applies the the ukrainians were responsible. a claim that ukrainian authorities have denied one senior official saying we are not a criminal state. fred pleitgen is in moscow. where do things stand on this investigation? reporter: a lot of this is still very much a mystery. at such dazzling time in russia as you have russia s special military operation, as they call it, in ukraine, going on. so there were, of course, someone in the pretty high echelons in russia who believe that maybe the ukrainians might be behind all this. but right now, it still remains absolutely unclear. the latest from the investigation is that they say the explosive yield of that charge was the equivalent of about 400 grams of tnt. they say the bomb was placed inside the car. they ve recovered some parts and sent it in for a forensic investigation as well. still very much unclear who might be behind all this. here s what we re learning. reporter: a car engulfed in a massive fire ball on a highway o
i don t think it is your normal terrorist group, for instance, the chechnyans or the rest of it. so a friend of the dugin family said darya was driving her father s car when it happened. she s been an outspoken russian nationalist herself. do you believe she was the target? do you believe it was her father who was the target? on was there suspicion that they would be potentially in that car? i think the suspicion so far is that he went off in a different car. the real target, what was the father, alexander, because he is, he s almost call for genocide against ukrainians. he s a eurasian nationalist, whatever that is. and he s pushing putin, at least on tv, if not personally, to wipe out ukraine. he s december missed in ukraine. he s looked at it as someone who
neil: right. when he says heavy casualties, what does that really translate into? just what you got through saying. it s enormous. they went in with no expectation of anything, anything near that number of casualties. so now they have a replacement problem, and that s why they re reaching out to these what i would say are absolutely mercenaries. clearly mercenaries, chechnyans, the syrians, i think some even out of africa that they re looking at right now. and they re going to paw em a reported $ pay em a reported $1200 a month. well, you know what? that, you know what those people are going to do? they re going to perpetrate incredible war crimes. neil: i hope you re wrong on that, general, but you ve been pretty prescient about a lot of this. general boy kin, thank you. we are falling other developments hear including right now in here including
hundreds of civilians, entire families are using to escape. leaving the horror of the past few weeks behind. my name is nadia. reporter: where have you come from? up there. yes. this is a place which was the very dangerous and a lot of russians, and a lot of chechnyians. i don t know. reporter: russians and chechnyans. yes. and they kill the owner of the house where we sitting. reporter: they killed the owner of the house. yes. they killed the owner of the house. reporter: so you must have been, you and your family, must have been terrified. frightening. it was terrified. absolutely terrified. my family is okay. now we are going ten days underground. reporter: you ve been ten days underground. my goodness. there you have it.
have a manpower problem. they ve probably suffered 10,000, 15,000 casualties so far. putin now is bringing in foreigners, chechnyans, syrians and others. look, the battle of kyiv will be the end of it. if the ukrainians elect to fight block by block, the advantages overwhelmingly for the defender. the armor will have the least impact on the fight in the cities. but conversely, that means this giant beautiful city of millions of people, 3 million people, will be a battleground with civilians stuck in the middle of it running out of food and medical supplies and the electric grid turned off and the heat turned off. it will be a humanitarian disaster of the first order. zelenskyy s got some tough decisions coming up. time and russian casualties and the pressure on putin are his