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U.S. and Russia Hold Talks Without Ukraine; Delta Plane Crashes in Toronto. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired February 18, 2025 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[11:00:30]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: Good morning to you. You are live in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Pamela Brown in Washington.

New this morning, dramatic new video of the moment a Delta plane crashed and then flipped over in Toronto. This video taken from the cockpit of another plane shows the Delta flight coming in for a landing as it touches down. As you see right here, the wing appears to hit the ground before the plane catches fire and flips on the runway in a plume of black smoke.

This hour, we will hear from airport officials with an update on the crash.

CNN's Jason Carroll picks up the story from here.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Come on.

JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Dramatic moments captured on the runway at Toronto's Pearson Airport as passengers escaped from a Delta commuter jet which had just crashed and flipped upside down.

One by one, passengers ran for their safety. One says all seemed normal as the aircraft was on final approach yesterday afternoon, then suddenly a hard landing.

JOHN NELSON, PASSENGER: When we hit, it was just a super hard, like a -- hit the ground and the plane went sideways. And I believe we skidded on our side and then flipped over on our back. Where we ended up, there was like a big fireball.

PETE KOUKOV, PASSENGER: We didn't really know anything was the matter, or at least I didn't until the second we hit the ground. There was no real indication of anything. And then, yes, we hit the ground and we were sideways, and then we were upside down, hanging like that.

CARROLL: Flight 4819 was inbound from Minneapolis carrying 80 people on board.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Clear to land 23, Endeavor 4819. CARROLL: Air traffic control cleared the CRJ900 to land. Already questions if weather could have played a role in the crash. Wind gusts at the time reached almost 40 miles per hour, over the past week, Toronto hit with nearly two feet of snow.

TODD AITKEN, FIRE CHIEF, TORONTO PEARSON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT: This is an active investigation. It's very early on. It's really important that we do not speculate. What we can say is the runway was dry and there was no crosswind conditions.

CARROLL: Canadian officials say 18 people on board were injured. The incident comes as the aviation industry still reeling from recent accidents involving an American Airlines commuter jet and a military chopper near Washington, D.C., a medevac jet in Philadelphia, and a Bering Air flight near Nome, Alaska.

Passengers on board Flight 4819 say it is remarkable everyone survived.

KOUKOV: Just feeling lucky and happy I got to give the person that ended up sitting next to me a big hug that we were OK, and see my friends who were here to pick me up from the airport and give them a big hug, and, yes, get home who knows when, but get home and give my family a big hug.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CARROLL: Investigators have several factors working in their favor. The plane is intact. They will have access to the flight data recorder, as well as the cockpit voice recorder. They're also going to be able to interview the pilot and co-pilot to get their input in terms of what happened in the final moments on approach

But even with all of that, it could be some time before we have a concrete answer exactly what caused the crash -- Pamela.

BROWN: All right, Jason Carroll, thanks for that.

Joining us now is Billy Nolen. He is a former acting FAA administrator.

So the plane appears to pitch to the right. Its wing hits the ground. We saw that in the video. We just heard one passenger call it a hard landing. What do you think as you saw the video and what could have happened here?

BILLY NOLEN, FORMER ACTING ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION: Yes.

So, I think you have already sort of expressed, right, a couple of things have been here. When we think about landing in winter operations, certainly, as a longtime captain, as a training captain myself, you think about whether or not the runway is slippery, what are the conditions, what are the latest tower winds that you would have received just prior to landing. It does appear to be a hard landing, but we will have to wait and see

the report coming out of the Transportation Safety Bureau of Canada. Of course, they will be assisted by the U.S. NTSB, as well as the FAA, sort of get that final.

But to the points already made, right, you have got the fuselage intact. And I really want to take a moment to just express appreciation -- sometimes, they don't get it nearly enough -- for the cabin crew, for the flight attendants who safely and expeditiously got all the passengers off the plane and away from that, right?

[11:05:00]

So that is just fantastic, right? So now is an opportunity. They will be -- as you said, be able to interview the crew, understand what they were thinking at the moment just prior to landing and then what led to this. It is, I would say, almost miraculous that you have this fireball that is behind the aircraft as it's sliding, I think, again, a contribution to not having any more serious injuries than what we saw.

BROWN: So why do you think there were no fatalities in such a dramatic crash? And how do you think that reflects how aviation safety has evolved over the years?

NOLEN: Yes, it's an excellent question, Pam.

Having been in aviation 45 years now and started out, I can tell you that, from the manufacturers, the OEMs, as we call them, they are producing -- the aircraft are stronger. The ability to withstand higher g-forces -- the seats themselves are stronger and the ability to withstand higher g-forces, as we call it in the business.

So all of this contributes to creating a safer cabin, right? And in this case, where this happened so close, it's not like you're at 1,000 feet and you're doing a dead fall, if you will. So I think all of those things contribute to the safety that we enjoy in modern commercial aviation.

