60 Minutes - 5/8/2022: Mark Esper, Crisis, Ballet in Exile

Episode Date: May 9, 2022

On this Mother's Day edition of "60 Minutes" Wisconsin’s rate of adolescent self- harm and attempted suicide increased by nearly 200% since 2019. Sharyn Alfonsi speaks with families who’ve been impacted, and with doctors and therapists trying to make child mental health care more accessible. In his first interview before his book about his time in the Trump administration is published, former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper speaks with Norah O’Donnell. They discuss previously unreported events from inside the Trump White House. In Russia, ballet has always been entwined with politics. When Russia invaded Ukraine, Russian artists opposed to the war were left with a choice: stay and be silent or voice their dissent and leave. Jon Wertheim speaks with the dancers making difficult decisions. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Grocer $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Critics will say, why now in a book? Why didn't you speak out during the Trump administration?

It's very simple. If I spoke out at the time, I would be fired. I had no confidence that anybody that came in behind me would not be a real Trump loyalist. And Lord knows what would have happened then. Tonight, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, a lifelong Republican, on his tumultuous tenure during one of the most chaotic times in the nation's history. Even before the pandemic, American kids have been dealing with a crisis. Rising rates of suicide, self-harm, anxiety, and depression. Your generation got hit with this in what's supposed to be kind of a fun, carefree time. What was lost? What did you guys lose during the pandemic? Myself.

Yourself? Yeah. Olga Smirnova is a Russian prima ballerina, one of the world's leading dancers. But days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Smirnova pirouetted and stepped off her stage

at the renowned Bolshoi Theater with dramatic flourish. I was so ashamed of Russia. This is the truth. I'm not ashamed that I'm Russian, but I'm ashamed because Russia started this action. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm ashamed because Russia started this action. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper.

I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Nora O'Donnell. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories and more tonight on 60 Minutes. Wendy's Most Important Deal of the day has a fresh lineup. Pick any two breakfast items for $4. New four-piece French toast sticks, bacon or sausage wrap,

biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small hot coffee, and more. Limited time only at participating Wendy's Taxes Extra. Why do fintechs like Float choose Visa? As a more trusted, more secure payments network, Visa provides scale, expertise, and innovative payment solutions. Learn more at Visa.ca slash fintech. Mark Esper is a Washington insider who spent his whole career flying below the radar until he became President Donald Trump's second Secretary of Defense. A West Point graduate and paratrooper, Esper spent 10 years as a by-the-book Army officer. And when he left active duty, he moved through the revolving doors of think tank jobs, Capitol Hill and Pentagon staff

positions, and defense lobbying. It all turned out to be boot camp for his assignment as Defense Secretary and a face-off with Mr. Trump, whom he came to regard as a threat to American democracy. But we begin tonight with the former defense secretary's thoughts on Russia's war in Ukraine. Overall, how would you grade President Biden and his administration's performance in terms of Ukraine? It's mixed. They had a shaky start. I would have never taken the military option off the table, for example. I don't understand the reluctance to provide the Ukrainians with MiGs. Fighter jets. Fighter jets, that's right. But since then, it's picked up. I think we're now flowing more supplies and material and weapons into Ukraine. I think they've done a good job of bringing the allies along, which is important.

You have to act collectively. And you have to give some credit, by the way, to the Congress, which I think, you know, one of the few issues that has unified Congress has been this one, support for Ukraine. And in some ways, they've led the administration. So it's good to see now Congress and the executive branch acting together, reasonably aligned to help the Ukrainian people acting together, reasonably aligned, to help the Ukrainian people.

Tomorrow, May 9th, marks an important day on the Russian calendar, victory in World War II. Well, I think the conventional wisdom right now seems to be that by May 9th, Putin is going to try and secure Donbass, which would be occupying the rest of the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, if you will, and declare them protected. Is there any scenario where President Putin could take those regions and then just declare victory? Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, if I were a betting man today, I'd say that is what he will do. He'll at least secure the all of Donbass, declare that he's liberated the Russian-speaking peoples of

that region, and declare victory. and that will become another frozen conflict. Mark Esper's time as Secretary of Defense began when he was overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate 90-8 on July 23, 2019. Two days later, on a phone call with President Zelensky, Mr. Trump asked for, quote, a favor while he was holding up aid to Ukraine. The call ultimately led to his impeachment. You had to keep pressing President Trump to release $250 million in aid to Ukraine. Yes. And it would be an argument after an argument. And I have to say, look, Mr. President, at the end of the day, Congress appropriated it. It's the law. We have to do it. Esper writes in his new memoir, Called a Sacred Oath, that the Ukraine affair was an early source of tension between him and President Trump.

