Ukrainian MP Gives an Update on Casualties in Kyiv

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Tell me the very latest. We have heard all these military reports all day. Are you expecting any further advances on the capital?

LESIA VASYLENKO, UKRAINIAN PARLIAMENT MEMBER: We are. As we speak, I was just checking the messages. We parliamentarians get operative information about what is happening. And now they’re checking information about a dozen also Russian aircraft planes being directed towards Kyiv for further airstrikes.

AMANPOUR: Can I just ask you, Madam Vasylenko? Your foreign minister has already called out what he calls a war crime. He said Russian artillery all from the air have taken out a kindergarten and some other civilian targets on the outskirts — on the outskirts of Kyiv. Do you have any confirmation of that?

VASYLENKO: Not just the outskirts of Kyiv. Through the night, over 30 civilian targets have been hit, 33, to be exact, three kindergartens in Ukraine. One children’s hospital in Kharkiv region was targeted, thankfully, no casualties there. The medical staff were able to get the children down to the bomb shelter in time. Cars get run over by tanks in Kyiv, for example. And down in Kherson, a car was shot at which had a family, a husband and wife and child, as far as we know. And, finally, just very close to Kyiv, an aircraft was shooting at civilians. This is a town just around 30, 40 kilometers from Kyiv. And as a result of that shooting, there are four civilian casualties.

AMANPOUR: Do you have a sense of how many casualties altogether around Ukraine your forces or your civilians may have suffered? Because we hear from the British defense minister the number 450, which is an extraordinarily high number on the first day of an invasion by a hugely more sophisticated army, I’m sorry to say, but the Russians have had so much force. And they seem to have suffered a lot of casualties. Can you talk to that and what your forces are doing?

VASYLENKO: Sure. But you are telling the truth. The Ukrainian army is honestly up against a force much bigger than it ever had and that it will ever have probably. We’re talking about a top three global military power, the biggest army in Europe and a nuclear state. And the Ukrainian army has to fight all of that itself on the ground. So, what we have — what we are facing is actually having to withstand all kinds of attacks.