YAMICHE ALCINDOR, PBS MODERATOR: Human devastation and Supreme Court history.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): Please, I'm begging you, do something.

I want to live.

Everyone just wants to live.

ALCINDOR (voice-over): Global outrage as horrific images emerged showing atrocities committed by Russia against Ukrainian civilians.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): They are lying there, some of them shot in the head, some of them are shot blindfolded.

ALCINDOR: President Putin's military shifts its battle lines from cities around Kyiv to eastern Ukraine.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Remember, I got criticized for calling Putin a war criminal.

You saw what happened in Bucha.

He is a war criminal.

ALCINDOR: Meanwhile, President Biden doubles down on his condemnation of Russian President Putin and imposes new sanctions.

Plus -- KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The yeas are 53, the nays are 47, and this nomination is confirmed.

(APPLAUSE) ALCINDOR: History is made as Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson becomes the first Black woman confirmed to the Supreme Court -- next.

(BREAK) ANNOUNCEER: Once again, from Washington, moderator Yamiche Alcindor.

ALCINDOR: Good evening and welcome to "Washington Week".

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is now entering its seventh week, and this week, the world saw carnage and brutality unlike we've seen in this conflict.

A warning, some may find the following images disturbing.

Russia's military withdrawal from Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, exposed atrocities against Ukrainian civilians.

Some people who are found dead with their hands tied behind their backs, others with gunshot wounds in their heads.

Terrified residents describe how they survived as their city was under siege.

VLADYSLAVA LIUBANETS, BUCHA RESIDENT (through translator): We were in the basement for 35 days.

There was shelling all the time.

Sometimes there was no water, sometimes, there was no food.

ALCINDOR: A Russian attack also killed dozens of people at a train station in eastern Ukraine that was being used for evacuations.

On Tuesday, in a fiery address to the U.N. Security Council, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy took the body to task and demanded more action.

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): Where is the security that U.N. Security Council must guarantee?

There is no security.

Where is the peace the United Nations was created to guarantee?

Now, we need decisions from the Security Council for peace in Ukraine.

ALCINDOR: On Wednesday, President Biden introduced a new round of sanctions targeting Russian banks and elites and Russian President Vladimir Putin's own daughters.

Joining me tonight to discuss this and more: Simon Ostrovsky, special correspondent for the "PBS NewsHour".

He's joining us from Kyiv; Nia-Malika Henderson, senior political analyst for CNN, and Jeff Mason, White House correspondent for "Reuters".

Thank you all for being here.

Simon, I want to start with you.

You reported and saw firsthand the carnage, the human devastation in Bucha.

What sticks out for you in your mind as you think of all that you saw this week?

SIMON OSTROVSKY, SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT, PBS NEWSHOUR: Well, I remember how the week started with a trip to Bucha on Sunday, when we toured the city and saw dead bodies strewn through the streets, some of them with their hands tied behind their back, and how that became the headline around the world.

But I think what a lot of people don't realize, with all the coverage that has been focused on the town, is that the atrocities that were perpetrated during the period that Russia was occupying the area were much more widespread than just the town of Bucha.

I have been traveling to towns throughout the Kyiv region, throughout the Chernihiv neighboring region, throughout areas where Russian troops came down from the north towards Kyiv, into and held for roughly a month, depending on the areas that you go to.

We have heard stories like the ones that have been coming out from Bucha absolutely everywhere, stories of soldiers coming to peoples homes, taking them away and those men and women, their bodies only being found once the Ukrainian troops came in and liberated the areas.

I think the other thing that is important to understand is that this was not a recalibration by the Russian forces towards eastern Ukraine.

This was a Russian defeat in the areas around Kyiv.

They retreated.

And now, they are sending their troops to eastern Ukraine because the Ukrainian forces kicked them out of this area.

So, the fighting has been very heavy in some of these towns.

A lot of the civilians who were killed in these areas died in fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces, in shelling, in aerial bombings from Russia.

And, sadly, and I think shockingly, because of the orders that Russian troops had to go around and to cleanse the areas of undesirable people, and I think that is what is emerging over the last few days.

ALCINDOR: Simon is talking about all this carnage and the things that he saw not just in Bucha.

Jeff, I want to come to you, Poland's president told CNN this week that this was a genocide carried out in Russia -- sorry, carried out in Ukraine by Russia.

But President Biden, while calling Putin a war criminal, has not wanted to use the word genocide.

Can you talk about how the president is balancing his personal thinking around this versus U.S. policy and how he's talking about what is going on as we see these devastating images?

