11/23/2025: The Bus on Route 62, The Last Best Place, The Empty Rooms

0:07On Palm Sunday, the bus on Route 62 happened to be on Peter and Paul Street. At the same moment, a warhead was bearing down at 2 ,000 miles an hour. One blow on more than a dozen cameras. The attack in Ukraine is being investigated as a war crime, one of thousands in a Russian campaign against the innocent. The attack seems to be calculated to make as much destruction as possible and to terrorize the civilian population. Montana's landscape beguiles as it unfolds, a patchwork of golden prairies and green mountains with rivers that run through it. So when politicians in Washington, D.C. suggested selling off public lands for development, Montanans of all stripes stood in opposition.

1:04It's a red, white, and blue issue. It's not a Democrat or Republican issue. This is an American issue, and once you sell land, you're not going to get it back.

1:16Steve Hartman, a veteran CBS News correspondent, and Lou Boop, a photographer, have spent the last seven years asking parents whose children were killed in school shootings for permission to take pictures of the empty rooms they left behind. Rooms that have become sanctuaries, a tangible link to a child they can feel but no longer hold. All these physical things are tangible ways of reminding me. Like, she was real. She was here. She lived with us. Yeah. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Scott Pelley. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm John Wertheim. Those stories end in our last minute, one of the world's best soccer players, tonight on 60 Minutes.

2:12Russia's bombardment of Ukrainian cities is relentless as Vladimir Putin tries to plunge civilians into a winter of cold and darkness. President Putin's war, approaching four years, threatens to draw in all of Europe. Targeting civilians has been an international war crime since 1949. The crimes you're about to see are hard to watch. Putin is hitting homes, schools, hospitals, and seven months ago, a city bus. In the city of Sumi, bus route 62 takes you to the university, the mall, and on to the airport. The fare is 20 cents. Last April, Palm Sunday, there was only standing room. as two ballistic missiles bolted through the sky of a clear, holy day.

3:10The body is wrapped to preserve the evidence in the hope of a future trial. But a Ukrainian war crime prosecutor wanted us to see it, wanted the world to see, the steel corpse where 16 civilians were killed.

3:32We climbed aboard with prosecutor Vitaly Doval, who showed us the shrapnel that sliced through the bus. This is from what the military calls an anti-personnel warhead. It's designed to kill as many people as possible. And it doesn't distinguish, Doval told us, whether it's a soldier or a child or a retiree. This little square will not spare anyone, and this is exactly why this is a war crime. The crime scene is a city of 250 ,000 less than 20 miles from Russia. Most days, in Sumy, are interrupted by an air raid. And so it was, last April 13th, Palm Sunday, for passengers on bus route 62.

4:32Tetyana Porhilova was taking Liza to her grandparents. Liza is a little girl, she told us. She wants to pick her own outfits, and we are always late. I wanted to catch that bus. The next one wouldn't come for an hour. Natalia Ternitska and her son Maxim were headed to the mall. it was the day before my son was going to have his school picture we were going to buy some nice clothes on one of Ukraine's holiest days the bus happened to be on Peter and Paul Street at the same moment a warhead was bearing down with great precision at 2 ,000 miles an hour one blow

5:33on more than a dozen cameras.

5:43It got dark inside, Natalia told us. My ears started ringing. People were shouting to open the doors.

5:56The first thing I thought was that I could feel my body, Tatiana said. I thought, okay, I can feel everything. Lisa is screaming, so we're alive. Lisa's screams carried on into the street. Tatiana is saying to her daughter, wait, my little sunshine, it's going to be all right. You have a little cut, a little cut.

6:27I look at everything there. When I was out of the bus, I saw that many gilogs were... Tatiana told us, everything looked destroyed. I saw broken branches, there was the smell of burning and soot, and there were people lying on the ground. People who... you understand.

6:53Maxim told us, in the front of the bus everyone was dead. I was walking on dead bodies.

7:03I urged him to leave me and run, but he said, no, that's never going to happen. He broke what was left of the window with his feet so we could escape. That's Natalia and Maxim among 25 surviving passengers. Many others on the street were cut down. In the lower right corner, a 47-year-old musician, a pianist, Olena Kohut, had watched the bus pass. Hit by shrapnel, bleeding out, she would live two more steps.

7:51All together, 35 civilians killed, two children, and 145 wounded. Prosecutor Vitaly Duval responded from his church. He told us, I have never seen such a horror in my life.

