Their assault on eastern ukraine. kelly cobiella is there for us. reporter: tonight, ukrainian troops trying to hold the line in the east, now facing an intensifying russian assault. in mariupol, authorities say russian forces have hit a steel plant 35 times in 24 hours. it s the last holdout of ukrainian troops there. the city s mayor says a third mass grave has been discovered and that locals are being forced to bury bodies in exchange for food and water. and tonight, russia is taking new actions outside ukraine. now cutting off natural gas deliveries to poland after poland refused russia s demand to pay in rubles poland like much of europe is still buying russian oil and gas and has been sending ukraine weapons. today in germany, u.s. defense secretary lloyd austin meeting with defense officials from 40 countries, pushing for more military support for ukraine. ukraine clearly believes that it can win.
And so i think saber rattling, and and rhetoric like that is just unhelpful. and so, again, hard to say what s motivating mr. lavrov. but, again, i think that kind of talk should be avoided. also tonight we have major new developments in the january 6th investigation. a cnn exclusive as a matter of fact. newly obtained texts reveal what a little-known congressman was doing behind the scenes to advance the scene to overturn our freon a fair election. and never before heard sound from kevin mccarthy just days after the insurrection, how he was worried the rhetoric from far-right republicans was dangerous. we ve got more to come on all of this tonight. make sure you stay tuned. but i want to begin though with cnn s phil black, live for us in kyiv. phil, hello to you. first question, mariupol mayor says a third mass grave has been found around the city.
Indefensible and a war of choice. russia s invasion is indefensible. and so are russian atrocities. we all start today from a position of moral clarity. russia is waging a war of choice to indulge the ambitions of one man. and breaking another unite, ukrainian authorities say that two guided missiles were fired at the city of zaporizhzhia in central ukraine. a state ukraine energy company says that two cruise missiles flew over the nuclear power plant near zaporizhzhia, which plant officials say puts the world and their own safety at risk. meanwhile in moldova, two blasts have hit a village in transnistria, knocking out two radio towers. in mariupol, the mayor said a third mass grave has been found near the city and that the russians, get this, made locals work for hours on those graves
Issue number one. issue number two, let s say people did resign. or they left under whatever circumstance, who would then replace them, would it make a difference to do that? and i think that was something that was always in the back of their minds, redfield, hahn, fauci and birx. she said they had a pact if one of them was fired, that they would all resign, which is just so notable because we could tell the tension happening while we were there reporting on this on a daily basis, you could see it in the briefing room. but to hear her writing about it in this book is really something. dr. sanjay gupta, thank you for joining us on that this morning. you got it. have a good morning. we also have more of our breaking coverage of russia s war on ukraine as there are new satellite images that reveal a third mass grave outside of mariupol. and reports that local ukrainians are being forced to work them in response, in
Is in the capital kyiv. and, phil, we re getting these reports of a new mass grave in mariupol, and what the ukrainians in mariupol are being asked to do there. what have you learned? reporter: yeah, john so this is information that has come from the mayor of mariupol, someone not in that devastated city, but throughout the war acted as a conduit for information that is coming from beyond the siege that has kept everyone else out and, of course, the population in. he says partly as a result of analysis of commercial satellite imagery that they have identified a third mass grave on the outskirts of the city. there were two others recently, this would be a third. this, he says, is as a result of images which show large trenches that have been dug and made larger as they have been filled in over time. now, if this is true, it adds to, well, the growing picture of extraordinary human suffering