causing serious destruction. ukrainian government is now imposing energy restrictions, rolling blackouts across the country, after repeated strikes on critical energy infrastructure. in the meantime president biden responding to putin s declaration of martial law in these ukrainian territories saying it reveals his dwindling options in the war. i think vladimir putin finds himself in an incredibly difficult position. and what it reflects to me is it seems his only tool available to him is to brutalize individual citizens in ukraine. cnn got rare access to ukraine s military on the battlefield frontlines. matthew chance is live in moscow first, but i want to go to fred 34r50i9 plight ken who is in kramatorsk. tell us what you saw. reporter: and we ve been hearing so much about the long distance strikes that the russians have been carrying out on critical infrastructure and of course that school that they hit overnight there in zaporizhzhia. but there are still a lot of
Cover as best we can. waiting here for the shooting to stop. so we re taking cover here because we just had incoming artillery fire. we ll hope there are not any hits anywhere close to us. [ she wlling ] we re at the receiving end of a full russian artillery barrage. our photojournalist tracks several of the projectiles whizzing close over our heads.
Decision to carry out the strike. so how will russia respond to all of this? we ll ask pentagon press secretary john kirby when he joins us live. and in the southeastern ukrainian city of mariupol this morning [ she wlling ] that is shelling of the azovstal steel plant it is believed 200 civilians are sheltering there at the plant. women, children and wounded soldiers. at this moment the next stage of evacuations are underway. the united nations is hoping that a joint effort with the international red cross would be able to get more people out of that plant today. a medic on the inside says that people are dying in agony. bullets, hunger and a lack of medicine. now elsewhere, the pentagon is saying the russian forces made some small progress in parts of the eastern donbas region, but