JEFF MASON, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, REUTERS: Sure.

Well, I think we have seen with President Biden over the last several weeks during this awful war that sometimes his personal feelings get a bit ahead of U.S. policy.

But he has not gone so far as to call it a genocide.

He has called it a war crime and he doubled down on that this week, which you played in your opening clip.

And he continues to call President Putin a war criminal.

There is even discussion starting about how to try that, and how the United States would be involved in that without being a member of the International Criminal Court.

But in terms of that line you were referring to, Yamiche, I think we will continue to see President Biden let his feelings come out and the White House will say he's speaking from the heart, even if when he says something it does not necessarily mean there is a shift in policy.

There is not a U.S. policy to go for regime change.

That's not U.S. policy.

But President Biden did say Putin should not be in power.

He said he called him a war criminal before.

That was the policy of the United States.

And now, policy kind of caught up with him on that one.

You heard President Biden referring to that as well.

So, I think we will continue to see that and I think that it's absolutely burning within him to criticize what he sees President Putin and Russia doing in Ukraine and him wanting to do as much as he can to stop it.

ALCINDOR: And, Jeff, sticking with you, the White House announced new sanctions this week, including targeting, as we said, Putin's daughters.

What is the aim there?

If you could, talk about how President Biden is trying to balance being tough on Russia with the limited toolkit that he has.

MASON: Sure, it's largely an economic toolkit.

And that's why so much the U.S. has done along with its Western allies has been in the realm of sanctions.

And targeting Putin's daughters is another example of getting close to the president of Russia.

He's -- the president of the United States by President Biden and Western allies have done sanctions on oligarchs.

So, rich people around President Putin, but this is going all the way into his family.

And I think the strategy there is just to continue to sort of tighten the screws as it were around President Putin to impact the people who he cares about, impact the people around him, and have a hope that that will impact the policy he is implementing.

He hasn't so far.

It certainly has not led to President Putin pulling back on his military advancements and his military goals in Ukraine, but it is making it much harder in Russia for Putin and the military writ-large because of the financial fallout that is happening.

ALCINDOR: Yeah.

And, Nia, Jeff is talking about the tightening of the screws around the neck of Vladimir Putin, but the president of Ukraine says there is not enough being done.

And his speech to the U.N. was incredible in some ways because he was saying you need to do more.

How is that -- what are the politics of that, given this is attention that continues to build and build with Ukraine wanting more and the West wanting to help and being sympathetic but not doing nearly what -- what Ukraine wants?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST, CNN: Right.

And in that speech, Zelenskyy said, you all see this.

And the "this" that he was talking about was these mass killings of civilians and their bodies laying on the street.

He went into great detail about what the scenes were of those massacres of innocent civilians.

He seems to be trying to shame the West into more action, asking these international bodies that claim to stand for peace and security, asking them to actually live up to what they claim to stand for, to send many more weapons, the kind of weapons that would advance the Ukrainian cause much further, as well to cut off the spigot of funding to Russia in the form of paying for oil and gas and coal exports from the country.

Billions of dollars is still flowing into the Russian economy because Europe is so inextricably tied to Russia and they need that fuel.

You have seen some moves by European countries to try to wean themselves of particularly coal in the near months, but it is at this point a situation where U.S. central he have European countries funding the war efforts.

And as much as the United States has done what the United States has done in terms of tightening the screws with sanctions and targeting Putin's daughters and the billionaires in Russia as well, as long as this money continues to flow to Putin, you've got Zelenskyy knowing that is essentially funding this horrific effort against his people.

You heard Biden in his speech last week say this is a long slog, most likely.

The sanctions so far haven't worked and you have in Putin someone who is fixated like a madman on Ukraine and doesn't understand the rules of war.

We have seen those horrific scenes, and Zelenskyy, over and over, to the Grammy's, to anyone who will listen, essentially saying, the West, your thoughts and prayers and sanctions are great, but do much more in terms of helping Ukraine defeat Russia.

ALCINDOR: And, Simon, Nia is talking about this long-haul, this long slog ahead.

You talked about Russia retreating.

What more can you say about the strategy that Russia has to keep this war going, as it drags on, and as Ukrainians are saying they are ready to fight on and defend their homeland?

OSTROVSKY: Well, I think the Ukrainian authorities have warned that there is going to be a major offensive that they expect in the east in the Donbas region.

There has been fighting for weeks now where the Russians tried to join their southern force.

That has gone all the way to the border with Crimea and to the city of Kherson that they have occupied.

And that force wants to join with troops in the north that are fighting in the Luhansk and the Donetsk regions.

