as they wait for vaccines and testing. live from cnn center, this is cnn newsroom, with kim brunhuber. president biden has issued a major disaster declaration for the state of kentucky, as catastrophic flooding has killed at least 16 people, including six children. and the death toll is expected to rise. flash floods wiped out entire neighborhoods, scores of people are missing. kentucky governor andy bashir says it s hard to get a fix on the number of cell services out. bridges were demolished, and some homes were completely carried away. for many who have been affected, the damage is devastating. i don t know what we re going to do. we don t have no place to live now or anything. the water got to about there. we had about this much more room before we got flooded, and i ve never seen it that high. we came out of the house, and it was so swift that even a jet ski was hard for him to handle. and he took us out one at a time. federal disaster declaration will free u
two nations pointing fingers after an attack on a prison holding prisoner of war. we re live in kyiv with the latest. how russia is getting around sanctions by plundering sudan s gold. announcer: live from cnn center, this is cnn newsroom with kim brunhuber. it s 5:00 a.m. in eastern kentucky where a humanitarian tragedy is unfolding and will likely get worse. president joe biden has issued a major disaster declaration for the state as catastrophic flooding has killed at least 16 people, including 6 children and that death toll is expected to rise. raging waters decimated entire neighborhoods, scores of people are still missing. kentucky governor andy beshear says it s hard to know how many. he explains why here. listen. there are so many areas we still can t get to. the water hasn t crested in some parts of eastern kentucky. so we can t even get in to some hollers and see who is there. there are people out there all across kentucky and america that are scared bec
earlier than previous known. in fact, for more than a year. and the death toll is rising tonight in kentucky. homes completely under water. in just a matter of hours, we will speak to a pastor whose church was entirely washed away. let s go outfront . good evening to you. i m jim sciutto in for erin burnett. outfront , breaking news. the white house responding here on outfront after putin ups the ante on a prisoner swap deal. cnn exclusively reporting that president vladimir putin is demanding even more when it comes to the swap. according to sources, not only does he want viktor bout in exchange for brittney griner and paul whelan, the russians also now want a convicted murderer to be released. he was sentenced to life in president there. you broke the story. what more can you tell us what about the russians are demanding here. reporter: yeah. what we are told is earlier this month after they proposed the deal for viktor bout for paul whelan and brittney griner, they
smuggling the precious resource back to russia to finance its invasion of ukraine. welcome to our viewers here in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room . let s begin our coverage tonight on capitol hill with new details on the insurrection investigation. we have exclusive new information about when the inspector general over at the department of homeland security first learned of those missing secret service text messages. but first our chief congressional correspondent manu raju is joining us with other news on the january 6th probe. manu, i understand you pressed gop leader mccarthy today on a key conversation with former white house aide cassidy hutchinson. what did he tell you? more importantly, maybe what didn t he tell you? reporter: he said he didn t recall. this is one of the key moments of that testimony that cassidy hutchinson whether she went before the january 6th committee about the concerns and the efforts to s
keep her dog afloat. finally i was hanging on to a fern rope. i thought, i have to do it. i have to swim. but it was super swift. i never swam in water like that. reporter: the kentucky national guard is also assisting in rescue efforts, lifting people from their homes. as some buildings were left almost entirely submerged. officials say the storm caught many people by surprise. there was no warning. people asleep in mobile homes near this water. that water had never been up to before in 50 years. they ve lived there and never worried about it, so you never thought about it. caught in their sleep and just washed away. it s tragedy. reporter: power and cell phone service out in many of the hardest-hit areas, help is hard to come by. there s a big swath of the county that s totally isolated. the state highways are totally gone. reporter: one mayor says it s hard to know where to begin. we were so overwhelmed, we don t know what to ask for.