By — Nick Schifrin Nick Schifrin By — Teresa Cebrián Aranda Teresa Cebrián Aranda Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/russia-tightens-grip-on-eastern-ukraine-with-plans-for-secession-referendums Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Audio Turkish and UN officials say they expect to sign a deal with Russia and Ukraine Friday to allow Ukraine to resume vital exports. The country is one of the world’s largest providers of grain and oil. Meanwhile, the battles grind on. Russia this week said its goals had expanded to the country’s south and southeast, as the war of attrition continues in the eastern Donbas. Nick Schifrin reports. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. Judy Woodruff: Officials from Turkey and the United Nations say they expect to sign a deal with Russia and Ukraine tomorrow to allow Ukraine to resume vital exports. The country is one of the world's largest providers of grain and oil.Meanwhile, the battles grind on. Russia this week said that its goals had expanded to the country's south and southeast, as the war of attrition continues in the Eastern Donbass.Nick Schifrin reports. Nick Schifrin: Where children once played, today, soldiers and police dug through the obliterated remains of a school where children once learned the latest Russian attempt to erase Ukraine's future, an entire generation shattered by war. Dmytro, Former Student (through translator): I graduated from the school two years ago. I cannot believe this is the reality we live in. Nick Schifrin: Residents of Kramatorsk are shell-shocked. They know they are now the front lines. Missiles destroyed Yevhen Harbach and his wife's home while they were inside. Yevhen Harbach, Kramatorsk Resident (through translator): I could not believe it when we were under the rubble. After all, one wants to live. So we dug ourselves out with these hands. What else was there to do? Nick Schifrin: Kramatorsk is in the Donetsk region that Russian forces are now trying to seize, after capturing virtually all of the Luhansk region. The two regions make up the Donbass.But, yesterday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow's goals go beyond that. Sergey Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister (through translator): Now the geography is different. This is not only the Luhansk people's republic and the Donetsk people's republic. This is also the Kherson region and the Zaporizhzhia region and a number of other territories. Nick Schifrin: Parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions have been captured and occupied by Russia since the February invasion.National Security Council Communications Coordinator John Kirby said Russia intends to make those gains permanent. John Kirby, NSC Coordinator For Strategic Communications: You're seeing ample evidence in the intelligence and in the public domain that Russia intends to try to annex additional Ukrainian territory. Russia is beginning to roll out a version of what you could call an annexation playbook. Nick Schifrin: To try and prevent that, the West has sent billions of dollars worth of weapons, the most advanced, the U.S. High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS. Senior U.S. officials say Ukraine is using them against high-value Russian targets, including command posts and a bridge in occupied Ukraine that Russia uses to supply its military.The U.S. has sent 16, but limited the ammunition range to 40 miles. Ukrainian Minister of Defense Oleksiy Reznikov said this week there aren't enough. Oleksiy Reznikov, Ukrainian Defense Minister (through translator): For an effective counteroffensive, we would need at least 100, I think, that could become a game-changer on the battlefield. Nick Schifrin: The Ukrainian strategy is to force Russians to pay a high price to achieve little progress, says Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley.Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff: Is the Donbass lost? No, it's not lost yet. The Ukrainians are making the Russians pay for every inch of territory that they gain. Nick Schifrin: But in every inch of land, there are thousands of civilian lives. Families continue to leave the front lines on trains headed west, mothers whose children may never see their homes again. Kateryna, Severodonetsk Resident (through translator): To abandon your house is the worst thing ever. We abandoned our life there. I feel empty. How are we going to keep on living? Listen to this Segment Watch Watch the Full Episode PBS NewsHour from Jul 21, 2022 By — Nick Schifrin Nick Schifrin Nick Schifrin is PBS NewsHour’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Correspondent. He leads NewsHour’s daily foreign coverage, including multiple trips to Ukraine since the full-scale invasion, and has created weeklong series for the NewsHour from nearly a dozen countries. The PBS NewsHour series “Inside Putin’s Russia” won a 2017 Peabody Award and the National Press Club’s Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence. In 2020 Schifrin received the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Arthur Ross Media Award for Distinguished Reporting and Analysis of Foreign Affairs. He was a member of the NewsHour teams awarded a 2021 Peabody for coverage of COVID-19, and a 2023 duPont Columbia Award for coverage of Afghanistan and Ukraine. Prior to PBS NewsHour, Schifrin was Al Jazeera America's Middle East correspondent. He led the channel’s coverage of the 2014 war in Gaza; reported on the Syrian war from Syria's Turkish, Lebanese and Jordanian borders; and covered the annexation of Crimea. He won an Overseas Press Club award for his Gaza coverage and a National Headliners Award for his Ukraine coverage. From 2008-2012, Schifrin served as the ABC News correspondent in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2011 he was one of the first journalists to arrive in Abbottabad, Pakistan, after Osama bin Laden’s death and delivered one of the year’s biggest exclusives: the first video from inside bin Laden’s compound. His reporting helped ABC News win an Edward R. Murrow award for its bin Laden coverage. Schifrin is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a board member of the Overseas Press Club Foundation. He has a Bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and a Master of International Public Policy degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). @nickschifrin By — Teresa Cebrián Aranda Teresa Cebrián Aranda Teresa is a Producer on the Foreign Affairs & Defense Unit at PBS NewsHour. She writes and produces daily segments for the millions of viewers in the U.S. and beyond who depend on PBS NewsHour for timely, relevant information on the world’s biggest issues. She’s reported on authoritarianism in Latin America, rising violence in Haiti, Egypt’s crackdown on human rights, Israel’s judicial reforms and China’s zero-covid policy, among other topics. Teresa also contributed to the PBS NewsHour’s coverage of the war in Ukraine, which was named recipient of a duPont-Columbia Award in 2023, and was part of a team awarded with a Peabody Award for the NewsHour’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.