8:22Doval said lots of people were lying on the pavement. I saw that bus that had burned. Doval told us it was all mud, dust, blood, crying, and bodies. You seem to be saying this isn't war, this is murder. In my opinion, yes. It is just unimaginable to use such powerful high-precision weapons in the central part of a city. doball's investigation shows there were two missiles among the most accurate in the russian arsenal the first wrecked sumi state university's conference center the second peter and paul street they're among hundreds of russian war crimes and we have seen many over the years in ukraine a school in chernahy a hospital in izium apartments in borodyanka mr president i'm glad to see you again thank you for coming thank you last april president volodymyr zelinski met us on a playground where a missile killed nine children and 10 adults.

9:53All of those, so many more, and now this, make Ukraine the largest crime scene in the world. Ukraine's top prosecutor told us that the number of war crime investigations now open at the beginning of the fall is 178 ,391. They are systemic, literally everywhere that Russia's troops have been deployed. Few know the big picture, like Beth Van Scock. Until recently, she was U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice. She directed American support for Ukraine's investigations. Attacks happen in towns and villages where there are no discernible military objectives. The attack seems to be calculated to make as much destruction as possible and to terrorize the civilian population.

10:47So it's an effort to subjugate and to terrorize the community in order to get the country to essentially capitulate. The reason for Russia's terror is to take back territory it lost with the fall of the Soviet Union. Ukraine won independence 34 years ago. It's a democracy about the size of Texas. Of all of the crimes here, Putin faces one arrest warrant. In 2023, the International Criminal Court charged him in a campaign against Ukrainian children. He is accused of abducting Ukrainian children in a systematic way. It's a war crime. It's a war crime of unlawful transfer of civilians, and in this case, dozens and dozens of Ukrainian children.

11:35And these children are being kidnapped? They're being kidnapped. They're being subjected to rustification, to military training. They're forced to deny their Ukrainian roots, and ultimately they're often put up for adoption or placed in foster homes in Russia. What is the point? The point is to ultimately undermine the idea that Ukraine is an independent country and to raise these children as Russian children who deny their own cultural heritage. Putin and his allies, who are secure in Russia, are unlikely to face justice. But Ukraine is holding trials. There have been 211 convictions, many Russian troops, though nearly all of the defendants are at large.

12:19Still, Prosecutor Vitaly Doval has patience. He showed us where evidence for future trials is warehoused, including crashed drones and mangled missiles. On each part we find a serial number. We identify the part where the part was manufactured and when this missile was assembled in a factory. In the Palm Sunday massacre, serial numbers, like fingerprints, identified Russian ballistic missiles with 1 ,000-pound warheads. Ukrainian intelligence pinpointed the Russian units involved. Doval told us, we already know the individuals who gave the orders to carry out the attacks. Do you have any reason to hope for justice?

13:14I am convinced that those responsible for the strike at the central part of the city on Palm Sunday will be punished. The military commanders who made the decision to launch these missiles. I am convinced.

13:33Natalia Terninska told us, they're killing civilians. It's elimination of the Ukrainian nation. They're just wiping our cities off the face of the earth. We interviewed Maxim and Natalia, Tatiana and Liza, in the conference center, destroyed by the first missile. we could see where the warhead crashed through to the basement. The Russians claim they were aiming at a military awards ceremony, but prosecutor Vitaly Doval says that doesn't explain how no troops were hit and why two missiles fell on civilians. You have quite a stake in the future of Ukraine, and I wonder, what is your hope?

14:25Tetyana told us, I would like the Russians to answer for what they've done. I don't wish death on those people. I want them to learn how it feels to live in fear. I wish Ukraine could see the end of the war. And I want people to be able to live in their own homes. That's it. Near our interview, we found a room where it looked to us like a victim may have fallen. Close by, in the bomb dust on the table, someone had drawn a line. We don't know what they meant. But with so many innocent victims murdered without justice, perhaps the question was why.

15:26The old license plates read Big Sky Country, but inside Montana, there's an unofficial state motto, the last best place. Hemmed by the plains in the Pacific Northwest, Montana is a patchwork of golden prairies in green mountains, with rivers that run through it. And the last best place suggests a warding off of the onslaught of outside forces. So this year, when Washington, D.C. politicians suggested selling off public lands for development as part of the so-called Big Beautiful Budget Bill, Montanans of all political stripes stood in opposition. Is this a rare example of modern bipartisanship, proof that there are some issues that can knit Americans together?