That tension would grow, as he told us when we met him at his alma mater, West Point. Because it's important to our country, it's important to the republic, the American people, that they understand what was going on in this very consequential period. The last year of the Trump administration, and to tell the story about things we prevented, really bad things, dangerous things, that could have taken the country in a dark direction. What kind of terrible things did you prevent? At various times,

during certainly the last year of the administration, you have folks in the White House who are proposing to take military action against Venezuela, to strike Iran. At one point, somebody proposed we blockade Cuba. These ideas would happen, it seemed, every few weeks. Something like this would come up, and we'd have to swat them down. Whose we had to swat them down? Well, mostly me.

I had good support from General Mark Milley. Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of from General Mark Milley. Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley ran the Army for over a year before finding themselves in charge at the Pentagon. In order to deal with what he calls some of the crazy ideas coming from the White House, Esper and Milley came up with a system. I come up with this idea, actually Mark Milley and I discuss it, what we call the four no's. The four things we had to prevent from happening between then and the election. And one was no strategic retreats, no unnecessary wars, no politicization of the military, and no misuse

of the military. And so as we went through the next five to six months, that became the metric by which we would measure things. Esper told us he had reason to be concerned, not just about an unnecessary military conflict with an adversary, but with one of our closest neighbors and largest trading partners. The president pulls me aside on at least a couple occasions and suggests that maybe we have the U.S. military shoot missiles into Mexico. Shoot missiles into Mexico for what? He would say to go after the cartels. And we would have this private discussion where I'd say, Mr. President, you know, I understand the motive because he was very serious about

dealing with drugs in America. I get that. We all understand. But I had to explain to him, we can't do that. It would violate international law. It would be terrible for our neighbors to the south. It would, you know, impact us in so many ways. Why don't we do this instead? You politely push back on the idea. Did President Trump really say no one would know it was us? Yes. Yes. He said that. And I just thought it was fanciful, right? Because of course it would be us. I was reluctant to tell this story because I think, I thought people won't believe this, that they'll think I'm just making it up and folks in Trump's orbit will dispute it. And then I was having dinner after the election in 2020 with a fellow cabinet member. And he said to me, he goes, you

know, remember that time when President Trump suggested you shoot missiles into Mexico? And I said to him, you heard that? He goes, oh yeah, I couldn't believe it. And I couldn't believe how well you managed and talked him down from that. And at that moment, I knew I got to write the story because I at least have one witness who will verify that this really did happen. When asked whether Esper's story about Mexico was true, Donald Trump said in a statement to 60 Minutes, no comment. Esper says to fact-check his book, he sent all or parts of his manuscript to more than two dozen current and former four-star officers, senior civilians from the Pentagon, and cabinet members. 60 Minutes spoke to six of them, who said what they read was accurate.

No justice, no peace. During the late spring of 2020, it was not a foreign crisis, but the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis that Esper calls a turning point in his time as Secretary of Defense. On the night of May 31st in Washington, protests for racial justice were marred by rioters who set parts of Washington ablaze. And Esper says enraged President Trump. At a meeting the next morning, Esper told us the commander-in-chief was on the verge

of ordering 10,000 active-duty troops into the streets of the Capitol. What was the most disturbing thing that the president said during that meeting on June 1st? The president is ranting at the room. He's using a lot of foul language. You all are effing losers, right? And then he says it to the vice president, Mike Pence. He's using the same language and he's looking at Pence.

He called Mike Pence an effing loser? He didn't call him directly, but he was looking at him when he was saying it. And it really caught my attention. And I thought that we're at a different spot now. He's going to finally give a direct order to deploy paratroopers into the streets of Washington, D.C. And I'm thinking with weapons and bayonets, and this would be horrible. What specifically was he suggesting that the U.S. military should do to these protesters? He says, can't you just shoot them?