BROWN: And how critical was it that the plane -- the wing of the plane detached after it hit?

NOLEN: Yes, it's all things -- you will -- we will have to look at the data, right?

And once you see the flight data recorder, we will be able to understand what was the final speed just prior to touchdown, sort of what some of the decelerating forces after touchdown, the fact that the wing detached and then you have what we call a post-crash fire.

But that ability as the airplane is sliding away from that, I think will -- is just -- sometimes, it's good to have that sort of call it luck or whatever you will on your side. So -- and now comes the harder part of just sifting through all of this and getting to what the root cause of and seeing it from what the pilots had and how they -- how they interacted with the information they were given and what they were thinking about on this landing.

BROWN: You know, I think, for a lot of viewers, there's this fear now because of the recent plane crashes. There was here in Washington where I am, that the collision, recently this, other near misses and incidents.

But I think there's the issue of availability bias, right? It's the -- we are focusing on these incidents. But if you look at all the planes that take off and land every day, air travel is still overwhelmingly safe, right?

NOLEN: Yes, you have nailed it, right? I mean, this is -- to your point, it happens. This is what you like to think of as recency bias, something that happened just in the immediate past. We -- it tends to consume our attention, of course, and the fact that we get all of this information very, very rapidly, than we may have done in the past, right?

So, but to your point, U.S. alone, you have got about 45,000 flights that are up per day. Globally, that's 100,000 flights a day, with 99.999 -- you just do to numbers and do the math -- that are taking off, reaching their destination safely every single day.

That being said, safety in commercial aviation -- in any form of aviation, we can never rest on our record or our laurels, right? So you take every day as another opportunity to improve, to be better. We have seen the technological advances in modern aviation. It just shows what the aviation industry has spent updating the airplanes, providing better guidance to crews.

So these are the things that have made us ultra-safe in this day and time, but still let's never, never lose sight that aviation can be terribly unforgiving of mistakes.

BROWN: That is very true. And, again, we saw that here in Washington with that collision.

Billy Nolen, thank you so much.

When we come back: Russian and U.S. officials seemed to have a lot of positive things to say after hours of talks today about the Ukraine war. The Ukraine president has a completely different take, as Russia lays out what it wants.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:13:48]

BROWN: Three years of war in Ukraine, one day of talks in Saudi Arabia.

This morning, the U.S. has wrapped up its most high-profile talks with Russia since Moscow's illegal invasion of Ukraine three years ago. The U.S. sought to lay the groundwork for ending the war, while Russia said it was looking to restore relations with the U.S. And Russia also has sent the clear message that Ukraine becoming a NATO member is a nonstarter.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SERGEY LAVROV, RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER (through translator): We explained to our colleagues today what President Putin has repeatedly stressed, that the expansion of NATO, the absorption of Ukraine by the North Atlantic Alliance, is a direct threat to the interests of the Russian Federation, a direct threat to our sovereignty.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: CNN's Clare Sebastian is in London and Nick Paton Walsh is in Kyiv.

Nick, you have some new reporting. Ukraine's president has really lashed out about his country not being represented at the meeting. What more can you tell us about that?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, look, Ukraine was never expected to be an initial presence in this U.S.-Russia summit.

But I think the tone of the conclusion we have heard from both Moscow and Washington was much more about improving their direct relationship. It seemed much more about trying to wipe away years of that deteriorating than it was about what many thought were the initial reasons for their meeting, which was, as President Trump has suggested, trying to find a swift end to the war in Ukraine.

[11:15:11]

Clearly, that was something they discussed, but they deferred further detailed negotiations to separate teams, and they did agree, indeed, to increase their diplomatic presence in each other's embassies in Washington and Moscow, essentially removing some of the isolation around Russia after the poisoning of a former Russian spy in the United Kingdom with a weapons-grade nerve agent that could have killed hundreds.

So that rehabilitation of the Putin administration gathering pace, and that may be why we heard from Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy such stark words that he expected to be at that table, but he had said he would be tomorrow in Riyadh. I think some may have interpreted that preplanned trip as maybe him hoping he might catch the entrails, the sort of jet stream of that previous U.S.-Russian summit and collect some kind of diplomatic progress from it.

But he said they don't want to be part of anything, any deals made about Ukraine without Ukraine, our paraphrase here, and essentially that they didn't really care if their allies had unnecessary opinions about them. He would delay his trip until March the 10th.

Now, I think that is him again reminding Washington that they had continually promised to keep Ukraine involved in this and reiterated those promises today, but that hasn't yet translated into a seat at that particular table in Riyadh. We will now see the Ukrainian-Russia envoy for the Trump administration, General Keith Kellogg, arriving here tomorrow, Thursday, Friday, for the first real substantive talks he will have with Ukrainian officials.

