outside of mariupol, ukrainian officials point to nassau satellite images that show ground in one area has recently been disturbed. they also say claims from one source indicate that the site has been used to dispose of bodies. cnn is working to independently verify those claims. meantime, russia has unveiled a new goal in the conflict, a new strategy. a commander saying taking control of southern ukraine and even donbas region to establish a land block of crimea. there is new credit yo that shows utter destruction in the small village of moschun, north of kyiv. house after house flattened. the ukrainians played a major role in pushing back from the city. 100,000 people are trapped in mariupol including soldiers and sillians. ukraine s deputy prime minister announced this morning, a humanitarian corridor is now open to evacuate, women, children and the elderly. this morning, we are hearing reports of more shelling in the kharkiv region. we re going to bring you up to date w
russians may push them to russia. mariupol is one of the last strongholds in the eastern past of the ukraine. russians continue to carve out more territory in the donbas. and according to a military commander, we spoke to russian media, that is the second, phase two as they re calling it, of the operation. to completely control the donbas region including mariupol and the southern part of ukraine along the black sea, that would connect russia to transnistria. the difficulty is that area is not part of ukraine, or russia. it s actually moldova. it s a separatest part of moldova there. there have been russian troops stationed there since the 1990s. many people speak prrussian in that area. it s infringing on a second country. obviously the moldovans are not keen on this.
ukrainians about the potential for russia to conduct cyber operations in the ukraine. i don t have anything specific at this point. moving to the hypothetical. there s a lot of steps that could have taken short of an invasion but are still aggressive. you know, including cyber and there s this step that congress has taken on recognizing the break-away regions in ukraine as being a separatest legitimately and separatest region. would the u.s. respond to anything like that with sanctions as you would an actual invasion? we have conveyed before and i ll reiterate now that we ll be an to respond. i know that there s you said there s very little daylight with you and the european allies. the german chancellor said that ukraine joining nato is not on
they ve been calling for sanctions for some time now, most recently in munich, ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy saying what are you waiting for if you re so sure russia is going to invade and we re yet to hear from the ukrainian president following this latest move from the kremlin. he s expected to speak tonight. it s 2:00 a.m. in the middle of the night and yet, any minute now he could address the country and what will arguably one of the most important speeches of his entire career. one of the big over hanging questions in all of this is how will the ukrainian military respond especially if these russian peace keepers move into separatest controlled areas and push past the line of contact? so far the ukrainian military is ordered to exercise restraint, not to provoke the situation with president zelenskyy saying one cannon fire and artillery
eastern region. what we saw tonight is laying the ground work for president putin and the government in moscow to supply weapons and troops to these separatist areas. this is all been part of a political and military dance. coordinated theater by the russian government from the beginning. we ve seen the russian playbook roll out with the false flags attacks that we saw even as recently as this morning with the russians claiming that ukrainian troops entered their territory and they were fired upon. the separatest leaders saying they would have to evacuate women and children because of an ukrainian offensive. president putin wanted to speak to the leadership in kiev and saying that ukraine as a whole is a western colony. the coming hours will be interesting to see how the ukrainians response. we ve seen president zelensky on