Just shoot them in the legs or something. And he's suggesting that that's what we should do, that we should bring in the troops and shoot the protesters. The commander-in-chief was suggesting that the U.S and shoot the protesters. The commander in chief was suggesting that the US military shoot protesters. Yes, in the straits of our nation's capital. That's right. Shocking.

We have seen in other countries a government use their military to shoot protesters. What kind of governments are those? Well, those are banana republics, right, or authoritarian regimes. We all remember Tiananmen Square, right, in China. Regarding whether he suggested shooting protesters, in his statement, former President Trump said, this is a complete lie, and 10 witnesses can back it up. Mark Esper was weak and totally ineffective, and because of it, I had to run the military. Esper told us he wanted to avoid the president invoking the Insurrection Act, which would have allowed Mr. Trump to deploy active-duty troops. Instead, Esper says, he helped mobilize 5,000 members

of the National Guard, whose mission includes responding to civil unrest. And to placate Mr. Trump, Esper writes he also ordered part of the 82nd Airborne up from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to a base just outside Washington. That evening, the U.S. Park Police used force to clear protesters from Lafayette Park, and the cabinet was called back to the White House. The president greets us, and I say, where are we going? And he just ignores it and starts walking out the door and crossing across the lawn, heading out the gate. And as we round that corner, the press is all over, all over the place, filming, taking

pictures. And it just dawned on me at that point in time that we've been duped. Duped how? This is now a political stunt, right? And we, I, allowed myself to be put in that position. And it only gets worse, right? How does it get worse? Well, we end up in Lafayette Park, up near the church,

and that's where the president steps out of the crowd, if you will, goes up, picks up the Bible, and holds it up for everybody to see. And I eventually get directed to come up and join him. And I made that mistake, to kind of be there in the first place and to join him. Within 24 hours, Esper says he sent out a message to employees of the Department of Defense reminding them they must remain apolitical

and protect freedom of speech. Then he decided that wasn't enough. The Republic felt wobbly, and that's what prompted me to decide to go before the podium at the Pentagon on June 3rd and say what I said. The option to use active duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now. I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act. Right after that, Esper was summoned to the White House.

He says he was sure Donald Trump would fire him. Why did you think he would fire you? Because I publicly rebuked him, and what I would learn later at the White House is he thought I took away his authority to invoke the Insurrection Act. He did not believe that he had the authority to impose it. Politically, you might have. I suppose at a political level, I did. But he still had that authority. What he also knew was I wasn't going to go along with him. Esper believes President Trump didn't fire him at the time because it may have hurt

Mr. Trump's chances for re-election. Esper also told us he did not vote for either Joe Biden or Donald Trump, but mailed in a ballot for another candidate. You're a lifelong Republican, but in this book, you detail how you subverted many of the president's wishes, people will say you were disloyal. I never disobeyed a direct order from the president of the United States. I was fortunate that he often didn't give direct orders. But otherwise, I did what I thought was best for the nation and for our security,

and completely within the authority granted to me under the law. Critics will say, why now in a book? Why didn't you speak out during the Trump administration? It's very simple. If I spoke out at the time, I would be fired, number one. And secondly, I had no confidence that anybody that came in behind me would not be a real Trump loyalist. And Lord knows what would have happened then. Esper says six days after the election, he and his staff could hardly believe

they were still at the Pentagon. Then he got word that the president planned to fire him. The phone rang, and Donald Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, was on the line. You write in the book, he says, the president's not happy with you. He feels you haven't supported him enough. He added, you aren't sufficiently loyal.

And then you replied. I say, you know, that's his prerogative to fire me. But I say, my oath is to the Constitution, not to him. Sometimes historic events suck. But what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America, decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more.

The promise is in the title health of kids across the country. According to the CDC, the rates of suicide, self-harm, anxiety, and depression are up among adolescents, a trend that began before the pandemic. Tonight, we'll take you to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a community trying to help its kids navigate a mental health crisis. Wisconsin has the fifth highest increase of adolescent self-harm and attempted suicide in the country, with rates nearly doubling since before the pandemic. In the emergency room at Children's Hospital in Milwaukee, doctors like Michelle Pickett are seeing more kids desperate for mental health help. We unfortunately see a lot of kids who have attempted suicide.