16:08Or are these frontier folk just delaying the inevitable? Montana's landscape beguiles as it unfolds. The kind of sheer beauty that could stop traffic, if there were traffic to stop. The scale is hard to exaggerate. It's a state roughly the size of California, with roughly the population of greater Fresno, just north of one million. Montanans speak fondly of their neighbors, who might live 50 miles away. As for the land itself, it's not mere real estate. It's there for recreation. A corridor for wildlife. It's symbolic, too. The open frontier is an emblem of freedom and possibility. It's something deeper, sacred even.

16:58Like spiritual, right? It's like some people find that in church or in other ways. And for me, it's just being out where your feet are on the ground and actually connecting with this space. And then if you spend enough time in those spaces and on that landscape, it's like land is kin, right? And it starts to feel like... Land is kin. Yeah. Brian Mannix is a rancher who, along with his Uncle Dave and Cousin Logan, raise cattle in western Montana. They've been on this plot since 1882, when their forebears first homesteaded here. With lineage comes perspective. As ranchers, you guys have talked about feeling like you're stewards of the land more than you're owners of the land.

17:40What's the difference? It's not ours. It's just our turn. If you're going to steward that land, you're going to Treat that land in a way that maybe doesn't maximize your life, but is better for multiple generations of human beings, because this place is going to outlast all of us by a long ways. The Mannix's operation relies on a mix of land, around 55 ,000 acres all told, more than three Manhattans. It's land they own, private land they lease from others, plus federal plots they pay a relatively small fee to use. So earlier this year, when members of Congress proposed the wholesale sell-off of cracks of public land, the first serious effort of its kind in more than four decades, the Mannix's, well, bridled.

18:31Yeah, to me it's worrisome because I think that you can have a very nuanced conversation about management, management, but whether or not should we have these lands as public lands, to me, is a no-brainer. The federal government owns and manages about 640 million acres of American land, most of it in the West and Alaska. Yes, those breathtaking national parks, but also huge tracks for conservation, recreation, and moneymakers like ranching, mining, and logging. Interior-managed resources hold a significant position on Americans' balance sheet. The Trump administration, including Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, have made clear federal lands could be generating much more value if there were better management, fewer regulations, and more vigorous extraction.

19:23One of my top priorities has been to make a small percentage of underused federal land available to address housing affordability. But Utah Senator Mike Lee went further this year, putting forward his measure as part of the big, beautiful budget bill that proposed selling public land as much as three million acres across the West. Federal land is a massive, underutilized asset. Lee's proposal did not list specific parcels, but he and some Republican colleagues reasoned selling land would address America's housing shortage and also help pay down the nation's debt. If the public land that you use were sold off, could you run your business?

20:06The answer is yes, but it would be something less than what it is now. If we lost our public leases, we would lose a significant amount of income. So absolutely it would impact us. In Montana, selling public land was perceived as an attack on a way of life already under stress. In recent years, the moneyed class has descended. Westward Ho. Exclusive enclaves like the Yellowstone Club, studded with eight-figure residences, are proliferating. In the last five years alone, home prices in the state have vaulted nearly 70%. So much private land is being sold and developed. Construction, sprawl, for sale signs, they're everywhere.

20:53in Big Sky, in Bozeman, Boz Angeles, they call it, in the remote Ruby Valley. When we all come together... Which is where we met Donna McDonald, a hunting and fishing guide, John Helley, a sheep rancher, Chris Edgington, a fly fisherman and river health advocate, Emily Cleveland, a conservationist. They come from across the state and across the political spectrum. They find common cause in a devotion to public lands. Could you run your business if the public lands were sold off? No. There would not be a business to run. From the ranching community to the guiding community to the wildlife that the hunters and the anglers use, spend a lot of time on public lands.

21:42In some states, the vast majority of the territory is federally owned. Montana is about 30 percent. How did we get here? As the nation expanded in the 1800s and as Native Americans were forcefully removed, some land was settled by homesteaders or sold to industrialists. But much fell to the federal government. Further out that way. Good work, good work. McDonald, who grew up in this valley, makes a living taking guests out on the private and public lands that surround her property. She invited us to do some fishing. How long have you been doing this? I can't remember not doing it, John. You're out on the river.