That may yield details about a potential peace plan, but there's a lot, I think, of frustration in Kyiv about how much has happened between Moscow and Washington without them being in the room, and how that U.S.-Russia relationship and its improvement seems to be at the core of what's happening in Riyadh.

BROWN: And, Clare, to bring you in on this, the U.S. delegation headed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio has offered positive remarks on the talks. Tell us more about that.

CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I think we got certainly some positive words out of the three members of the U.S. delegation.

I would say, out of the three, Rubio was perhaps the most sober, the most measured of them. He seemed to suggest that, after the breakneck pace of the diplomatic moves it took to get to this point less than a month into the start of the Trump administration, things might move in a slightly more measured fashion going forward.

Take a listen to that portion.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARCO RUBIO, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: But we have to understand that it's been 3.5 years since there's been any sort of regularized contact between the United States and Russia and in some cases between any of the participants in this conflict and Russia.

So the goal of today's meeting was to follow up on the phone call the president had a week ago and begin to establish those lines of communication. The work remains. Today is the first step of a long and difficult journey.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SEBASTIAN: A long and difficult journey.

I will say he was somewhat contradicted by Mike Waltz, who said that things would continue with the same pace that you have seen so far from the Trump administration, that they were really keen to get this done.

And, obviously, as Nick pointed out, the bulk of this was about opening these lines of communications, restoring the diplomatic missions, moving then to technical talks involving a different set of people on Ukraine. But Rubio did also offer some reassurance perhaps to European nations. He said no one is being sidelined, that perhaps also directed at Ukraine, though it doesn't seem to have been particularly effective.

Mike Waltz also backed that up, saying, look, Trump is clearly engaging with Europe. We have had seven Cabinet ministers in Europe at the same time this week. So they are going down that road as well. But I think the real problem here certainly for Ukraine is that Russia hasn't had to give up anything to get to this point.

They haven't even moderated their pace of attacks. We saw almost a daily record number of drones fired at Ukraine today. And, certainly, Lavrov didn't signal anything in his briefing that suggests any concessions are coming, Pamela.

BROWN: That's an important point.

Clare Sebastian, Nick Paton Walsh,thank you.

I want to continue this conversation with retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman. He was director for European affairs at the National Security Council. He was also a whistle-blower on the Trump call with Zelenskyy back in 2019.

Colonel, thank you so much for joining us.

So, first of all, what do you think about this and the fact that Zelenskyy has postponed his trip to Saudi Arabia? How significant do you think that that is?

LT. COL. ALEXANDER VINDMAN (RET.), FORMER DIRECTOR FOR EUROPEAN AFFAIRS, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL: I'm not sure if it's really all that significant. I think part of the issue here is that this meeting in Saudi Arabia was billed as Ukraine peace talks.

It wasn't. It was more of a standard fare reset in U.S.-Russia relations. It was an effort to normalize. And this is exactly the consequence of Trump's call with Putin, where they said that they need a -- they need to kind of start talking again. That direction was fulfilled here in these meetings in Saudi Arabia, but it wasn't really a dive into the peace talks.

[11:20:01]

Now, whether this was a good idea in the first place, we have had this pattern of resets, only to learn the lessons of the hard way that Russia is not going to compromise on the things that it believes are in its national security interests, in its vital interests.

We saw that under Obama administration, under Trump to a certain extent, and those all kind of floundered. I think this is a pattern, frankly, that I cover in my book that's coming out next Tuesday, six administrations doubling down on a Russia-first policy, and it doesn't really go anywhere.

So I think that's -- if we take that perspective, Zelenskyy not showing up to this one is not that important. There's a lot of groundwork to be done. There is no imminent effort to move this towards peace any time soon, I think, if anything, maybe even a bit of a setback, because Russia got something for free, a normalization in relations with the U.S., without any additional pressure.

BROWN: Yes, I mean, that is how Russia is framing the meeting too, that it was positive for U.S.-Russia relations. I'm just wondering, though, when you look at the different tacks from

the administrations, with Biden, he basically iced out Putin and Russia. Trump is clearly trying a different tack. I mean, what would you say to someone who was like, well, why not try? I mean, clearly, when Biden was president, this war is ongoing, there were no substantive peace talks.

Now we're actually seeing potential movement in the right direction. What do you say to that?

VINDMAN: I think there is -- if you don't care for history, if you're operating in the vacuum and everything is transactional, then this seems like a good move. It seems like, well, it's better to talk and have a conversation with the Russians and then maybe move forward.

Trump is a relationship kind of person. He thinks that he could -- based on his own charisma, his own engagement with Putin, he might be able to move on peace talks forward. The fact is that history actually says something completely different.

