cut off russian banks from s.w.i.f.t., the society for worldwide interbank telecommunication. our cnn reporters are covering the story from all angles. let s begin with alex marquardt, live for us inside kyiv. fighting has intensified across ukraine, but from last night your vantage point, you could see the skies lighting up. earlier you shared that you were hearing explosions not far from where you re standing right now. bring us up to speed with the latest on what you re seeing. reporter: the fighting intensifying not just across the country, but around the city as well. in the past hour there does appear to be an acceleration of the pace of the bombardment. we are up on the roof of our hotel, and from here we ve heard many distinct blasts in the distance, to the northeast, to
kansas.com. she s on the phone. roll the video and then we ll talk to her. kind of scared. jaime green, it s dark. you see the skies lighting up. was this before or after? did it become was it dark when it happened and then it got lighter, or did you take this after the initial pictures? i took this way before i shot any of the devastation. this was i believe when the tornado was about to happen. and then my friend was like behind me in another car, and she s from kansas and she says that you should never stay in a car during a tornado. so we didn t really have many
jaime green, it s dark. you see the skies lighting up. was this before or after? did it become was it dark when it happened and then it got lighter, or did you take this after the initial pictures? i took this way before i shot any of the devastation. this was i believe when the tornado was about to happen. and then my friend was like behind me in another car, and she s from kansas and she says that you should never stay in a car during a tornado. so we didn t really have many options. so we got out of the car shortly after i shot that. and we huddled down. it was my friend and i and her 6-year-old daughter. we huddled down over her daughter out in the elements but up against a wall, up against an office building. our only other option would have been to throw a bench through the glass window which we actually thought of, but we didn t. we decided not to. so that was again, that video was taken maybe a minute or two before the tornado.
kind of scared. jaime green, it s dark and see the skies lighting up. was this before or after? was it dark when it happened, on did it get lighter and you took this after your initial pictures? i took this way before i shot any of the devastation. this is when i believe. my friend was like behind she behind me in another car. we didn t have really many options so we got out of the car shortly after i shot this. we huddled down and we huddled
it s from chasertv.com. rob, roll it. oh, my. and then just a short time ago, storm chaser, his name is steve polly got out in the middle of this driving on the interstate, and he said he didn t think he was going to make it touch and go for a while. these videos he took at a gas station. listen. come on. yes, it is. all right. our jacqui jeras, our meteorologist joins us now. some officials in missouri reporting that there are at least as many as 24 fatalities from this tornado that touched down, and they are saying there s widespread damage across the city s south side. that s right, don. it was just an incredible tornado that touched down just before 6:00 local time there. a multi-vortex tornado touched down in downtown joplin and just stripped a path of destruction through the city. there are many buildings which have been damaged. homes have been flattened and trees broken off and stripped from their bark, and, unfortunately, we re concerned that that death t