russia that they were fomenting the crowds and fomenting people to come out and protest. now, on the streets of this city all day today there were pro-russian groups coming out to chant russian chants, to say russia, crimea, sebastapol. they did not look as though they were forced to come out. these were the ethnic russians