And if they were to do that, they would encircle quite a large force, the Ukrainian force in the Donbas that has been fighting there since 2014, since 2015, when this war actually started.

I think the Russian so far has in many cases risen to the level of a war crime with what we've seen with the bombings of cities like Mariupol, which seem indiscriminate, where civilian areas are being targeted, and places in the Chernihiv region where Russia retreated.

I heard a story a couple of days ago from residents of that village where the entire population of the village was held as a human shield in the basement of a school, that the Russian troops that were stationed there, were using as their headquarters.

So, what I am afraid of is -- and what I'm worried about seeing in the future is when we do hopefully eventually see Russian troops pull back, we will find these kinds of things that we see in Bucha and the Chernihiv region, and Kyiv region now have been happening and are happening right now in the areas that Russia continues to occupy.

That is why Vladimir Zelenskyy is speaking with such urgency and speaking to any form that he can try to get as much help as he can, because I think Ukrainians, after seeing what they saw, know that they have no time to spare in order to save their people.

ALCINDOR: And really quickly, Jeff, while - - before we go to the domestic politics, I'm just wondering, what's the White House bracing for when you hear all that Simon is talking about?

MASON: Oh, I think it is bracing for it to get worse.

I think they are bracing for more images.

I think they're bracing for more battles.

And this kind of thing, of course, in addition to being outrageous, also raises pressure on President Biden, on the Biden administration, on the West in general to do more.

Those are all things the White House is preparing for and seeing coming on the horizon.

ALCINDOR: Yeah.

Certainly, White House officials are concerned about how all this will impact domestic politics and inflation and gas prices.

So, there's more to talk about, about Ukraine.

But thank you so much, Simon, for joining us and sharing your reporting.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson made history when she became the first Black woman ever confirmed to the Supreme Court.

Today, at the White House, Judge Jackson alongside the president and vice president celebrated the moment.

JUDGE KETANJI BROWN JACKSON, SUPREME COURT JUSTICE-IN-WAITING: It has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a Black woman to be selected to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States.

(CHEERS) But we've made it.

(CHEERS) In the poetic words of Dr. Maya Angelo, I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

(APPLAUSE) ALCINDOR: A powerful moment.

Earlier this week, I talked to a number of Judge Jackson's closest friends.

Here is what two of them had to say.

ANTOINETTE COAKLEY, FRIEND OF JUDGE JACKSON: It feels like, ahh!

That's my emotional response, but it does feel like it is a coming full circle.

This is what we recognized so many years ago.

NINA SIMMONS, FRIEND OF JUDGE JACKSON: During the hearings watching her, I felt her pain to see what she went through, to see that she persevered.

It really speaks not only to black women, but women everywhere.

ALCINDOR: Nia, what is the significance of this moment?

HENDERSON: You know, this is a huge, huge moment.

You saw that she was so moved in that ceremony today, and millions and millions of Americans all across the country are moved too, not just Black Americans, but white Americans too, to come to this moment.

So often if you think about the civil rights struggle and Black freedom struggle in general it has been about prevailing on the courts to recognize the humanity of African-Americans, the full humanity, the equal humanity of African-Americans.

And we know that has not been the case in previous centuries with judging how African-Americans fit into this country.

Now you fast-forward to this day and think about people like Thurgood Marshall, you think about people like Constance Baker Motley, who was a clerk of Thurgood Marshall as well as a hero to Ketanji Brown Jackson, she stands on their shoulders.

She talked about them in her speech.

And in that moment where she said, wave all made it.

And, Yamiche, when I got on here with you, I said that to you.

I think that might become a sort of catchphrase among African-American women who haven't seen themselves in these positions of power.

Not because they are not qualified, not because they are not smart enough, because they were quite frankly barred from holding positions like this.

You saw today in Joe Biden -- I mean, he was happier than I think we have seen him in quite some time.

ALCINDOR: Well, he was actually -- he was so happy at the White House.

I want to also ask you one other thing, she said she was the inheritor of justice for all and the promise of America.

But some of her friends told me in this representation they also see there are limits, that this country has so much more to do and just having a black woman on the Supreme Court or even black woman vice president is not enough.

Talk about that, too.

HENDERSON: No.

I think that's exactly right now and we sort of went through this discussion as well a few years ago when Obama was elevated to being the first black president.

That was obviously a watershed moment, but still so much work to be done in terms of breaking down barriers for African-American women of all socioeconomic backgrounds.

On the one hand, I do -- you know, I sort of smiled when she said we made it, but I kind of said, well, have we all really made it?