That is something that we see, I'd say, at least once a shift. Once a shift? Oh, yes. Yes, unfortunately. Dr. Pickett has worked in the ER for nine years. Is there any group that's not being impacted? No. We're seeing at all kids, you know, who come from very well-off families,

kids who don't, kids who are suburban, kids who are urban, kids who are rural, we're seeing it all. The surge of families needing help for their kids has revealed a deficit of people and places to treat them. Across the country, the average wait time to get an appointment with a therapist is 48 days, and for children, it's often longer. What does it say to you that the average wait time to get an appointment with a therapist is 48 days. And for children, it's often longer. What does it say to you that the place they have to come is the emergency room? That there's something wrong with our system? The emergency room should not be the place to go and get acute mental health care when you're in a crisis. We are not a nice, calm environment.

But they're desperate. Yeah, but we're there and we see everybody. But I wish there were more places that kids could go to get the help that they need. We just have a couple questions for you to answer on the iPad. To manage the mental health crisis and heavy caseload, Dr. Pickett introduced an iPad with a series of questions that screen the mental health of every child 10 and older who comes to the ER for any reason. Among the questions, have you been having thoughts about killing yourself? And have you felt your family would be better off if you were dead?

Harsh questions that can be lifesavers to the kids who answer them. We've had four kids that I know of personally that came in for a completely unrelated problem, so a broken arm or an earache or whatever it was, and actually were acutely suicidal to the point where we needed to transfer them to an inpatient facility right to the end there. So we're catching kids who are in very much crisis like that, but we're also catching the kids that just need help

and don't know what to do and haven't really talked about this. According to the CDC, hospital admissions data shows the number of teenage girls who have been suicidal has increased 50% nationwide since 2019. I thought it was normal. Safiya Jimenez was one of them. I remember crying every night and not knowing what was going on, and I felt so alone. Safiya and her friend Nina Hughes were in eighth grade, looking forward to high school when COVID turned their worlds upside down.

I've always been a super smart kid, and I've always had really good grades. And then as soon as the pandemic hit, I failed a class. When I was virtual, I had no motivation to do anything. I would just sit in my room, never leave. And it was like obvious signs of depression. My mental health got really bad, especially my eating disorder. I was basically home alone all day. My parents, well, they noticed that I wasn't eating. I would refuse to eat. So then they ended up taking me to the hospital. Sophia had to stay in the hospital for two weeks before a bed opened up at a psychiatric facility. Your generation, like, got hit with this in what's supposed to be kind of a

fun carefree time. What was lost? What did you guys lose during the pandemic? Myself. Yourself. Yeah. I would definitely say there were big pieces of myself that I were definitely lost. I lost friends because we wouldn't see each other. We couldn't go to our first homecoming. I couldn't have an eighth grade graduation. I know that doesn't sound like that big of a deal.

But it's a big deal when you're in eighth grade. Yeah. I feel like if the pandemic hadn't happened at all. A lot of my sadness and mental problems would not be as bad as they are. It just made everything worse. Are we in crisis mode right now? We are. We are in crisis mode. And it's scary. Tammy McClough has worked as a child therapist throughout Wisconsin for the last 25 years.

I think there was a hope that, you know, we're back in school, the kids are able to see their friends again and play sports, that this would all go away. Has it? No. No, I've noticed that the wait lists are longer. Kids are struggling with more anxiety, more depression. So we were in a mental health crisis prior to the pandemic. Did the pandemic accelerate it? I believe so. We're coming out of the pandemic, but kids have still lost two years.

Two years of socialization, two years of education, two years of their world kind of being shaken up. So as we get, quote unquote, back to normal, I think kids are struggling. Even when the pandemic's over, this crisis isn't going to be over. CDC numbers show that even before the pandemic, the number of adolescents saying they felt persistently sad or hopeless was up 40 percent since 2009. There are lots of theories on why. Social media, increased screen time and isolation. But the research isn't definitive. This past March, Tammy McClouf was tapped by Children's Hospital to run an urgent care walk-in clinic specifically open to treat kids' mental health.

May I help you guys? We are here to get some help. Open seven days a week from 3 to 9.30, it's one of the first clinics of its kind in the country. What's going to work for you and what's going to work for you? So when they come to our clinic, we assess them and we provide them with a therapy session. So we give them some interventions, we give them like a plan, an action plan. The plans are catered to each child's situation.

