The kids survived. We begin with Airlines Flight mh 370. Boeing trip 777 carrying 227 passengers, 12 crew members. The aircraft stateoftheart and, a we should mention has an excellent safety record. However, bound from coalalampur to beijing, air Traffic Controllers say they lost contact with it. It happened about two hours into a flight according to a statement from the airline. Search and rescue operations are now under way. Were doing all we can to try to get as many details as possible from our sources around the region and the world. Right now want to bring in retired American Airlines captain jim tillman who joins us by phone. Jim, when the air Traffic Controllers said they lost contact, how often are they monitoring that . Is it constant . It is constant to the extent whether they have regular reports that they have to make and that sort of thing. I would suspect, and i dont know this for a fact but i would suspect that they also may have lost radar contact with them. This route as you point out on the map there, is mostly over land. Theyre not dealing with the thing where this airplane was over the middle of the ocean someplace. Being over land means there are lots of places and lots of antennas and lots of radars and lots of radios that would be at your disposal. This sounds really bad, anderson. It sounds like a really bad situation. Ive been trying to come up with every scenario i could to just explain this away, but i havent been very successful. You point out that its over land, this plane was two hours late getting to beijing. You would think unless theyre obviously there are some very remote regions in that area that the plane is flying over. But there are no reports from the ground of anybody spotting this plane. Yes, thats true. And again one can assume that the Chinese Government has radar stations all over the place for their own security. I would think that they would have some way of being able to detect where that airplane was and wasnt. Theyre dealing with an airplane that is about as sophisticated as any commercial airplane could possibly be at this point in time. It has as you mentioned an excellent safety record. Their only fatality has been the asiana crash in san francisco. Theres been one other 777 that had some problems, but no one was hurt in that. This is really a shock in lots of ways. This may be a dumb question, but when the airline says they are trying to find this airplane, how do they go about trying to find it . Are they just waiting for reports from the ground . How do they actually go about this . They use everything available to them. You use any reports that are coming in from people on the ground. They also use large aircraft to fly along that route and see anything thats available. This of course goes over international lines. So theyre going to have to coordinate with other nations who have access to their air space and ask them to also join them in the search for any wreckage or anything like that. I came up with one wild scenario that they had a total electrical failure. If that happened on that airplane, there is a backup to the backup to the backup radio which can be used. It has very limited range. Very, very limited indeed. Its Something Like maybe 100 miles. So if that happened, and thats a very remote possibility, you would not be able to communicate with anybody by radio until it was able to land someplace. But we dont have any evidence of that. And just the sketchy information we have so far, it doesnt sound very good. We are going to continue to monitor the situation, obviously, very closely. Malaysian airlines saying they have lost contact with this jet more than 200 people on board. Were going to bring you any updates as soon as we get them throughout this hour. We do have a very busy night ahead as well. We want to turn to ukraine. A lot happening on that front. First off a tense standoff at a crimean military base is over right now, ending when Russian Troops and local cossacks like out of the 19th century withdrew. Russia angering ukrainian nationalists, as ukrainian authorities report, new russian moves to blockade and bottle up ukraines navy. A second u. S. Warship entered the black sea for planned exercises, while nearly 50 european observers were sent to monitor the situation in crimea. They were again turned away at a border checkpoint by armed men for the second time in two days. Back in washington, breaking news. President obama working the phones speak at length with the german chancellor, angela merkel. No details yet on precisely what was said in that conversation. The main focus remains certainly on the ground where anna coren is reporting for us tonight. So the situation there obviously very tense. Earlier today russian soldiers actually attempted to storm a ukranian base. What do you know . Reporter as we know, anderson, tensions have been bubbling away for days. But it would seem that things really turned ugly at a military base about an hour and half from where we are. 60 russian soldiers arrived in trucks. They are called on ukranian troops to surrender, put down their weapons. The ukranians refused. And that is when the russians got their truck and rammed the gate. They actually managed to get through onto the base. Apparently the ukranians then form add human shield and stopped them from getting through. The russians retreated when the local militia then turned up to support the russians, thats when it really turned ugly. They attacked journalists on the ground, and some were even hospitalized. Anderson, we know that the Prime Minister here in crimea has basically said that the only troops that should be here now are russian and that the ukranians should easterly swear their allegiance to the russians or leave immediately. Its obviously become a much more difficult situation for ukrainian troops on the ground and journalists now being targeted i understand including you and your crew. What exactly is going on on that front . Is it just western journalists . Reporter yes. It would appear anyone who is speaking anything other than the prorussian line, anderson. There just seems to be this media crackdown. Theyre just stamping out dissent and opposing views. The government here, it has shut down two ukranian television stations operating in crimea, replaced one of those channels with state russian tv. And then there was this attack on a bulgarian journalist, brutal attack captured on ccc tv. Surveillance video. He was filming. He was filming these paramilitaries who actually confiscating equipment out of one of the tv stations. And they spotted him, they raced over, they pinned him on the ground, put a gun to his head and took his camera and his phone along with his assistant. He gets up, hes in shock as to what happened. It really goes to highlight, anderson, just the hostility and the angst being shown to western journalists. The real concern is that this i only going to worsen as we get closer to that referendum on the 16th of mar. Anna, be carful on the ground. A stunning claim that goes straight to the question of how foreseeable this was. Until lately weve been led to believe not very foreseeable. We are told there was little warning or Vladimir Putins move, almost a spur of the moment kind of decision he made. However thats not what the head of the Defense Intelligence agency Lieutenant GeneralMichael Flynn said this morning on National Public radio. Listen. I think for easily seven to ten days leading up to the Russian Troops as we see them now in crimea, we were providing very solid reporting on what i would describe as just strategic warning where we move from