Russian Invasion Of Ukraine Bearing Down On Second Week
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) - The Russian Invasion of Ukraine is bearing down on its second week as fighting rages across the country, destroying cities, neighborhoods and claiming lives in the process.
Chilling new video has emerged from inside the control room of Europe's largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine while it was under attack from the Russian military.
Over the public address system, workers frantically called out, "Stop shooting immediately. You threaten the security of the whole world." Outside, a fire raged, and video of the aftermath showed the damage, including what looked like shell casings.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the attack "terror on an unprecedented level," and added that Russian tanks knew what they were firing at and directly aimed at the station.
U.S. officials said that the world only narrowly avoided a nuclear catastrophe.
Late Friday night, a massive explosion came in Chernihiv, which is north of the capital city of Kyiv.
Many residential areas have been also been leveled after days of Russian shelling.
In the southern port city of Mariupol, paramedics scrambled to save the lives of civilian victims caught up in the days of heavy fighting.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, accused Russian military of using banned weapons.
"We have seen the use of cluster bombs, which would be in violation of international law," Stoltenberg said.
Aid groups from Southern California are also on the ground in Ukraine trying to help. Margaret Traub is with International Medical Corps, which is based in LA.
"The situation inside Ukraine is incredibly dire," she said.
Traub's organization has a team of medical professionals, like doctors, nurses and psychiatrists, doing what they can to help in the war torn country.
"I think the random, indiscriminate bombings that people are seeing, where our own staff in Ukraine -- we had about 30 staff in Ukraine before the hostilities broke out -- and so these are people who are Ukrainian. These are people who are doing this work, but also have their own families to worry about and they are on the move and it's hard for us to be in touch with them. Communications are down, and so it's really frightening for them," she said of the situation.
In Russia, Vladimir Putin is trying to hide the atrocities committed by the Russian military. The free media inside Russia has been mostly shut down. Facebook, Twitter and networks like CBS, CNN and the BBC have all stopped broadcasting. Putin's government is threatening to jail journalists who report on what Putin calls "fake" news about the invasion. In other words, journalists will be punished for telling the truth.
Burbank Congressman and Chair of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff weighed on Putin's effort to spread misinformation.
"Putin is pushing out this lie that there's a genocide against Ukrainians by Ukrainians. It's absurd, and I think it shows why Putin is trying to shut down independent journalism in Russia. He doesn't want his people to learn the truth, but I think they are learning truth and they're certainly going to feel the economic impacts of Putin's folly."
The Russian military is even targeting journalists in Ukraine. A Sky News crew was ambushed outside of Kyiv, with dozen of bullets tearing through their vehicle and hitting the network's correspondent, though he survived.