Actionable things families and kids can do while they look for a doctor or facility to make room for them. How long have the waitlists been to get help? Normally you're put on, you're scheduled an appointment within a few months. Months? Yeah. And then if you want a child psychiatrist, you're looking at like months to a year. How important is it to get them help when they need it immediately?

As days go on, the symptoms get worse. How important is it to get them help when they need it immediately? As days go on, the symptoms get worse. If you have a depressed child, you know, maybe they started out where they were feeling depressed, and then as the days goes on, they're suicidal. So it really, you really do need to get that help and that support right away. Eleven-year-old Austin Bringer desperately needed that support during the pandemic. He's a fifth grader at Roosevelt Elementary School in Milwaukee. How old were you when the pandemic hit?

Yeah, I was nine. I was still going to school, but then I kept hearing on the news in the car, just like, pandemic, stay put, quarantine, 14 days. When they first said, hey, you don't have to go to school, what was your reaction at that moment? Heaven. But then I realized it's the complete opposite. Opposite because like millions of school-age kids, Austin was forced into remote learning for more than a year and disconnected from friends. It was like this shut-in, like the only way you could see people is through like phones or your family that you live with. That isolation took a toll on Austin who

was already struggling with news that his parents were getting a divorce. And that's when I think everything just started to magnify. He, you know, he was always asking to see his friends. We couldn't. And I remember there was one moment that he was just on the floor, like, kicking and punching the air, but couldn't describe why he was upset. Unable to vent with friends and without access to in-person therapy, Austin's mother, Melissa, says his world began closing in on him. Felt like he was interacting less and just kind of withdrawing into himself

and spending a lot of time by himself. And I went to go tuck him in, and he said, Mom, I'm having suicidal thoughts. And he was how old? He was nine. And, like, I was kind of like, I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what to do. I just imagine myself going through all these things,

like jumping from a building and, like, taking a knife from my kitchen and ending my life. It was over 50 of them that just flooded my mind. I don't really know if it was from all the, like, just antisocialness and not being able. It also felt like with the divorce came a lot of yelling, and it felt like my parents didn't need me anymore. Just really hard to think about that moment.

Desperate, Melissa called Austin's pediatrician, who referred her to outpatient therapists and inpatient psychiatric programs, only to be told there were long waiting lists and no beds. All this stuff is racing through my head. And then for them to say, well, there's no beds right now. And I'm like, how am I going to keep him safe? In an effort to try and keep kids safe, Wisconsin is trying another approach that's being adopted in other parts of the country. Hello, how are you guys? Fourteen pediatric clinics across southeastern Wisconsin have incorporated full-time therapists inside their offices. Look who I got!

Offering mental health screenings and treatment as part of routine care. Okay, so let's start with our assessment. Dr. Brilliant Nimmer was the first pediatrician in Milwaukee to create a therapist's office inside her office. You're saying we're here together, we're gonna all work on this together, not we can't help you go see somebody else. Exactly. And so having the therapist in our clinic to really just have a team together, discuss that patient and family together, to bounce ideas off of each other because

we both know them so well is so much better for patient care. Dr. Nimmer's clinic treats an underserved community where families typically struggle to get mental health help. Therapists have treated more than 500 kids here since the pandemic started. I think as pediatricians and primary care providers, we can no longer just solely say, you know, mental health providers, you're the only ones that are going to be taking care of our patients in regards to mental health. Like, this is now something that we need to be doing, too.

Austin Bringer's pediatrician now has a therapist in her office, too. Their family was fortunate to find regular outpatient therapy for his depression. How do you feel now? I don't know. It's much better than before. Everything's going up in my life, and knowing that, like, I'm friends with everyone in my class, I'm building better social life. It's fun to just know there's others that like the same things as me.

Austin, it's not an easy thing to talk about all this stuff. Why did you agree to tell us about what you've been through? Because the world needs to. The world needs to know mental health and stuff like that needs to be treated, or bad stuff could happen. If you're going through that by yourself, try and contact someone you know, like your friend, your family. And talk about it. Yeah.