Russia will bank this as a way to normalize relationships, ease the pressure. It's going to play for lifting sanctions. It's taking a morale boost from these engagements. That will translate to maybe some additional activities on the battlefield. Ukraine's taken a hit.

So I think, from a standpoint of whether this actually moves the ball forward on peace talks, whether we could end Russia's approach to using military to achieve its aims, it doesn't get us anywhere. I think the thing that I have in my study and what I have learned is that it's clear resolve, it's clear lines, it's additional pressure on Russia that could get it to be compromising.

Ukraine doesn't need additional pressure. It's maximally compromising. So I don't think this is going to really advance that much. But Trump will have to learn this lesson potentially the hard way over the course of the next months, and then we will see maybe a rebalance of the relationship and additional support coming into Ukraine once it's clear that Russia is not going to deliver this win that Trump is achieving to get.

BROWN: You had Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov giving these positive remarks, saying both the U.S. and Russian negotiators -- quote -- "heard each other."

What do you make of that? And do you think -- I mean, do you think Putin is playing Trump right now, and how do you think Ukraine is taking this?

VINDMAN: Yes, well, to me, it's absolutely clear that Putin is playing Trump.

I have sat across the table in some of these principal-level engagements, high-level meetings. And it's good to go down the agenda of the different issues, mainly of challenges,very few issues that we could agree on with the Russians, and maybe air some of those grievances. But does it really move things forward? No. So, again, from that standpoint, for the objective of peace talks, it doesn't get anywhere. It puts additional pressure on Ukraine. It probably puts additional pressure on Europe. There are some discussions of a major, major investment in Ukraine going forward, with this idea of the Europeans are going to have to go it alone in support of Ukraine.

So, from that standpoint, it might be helpful and healthy for Europe to balance -- rebalance its own investments in defense. But, again, if this was billed as an effort to really advance peace talks, we're far from it. I think both sides want to spin it in a way that things are moving forward, Trump, so I guess he could deliver on a promise, the Russians, that they are normalizing relationships, they're now back at the big boy table.

But it really doesn't move things forward. We will -- this is going to be a many-months-long process before we come back around to the fact that there's little to agree on with Russia and work that we can achieve if we support the Europeans and Ukraine.

BROWN: But it's interesting that the U.S. didn't include the Europeans in this -- in these latest talks.

[11:25:00]

And the U.S. at the same time wants Europe to come to the table with more in terms of paying as a member of NATO and being responsible for its own security. What do you think about that strategy?

VINDMAN: Yes, I think actually it's probably not as big a deal as maybe some analysts think it is.

Again, if this was a peace talks type of conversation, you would want the Europeans there. You would want the Ukrainians there. They're absolutely essential. The U.S. has not been party to the previous rounds of conversations really in the opening phase of this war.

But if this is all about normalizing relationships between Russia and the U.S., this is standard fare. We have these things. They're called either stability talks when they're conducted by Defense and State Department or other kind of high level pre-summit type of activities.

We do these pretty regularly. And for the Europeans and the Ukrainians to not be there for this broader set of conversations, it's one thing. But we should recognize that, in the context of trying to end this war, putting pressure on Russia, it probably -- in that regard, it doesn't -- it's not helpful.

We want it to maintain a cohesion, unity. But, again, if we relabel it back to just U.S. or Russia talks, it's normal historical pattern.

BROWN: I just want to ask you something on a personal level as we wrap up.

We have seen President Trump take steps to seemingly exact vengeance against people he perceives as enemies, taking away security for certain people, like John Bolton, for example, firing certain people from the government.

I'm just wondering what it's like to be you right now. Do you worry at all that you could be a target?

VINDMAN: Yes, so I have the strange misfortune of being both on the Russian sanctions list and on the Trump enemies list, a little bit odd.

I think the fact is that there's going to be a high degree of retribution. Some of these figures that are coming -- being selected, for instance, Kash Patel, who's likely to get a Senate vote this week, would be the minister of retribution and retaliation.

Am I concerned? Maybe on some level, yes, but I'm not going to shirk my responsibilities to communicate on the areas that I think I could contribute to the policymaking or the policy deliberations that are essential to secure U.S. national security interests.

This book coming out next week is going to be critical of six different administrations and the Trump administration of their missteps going forward. And I guess the bottom line is, I take my duty in uniform seriously. I take my duty as a public figure now with a deep expertise on this topic seriously also.

And I will do what I think is right and let them pick this fight. It will be ugly. If they pick this fight, it will be embarrassing for them. I have nothing to hide. I have done nothing wrong. If they want to pick this fight, it's going to be embarrassing for them.

BROWN: Colonel Alexander Vindman, thank you so much. And congrats on your book coming out.

VINDMAN: Thank you.

BROWN: Another court win for Elon Musk and DOGE, as the lawsuits against his efforts to slash the federal government pile up.

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