one level of sort of a condition of warning, which i would just describe for the audience as sort of moderate, to one where we believe things are imminent. And we did that about a week prior to the events that unfolded, really last friday. Well before putin went to get military authorization. Yes. You knew he was up to something. You were warning the administration. Thats right. We along with our other Intelligence Community partners. Absolutely. What to make of that. Who knew what and who said what to whom . A lot of questions tonight. National security analyst and former cia officer robert bair joins us, and julia yaffy, Senior Editor at new republic. Her most recent article titled Eastern Ukraine still fighting its past life. Bob let me start with you. On the one hand we hear from someone like senator john mccain who said this was a massive intelligence failure now general flynn said there was word that russian intervention in crimea was imminent in his words. What are you hearing from your sources . Well, the question is where did the intelligence go . Thats always the problem. I talked to the state department today, a senior official, and said kerry didnt know about the invasion when he was talking to lavrov right up until the invasion. He was taking his word there would be no invasion. The problem is when you stovepipe this stuff you dont know where it ends up and who takes it seriously. Its a big Intelligence Community. And there may have been miscommunications here. David, you wrote a column earlier this week which you said that putin had already won. What do you mean by that . Well, in effect what he really wanted was crimea. And hes gotten crimea. Crimea is a vital strategic importance to first the soviet union now to russia. It helps guarantee their outlet to the meditteranean and black sea. Its of critical vital importance and he has that now. Julia, in your latest piece in the new republic ive been following on twitter all week long. Its been fascinating to read your stuff. You reference a comment ma putin made back in 2008 at a nato summit where he told then president bush that ukraine isnt even a country. We had professor steven cohen on last night and he said the same thing. Its not even a country. Obviously a lot of people in kiev take great issue to that. How much is that kind of thinking driving Vladimir Putins actions right now . I think its driving a large part of his actions. Hes part of a generation that grew up with ukraine just being another province of the soviet union. It was ruled from moscow. Now all of a sudden its its own country. And we have to negotiate with it over our own naval base . That sounds crazy to him. And i think its pretty widespread that this is not that these borders are fictitious. Julia, also one of the things youve been writing about this week which ive been following is that much has been made of sort of language divide in ukraine, the russianspeaking parts in the east and in crimea and in other parts the prorussian side, the prowestern side. But you say theres more of a generational split going on in ukraine that really impacts all of this. Explain that. Thats right. Well, when we see on our tvs sorry, or newspapers a map of ukraine its often split in half and we see the russianspeaking east and the ukranianspeaking west. The problem with that is most of the country speaks both russian and ukranian. The question is which comes first. Thats not even the issue. Like i said, this was all part of a big soviet space. And by stalins design this was an inherently russian space, a russianspeaking space. Despite all of the nationalities that came under the soviet umbrella. So when people say people of the older generation like putins generation, when they say russian, part of the time they mean soviet. But now theres a new generation that was born after 1991. Theyre in their early 20s now. They were born into these countries. And they see themselves as ukranians. So some of the students i spoke to at this university which is deposed president Viktor Yanukovychs hometown, theyre ethnically russian. They speak russian at home. But theyre fluent in ukranian. They can write in ukranian. But they still identify themselves as ukranian simply because they were born in a country called ukraine. Thats a very modern understanding of citizenship. It will take us awhile to get there for that to be a more kind of widespread notion. David, its interesting, though. No matter what, no matter those who want to be more associated with the European Union of the united states, the geography of ukraine demands they have a relationship with russia. Theres no getting around it. No doubt about it. Remember, russia has always needed what it believes is a buffer, a near abroad, that it can guarantee wont be part of nato, wont be part of the e. U. , that will be even if not directly linked as part of a nation called russia of or the soviet union at least not linked with its clear opponents, foes, nato, for instance, the west. So they need a buffer of some kind. If a real ukraine manages to break away and to the point can ally with nato, join nato, join the e. U. , that is a tree mend threat to putin and russia. At this point no one is talking about joining nato certainly. There is talk about that. If they can actually pry the whole country away, if they can have an election that really elects a westernoriented government, certainly joining up with the e. U. Would be a very interesting concept for them if not nato. David, appreciate you being on the program. Julia, great to have you on as well, thank you. And bob bair as always. 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This aircraft depart ed Kuala Lumpur International airport about 41 minutes after midnight local time. Supposed to lange at peking at 6 50 a. M. 239 passengers and crew members. 12 crew members and 227 passengers have been reported missing at about 2 30 a. M. This morning from the control tower. Lost contact with this aircraft so we tried to communicate with this aircraft through various means. We also got aircraft trying to detect the aircraft. We failed to establish any contact with the aircraft. And the aircraft has got about seven hours of fuel on board this aircraft. And we suspect that by 8 50 this aircraft would have run out of fuel. At the moment we have got no idea where this aircraft is right now. Have you received any reports from other radar installations along the route of this aircraft or any installations on the ground . Not at all, not at all. We have indeed got in touch with our search and rescue team from the local authorities. They have mounted a search and rescue. So far no luck. What exactly goes into a search and rescue operation . How does that work . Are you sending out can you speak a little louder, please . Sure. Its a bad connection. What goes into a search and rescue operation at this stage when you dont know where the aircraft is . Have you sent out other aircraft along the route . Okay. At the moment i dont have much information, but a search and rescue, but we are working with the team right now. They have we understand they have been deployed, but we have no idea of the findings yet. Commissioner sharuji, i appreciate your time. Could you speak louder, please . Well talk to you later on tonight. I want to bring back in retired American Airlines captain jim tilmon joining us on the phone. Jim you just heard from the airlines themselves. They say search and rescue operations are under way but they have no idea at this point where this aircraft is. Well, i can understand that. Ive been doing a bit of Quick Research here and