For decades now, Russians have known the drill. When there's bad news brewing, such as the death of a leader, or a convulsive event, such as the Chernobyl disaster, state TV switches its programming and begins airing Tchaikovsky's ballet, Swan Lake. Nothing to see here, folks. But also note the choice of distraction. Ballet is centrally important to Russian society and to Russian image. Dancers slicing through the air and challenging laws of physics and gravity represent civility and grace. But after February 24th, when Russian military troops invaded Ukraine, Russian ballet troops had their Western tours canceled. And just last week, Moscow's Bolshoi Theater abruptly canceled shows by directors critical of Putin's military campaign.

And so it is the brutal war plays out on the most delicate of fronts, leaving ballet in exile. When ballet dancers are described as God's athletes, well, you could offer up Olga Smirnova as supporting evidence. She treads on air, coming in on little cat feet. She's a Russian prima ballerina, one of the world's leading dancers. But days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Smirnova pirouetted and stepped off her stage at the renowned Bolshoi Theater with dramatic flourish. She took to social media to express her outrage and then fled the

country, the modern-day version of Nureyev or Baryshnikov defecting. When you sat down to write that social media post, what did you want to communicate? What did you want to say? I just couldn't keep it inside. I was so ashamed of Russia. This is the true. I'm not ashamed that I'm Russian But I'm ashamed Because of Russia started this action. I want to Read what you wrote You said you were against this war with every fiber of your being But I now feel that a line has been drawn that separates the before and the after it's how I felt

24th of February this is was the line. Because it's all changed. All changed. The reputation of Russian and Russian people. Even if you are not a soldier, you're just Russian, it's so... It still make a shadow on you. just Russian, it still makes a shadow on you. Being Russian.

Being Russian. And it's really painful. Predictably, Smirnova's post went viral. She was, after all, a leading light at Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet. From the Russian word for big, Bolshoi is the world's largest ballet company and the most prestigious. The theater is physically close to the Kremlin, a short walk away, and also aligned inextricably with the Russian government. Tsars love the Bolshoi. For decades, communist leaders used the Bolshoi theater for political stagecraft, holding rallies and giving national addresses there.

This is something that celebrates Russia. Every important guest who would visit the Soviet Union would be invited to the Bolshoi to see the performance. And there was a pride of Russia at any time. Alexei Radmansky trained at the Bolshoi school and was, for a time, its artistic director. He was born in Russia, but grew up in Kiev, where his parents still live. At the time of the invasion, he was in Russia choreographing two ballets. He left the country immediately, unwilling to continue working in a world so tied to the Putin regime. As I was going in a taxi to the airport, I felt these two sandcastles falling apart behind my back.

Those sand castles were the work you had done? Yes, yes, yes. It was an agony. It was a very hard day. And, of course, a catastrophic day for Ukraine. Indiscriminate bombings and missile strikes raining down upon the country, crushing lives and dreams. Not least, those of an ascendant ballerina from Kiev, Paulina Chepik, age 17. You wanted to be a ballerina for years and years. What was it like when suddenly you couldn't go to school, couldn't dance?

I was shocked and I was like, oh my God. And first, about what I'm thinking, that I left my pointe shoes in college. That was your first thought? Yes. You left your pointe shoes at school? I left everything, actually. War didn't stop her in her footsteps. She resumed dancing at home, using whatever she could as a bar.

But after a few days, her parents, both former dancers, focused on getting Paulina out. They called on a famously well-connected figure in the tight-knit ballet community, New Jersey-based Larissa Savlyev. You're getting this barrage of emails from parents and from dancers. What are they telling you? What are they asking you? Please help. That was get us out of here. They're willing to give up everything else, but they have to dance.

And the parents were, you know, it doesn't matter what we do, they have to dance. This was their lifeline almost. This is it. They just, they could not imagine not dance. In the 1990s, she founded Youth America Grand Prix, a ballet competition and scholarship program, pairing aspiring dancers with ballet schools worldwide.

Well, no, they want to see her for full year, but you have to come for the summer first. Now, in a humanitarian crisis, she and the international ballet community scramble to action. Savlyev tapped her vast network, relocating more than 100 young Ukrainian dancers to new schools and host families. We give each child a number just to move faster, and we say, OK, number 55 is, like, just get a spot in Stuttgart.