Because we know there are still barriers based on racism, based on sexism as well that we saw on display quite frankly with the hearings and the way she was treated and the racial undertones and overtones quite frankly in the way she was treated with disrespect even after she was confirmed with that 53 vote margin.

It was a remarkable moment to see Vice President Harris, the first African-American woman to be vice president, to read that into the record and make history, that was quite a moment.

But it was also a moment where you saw some Republicans essentially just walk out and show such disrespect for that moment.

ALCINDOR: And Nia -- what he is talking about, Jeff, is the sort of partisanship, the politics of this.

What do you hear from the White House about what this moment means to them?

But also, I want to -- if I could scoot in a second question here, which is that Mitch McConnell has said he's not sure he will let another nominee through if Joe Biden gets a second chance at this.

MASON: Yeah.

A couple things.

One, I think, in terms of how the White House is reacting, it was -- it was just a joyful day at the White House.

You saw Jen Psaki afterwards in her briefing try not to tear up because of the emotion of the moment for her and for everyone at the White House.

You know, politically, Yamiche, its important to mention, this is a pretty concrete example of President Biden making good on a campaign promise.

Presidents don't always get to do that.

He had this opportunity and he fulfilled it by nominating Judge Brown Jackson, and now with her confirmation he can say, I did not just promise to do that, I fulfilled it.

It comes politically at a time when he is not doing super well in the polls.

Only months still until the November elections, but this could be a positive jolt in the arm for Democrats, for progressives, for black women and men who are an important part of the Democratic constituency that President Biden needs.

To your question about Mitch McConnell, surely, that also is part of the overall political picture here.

If indeed Republicans end up gaining control of the Senate and perhaps the House as well after November, and should there be another Supreme Court opening, Mitch McConnell has said very clearly that he would follow the same playbook as he did at the end of the Obama administration, which is not let it happen.

And, you know, Democrats don't always vote about the Supreme Court.

Republicans are much more effective at getting there voters out to vote in favor of a candidate because of what is at stake in the Supreme Court.

I will be curious to see if that changes now.

Not that there is any openings expected anytime soon on the Supreme Court, but you never know.

We saw at the end of president Obama's presidency that an opening can come up unexpectedly.

ALCINDOR: Yeah, well, the way -- in some ways, the White House really has to calibrate that.

They do have other challenges.

Jeff, I want to -- MASON: For sure.

ALCINDOR: -- in a minute and a half that we have here left ask you about COVID, because it is the reason why unfortunately we are remote tonight.

It is the reason that so many people in D.C. are wondering how to navigate through this.

There are a number high-profile people like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the attorney general that now have tested positive this week.

How concerned is the White House about a spike in COVID cases and specifically also about the president's health?

MASON: Yeah.

It's also the reason I have a husky voice.

I apologize to your viewers for that.

As far as the White House is concerned, what was interesting to me today is their strategy seemed to shift early this morning to preparing the country and world and the media for the possibility that President Biden might get COVID.

They have been saying they are taking precautions, and they have.

Yet he was certainly very close, perhaps not under the CDC definition of a close contact to Speaker Pelosi earlier this week, but very close.

And, of course, he has been around Vice President Harris as well, who has been exposed.

I think they are worried but I think they're trying hard not to project that, and yet also giving a since, or giving a heads up that if he does, they are ready for it and they think -- and they say he will still be able to govern.

ALCINDOR: And, Nia, last 30 seconds to you.

There was this $10 billion COVID relief package that was blocked by Republicans over immigration.

If you could in the last, now I'm told, 15 seconds, can you explain the politics of that?

HENDERSON: You know, listen, we'll see if it happens.

I mean, you have Republicans not wanting to spend as much money.

You have them tying it to immigration reform.

For now, the Senate is out, you know, for recess for two weeks.

We'll see when we come back whether or not they want to take up this $10 billion which would be for COVID planning in the future in case there is another surge going forward.

ALCINDOR: Certainly, well, the White House is saying they definitely need that money.

Thank you so much to Nia and to Jeff for joining us and for sharing your reporting.

We'll continue our conversation on "The Washington Week Extra".

This week's topic, COVID-19, and more revelations on the January 6 Capitol attack.

Find it on our Facebook website and YouTube.

And also, tune in Saturday to "PBS News Weekend".

Geoff Bennett, anchor, Geoff Bennett will talk to astronaut Mark Vande Hei about his record-breaking stay on the International Space Station.

Thank you for joining us.

I'm Yamiche Alcindor.

Good night from Washington.