[Baldwin:] Welcome back. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Heavily armed men, anonymous, some in black masks, today have rumbled into towns in eastern Ukraine, atop military combat vehicles. Russian flags make their allegiance alarmingly clear. But more disturbing still, no one is even saying whose army this is. Even more unnerving, these fighters, sympathetic to Moscow and their supporters rubbed up today against Ukrainian troops sent to reassert authority and their supporters. So at this hour it is a potential tinderbox, very, very confusing. But we do know this. Moscow says it will not allow harm to come to pro-Russian Ukrainians while Ukraine, NATO and now the U.N. all are insisting no such threat resists except for the fact that the Russians are stirring things up a bit here. So now we have this. NATO's boldest response thus far. The U.S. led alliance today has announced it is stepping up patrols immediately along its eastern border. Keep in mind the Russians are massing troops on the other side of Ukraine. Christiane Amanpour joins me live from New York. She, of course, is our chief international correspondent. So, Christiane, is NATO finally drawing some kind of line here?
[Christiane Amanpour, Cnn Chief International Correspondent:] Well, NATO is desperate to figure out how to deter Russia and President Putin from making any more land grabs, to moving into any other parts of eastern Ukraine or even into the breakaway region of Moldova, Transnistria, you may have heard that word bandied around. People worried that that could be gobbled up. I spoke to the Russian EU ambassador today and I pressed him on, are we going to see any more land incursions by the Russian military? And he said absolutely not. That is not in Russia's interest. That's not what Russia wants to do anywhere any time anyhow. But what they do want is, as I have been saying, some kind of pressure maintained on the authorities in Kiev. And that is what they're doing. And of course ahead of these four-way talks that will start in Europe, in Geneva tomorrow between the United States, Europe, Russia and Ukraine. Hoping to form some kind of political solution to this crisis.
[Baldwin:] So he says no. On the flip side, though, you have the west. There is this other sign the west is ramping up just a tad here because the head of the CIA, John Brennan, he made a quiet trip to Ukraine over the weekend. We can't assume anything about this but might he have been talking about, you know, sharing intelligence with Kiev, maybe help them keep the Russians at bay?
[Amanpour:] Well, it's unclear what he was doing there. It's really odd that the White House confirmed his trip. I mean, they don't usually do that. But of course as we know the White House and other NATO nations have ruled out any kind of military help to the Ukrainian authorities, so would they be trying to help Ukraine figure out what's going on in their own country? Would it be about sharing intelligence? Would it about trying to figure out how to deter any more, you know, Russian disturbances in the eastern part of the country? I really don't know. But obviously Russia has jumped all over this trip as some sort of conspiracy theory to bolster their own theories and they accuse the West and Ukraine of creating the trouble in eastern Ukraine while the west are trying to keep people on the ground and independent observers including a special U.N. Human Rights investigation on the ground has conclude d that the disturbances are pretty much entirely racked up by the Russians, by these militants and Russia helping them inside the eastern Ukraine. And also very importantly, the U.N. has said that there are no significant instances of Russian speaking Ukrainians being under any threat from Ukraine at all, and that there may have been some issues of harassment but none to the extent that Russia is claiming. Plus of course, as you know, massive Russian propaganda is affecting the temperature of events on the ground because they are spouting the Kremlin line. I mean there are a lot of lies and misrepresentation, independent presses being taken off, as it was in Crimea, and Russia today and other state. Russian news organizations are pretty much the only information that a lot of people are getting so that is very troubling. But I might say this.
[Baldwin:] Sure.
[Amanpour:] Maybe I'm going on a little bit too long.
[Baldwin:] Go ahead, Christiane.
[Amanpour:] But a very interesting new poll has come out done on the ground in Ukraine after the Crimea referendum and it shows that the majority of Ukrainians, whether in Crimea, in eastern Ukraine or in the rest of Ukraine, they want closer ties with the EU and the majority saying that they don't feel under any threat or any pressure from Ukrainian authorities at all.
[Baldwin:] OK. Christiane Amanpour, thank you, thank you, thank you.
[Amanpour:] Thanks, Brooke.
[Baldwin:] Coming up next, back to our special coverage of Flight 370. The families that passengers lost in the planes storming out of this briefing today. One man shouting at officials, calling them liars. Furious. Listen, this story is the same. They are not getting the answers they want about these underwater search so we're going to try to get answers to those questions they have from our experts next.