22:22It's a nice day. You're in nature. And it's worth saving. Preservation is often, literally and figuratively, a grassroots endeavor. Really good to see everybody. Donna, John, Chris, and Emily sit on the Ruby Valley Strategic Alliance, one of many local land management groups across the state and the West. At a time of hyper-polarization, these folks, the Birkenstock crowd and the Cowboy Boot crowd, do something radical. They respect their differences and get along. Well, it's kind of like when neighbors get together to build a fence. We can stand there and argue about where to put the post, or we can roll up our sleeves and build the fence together.

23:03A little glimpse into Montana? Yep. Well, I think we finally came to realize that we all had kind of the same goals in mind and, you know, saved some of the last best places here. And now we have more tree growth. In response to the land sale proposal, hunters and hikers locked arms. Not one acre became a rallying cry. The Ruby Valley Group spoke out publicly and lobbied Montana's two senators and two congressmen, all Republicans. That was an easy one to all come to agreement on. Not a lot of dissent. We all realized the importance of the public land. And once it's gone, it's gone forever. I suspect there's some people saying, wait a second, you've got all this land.

23:47What's wrong with converting that into housing and using it in other ways? Yeah, I think a lot of our public lands aren't really close to infrastructure that would be necessary for wide-scale housing developments. And selling public lands to generate income and revenue is just not something that makes sense. I think it's a slippery slope. It is. What do you mean? I mean, if we sell this chunk or that chunk, I mean, where would it end? Which is precisely the case they made to their representatives, like Ryan Zinke. We kept hearing, you have zero political future in this state, unless you oppose the sale of public lands.

24:28I think Montanans are very passionate about the public lands because we live out here. You heard pretty clear on this one. I think it's absolutely crystal clear. Zinke grew up in Whitefish, Montana, and served as the Secretary of the Interior during President Trump's first term. Now he represents western Montana in the house. He called the land sale proposal his San Juan Hill, a nod to Teddy Roosevelt, noted conservationist. Rough translation, over my dead body. Public lands is not, to me, on a balance sheet. Public lands is our inheritance of this great nation, and we're blessed with it. There is no other country on the face of the planet that has the public land experience that we do.

25:15On this issue, Zinke's no ideologue. On a case-by-case basis, within the existing laws, he says he's open to rethinking public land use. What he does oppose? Wholesale sell-off. You could sell the entirety of the federal state. It's not going to get you out of debt. If you have a hotel and the hotel is being mismanaged, you don't sell the hotel. You get new management. And then if you sell the public land, you sell it all, right? Have you changed why you're in debt? No, you've just sold your assets. People supporting this thing, what's the harm of unlocking some of this so we can build affordable housing?

25:53Why are those people wrong? Well, if we want to discuss reality, selling all our public land for housing, one, it won't solve the housing crisis. And secondly, public land itself, if it's managed well, You should be able to bring timber off of it. You should be able to graze energy, oil, coal, gas. A lot of that comes from our public lands. Zinke was instrumental in getting the land sale proposal killed in the House. He then coordinated with his colleagues in the Senate, where Mike Lee had crafted a special carve-out exempting Montana. But that didn't win over the state's delegation. The measure was abandoned.

26:35In a statement to 60 Minutes, Senator Lee said in part, quote, the federal government controls more land than it can manage, hurting the growth and prosperity of American families and their communities. Perhaps more than any other state, Montana stood in the breach, thwarting the sale efforts. Though there is widespread expectation public land sales will come up again in Congress. This is an era where party unity in the Republican Party is strong. You went against the grain here. You stuck your neck out. It's a red, white, and blue issue. It's not a Democrat or Republican issue. This is an American issue.

27:14And once you sell land, you're not going to get it back. The challenge is this. On this point in particular, Zinke has seen his state transformed. Behind us is the Yellowstone River. And below us, the Yellowstone dumps into Missouri. What's changed? When I grew up, you know, there was less people. You see all these houses in there. There wasn't maybe one or two houses in this whole valley along the river. Zinke knows changes to land bring changes to culture. Locals complain they no longer know their neighbors. No trespassing signs suddenly abound. Montanans, like the Mannix's, are tracking the public land's issue closely.

27:54If an unsentimental government gets in on the sale, there really goes the neighborhood. John McEwan, D.C. Often what we see is the most valuable thing to do with this land, probably forever now, will be to chop it up and sell it in small chunks for people to have a little piece of paradise. And I think that's going to be true whether it's a ranch that sells or public land that sells. To borrow a phrase, this land is your land, this land is my land. People here just hope it stays that way.