OK, number 54, just get a spot in Dresden. Cross it off the list. Cross it off the list. When a slot opened for Paulina, she stuffed leotards and tutus into a suitcase, along with a bottle of her mom's perfume, a reminder of home. And then she headed to Kiev's train station. And my parents are in the window of train. They said, goodbye, we love you, everything will be fine. And I was crying and we were all crying. I was thinking maybe I need to take my suitcase

and go back to my family because my heart was broken, really. How did you overcome that? What made you not get off that train? Because it's open door for me. It's like door for my dream. 17-year-old that she is, Paulina documented the lonely odyssey on TikTok. Trains and buses, five days and 1,200 miles, Kiev to Lviv, Poland to Berlin, finally to Amsterdam, where she landed at the Dutch National Ballet Academy, one of the leading schools in the world. When you got to the new school and started dancing again. How did that feel? Oh, I was very happy, yes. My mind changed because I was thinking about my parents all the time, for my family, for my sister.

And when I go to ballet class, this world changed for me. I have another world, a world of ballet. Her adjustment was made easier when she found other Ukrainian dance students who, thanks to Larissa Savlyev, also found safe harbor in Amsterdam. Paulina fell into a routine immediately. On the cusp of a professional career, she prepared for final exams. She was jittery beforehand. She emerged relieved, triumphant, and eager to report back to mom. What did you tell her?

That I was nervous, but when I start, I do everything right. If the war has made refugees out of some Ukrainian dancers, it's made soldiers out of others. When the war began, Alexei Podiumkin, a principal dancer with Ukraine's National Ballet, turned in his tights for military fatigues. Here he is in downtown Lviv last week, having just returned from duty as a medic.

What was your life like before the war? Before war, I was preparing a new premiere in the Ukrainian ballet. You know, like real normal life. And just one moment, it changes. But I need to do something. What have you seen these last few months? seen, destroyed houses of civilian people, its brothers, sons, fathers, sisters. While he says he's shaken by what he's seen unfold on the battlefield, he's also appalled by a war taking place on another front, at the Bolshoi. The Bolshoi now, it's toxic feature.

Nobody want to work with you. You said toxic? Toxic, yes. In Russia, art, it's politics. It's Russian government use it barely. It's like weapon. The weapon was deployed at the Bolshoi as recently as last month, when the theater revived a production of Spartacus in support of the Russian military invasion, unnerving many in the dance world, including longtime head of the Dutch National Ballet, Ted Branson. Well, it was a very clear statement that we have to support our boys who are on a military operation to save Ukraine from the fascists, which is a

totally ridiculous concept, of course. This allegory, Spartacus, about the slave revolt is somehow being co-opted by the aggressive superpower. Absolutely. No, it's not for nothing that this became one of the signature ballets of the Soviet time. Abroad, the ballet community has staged benefit concerts to raise funds for Ukraine, while Russia's famed companies, the Bolshoi and St. Petersburg's Marinsky,

have had their touring dates canceled. I think you need to be a little bit more exit with your arms. With the Iron Curtain down, artists have to pick a side. Alexei Radmonsky left Moscow for American Ballet Theatre in New York, where he is artist-in-residence and where we spoke with him remotely last week. Sounds like you don't buy this idea that, look, individuals shouldn't bear the responsibility for the acts of the state, that artists should just be artists. No, I don't think the artists are separate from politics. And besides, it's not, for me, it's not politics.

It's about humanity. It's about responding to war crimes, responding to the crimes of your government, of your president. It just made things clear which things are important and which aren't. And you make a choice. You decide where you want to belong. For Olga Smirnova, that choice came together in a matter of days after she condemned the war.

She left Russia and landed on her feet at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, just around the corner from Paulina's school. It must have been incredibly difficult to leave the Bolshoi. If you make a choice, you have consequences. But this is how it works. I had to leave everything. Like my home, my theater, my repertoire, my partners, my parents, sister, brother, everything.

But I don't have regrets. No regrets? No. Because at least I can be honest with myself. The bombshell of a leak from the Supreme Court, the draft decision on abortion rights, shocked much of the country. It shouldn't have. The crucial vote on the future of Roe v. Wade

wasn't cast in a Supreme Court conference room in 2022. It was cast at the polls in 2016 when Donald Trump was elected president. Shortly after Election Day on this broadcast, President-elect Trump told us he would appoint what he called pro-life judges, a promise he made repeatedly during his campaign. It took Mr. Trump one term to keep his promise and add those three votes to the court. Not every political promise is just rhetoric. I'm Leslie Stahl. Happy Mother's Day. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.