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Ranil Wickremesinghe Appointed Acting President of Sri Lanka; Sri Lanka Protesters Break into State TV Premises; Explosions, Gunfire Reported in Russian Held Enerhodar; Sri Lanka Declares State of Emergency as President Flees. Aired 5:30-6a ET

Aired July 13, 2022 - 05:30   ET

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

[05:30:00]

PADMA RAO, FORMER BUREAU CHIEF, "DER SPIEGEL": The trouble is there is growing anarchy, growing vandalism. And the movement lauded by the single and the woke alike around the world is -- runs the risk of bringing down Sri Lanka's image and reputation in the international arena.

Two houses have already been vandalized and books and furniture destroyed. Now we see these scenes on the streets. They've reached the office of the national broadcaster. We have visuals of protesters appearing on screen, announcing things on air.

So there is chaos and anarchy in the country. The Prime Minister has been named the president but that doesn't ensure that things will go back to normal; if anything, they'll get worse.

MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: There's a curfew installed by the prime minister. The military appear to be standing by the prime minister and carrying out orders.

Will that continue?

As you say, it's anarchy, it's chaos.

Is the military fully behind the leadership of the country?

RAO: I think the military is fully behind. It would not be with a political vacuum. For now things (INAUDIBLE) because the president left the country last night. And the Prime Minister had not yet announced his resignation.

There was a lot of political wheeling and dealing going on between the opposition and various other members of parliament.

Most did not want the Prime Minister to be named the acting president, which is what the constitution of Sri Lanka actually contains. But they said they would have an all-party conference and the speaker can't be president, the prime minister can't be president.

It wasn't just the people on the streets acting in an arctic fashion but much of many of the statements coming out of parliament and coming out of these huddles of these politicians pointing to were equally contradictory and flew in the face of the constitution.

But that seems to have calmed down now. Ranil Wickremesinghe has been named the acting president. But it remains to be seen what happens in the days ahead. As you know, the 20th of July is the day when there will be a vote in parliament to actually elect a successor to Gotabaya Rajapaksa. So a new president.

And we will also see a new prime minister. So people in the base are reckoning but nobody in the corridors of power in Colombo seem to actually realize the urgency of peace and stability.

Certainly not the protesters on the streets.

FOSTER: Stay with us, Padma. I want to cross to Will.

This decision to empower the Prime Minister rather than get the Prime Minister to resign is clearly going to infuriate the crowds even more and they're making progress with their demos.

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, you are certainly seeing a really volatile situation on the streets continuing to escalate and this is the Prime Minister who had said that he was going to stick around to await the formation of this all-party government.

But you know he doesn't have to be the acting president if the Prime Minister were to step down and the president were step to step down and the speaker of parliament could become the acting president, he has been the one who has been trying to calmly relay messages.

He is the one who asked respectfully on the air for the protesters to disperse and go home. Of course, they haven't done that but now you have the Prime Minister, instead of stepping aside, now taking control.

And, you know, is it going to be for a matter of hours, for a matter of days?

Is parliament going to elect a new president next Wednesday as they have scheduled to do?

Is the president, now in the Maldives in exile, going to formally resign once he feels that his safety considerations have been taken care of?

These are all unanswered questions. But what we do know are actions and the Prime Minister is now calling on a nationwide state of emergency and a curfew and ordering police to enforce this, you know, with force if necessary.

And so right now we are seeing tear gas and water cannons.

The question is, what is going to happen if the protesters continue to breach the premises of more official buildings?

They are now occupying the president's residence. They have already set fire to the Prime Minister's residence. They've entered the state TV broadcasting facilities.

And what else is yet to come?

Also the Prime Minister's office now has been breached.

[05:35:00]

RIPLEY: And so they're taking hold of these various government buildings and there is really one of two options here. Either something dramatic happens to defuse the situation so that they go home or the government and the military engage in some sort of larger coordinated crackdown, something that people feared could happen over the weekend when they broke into the president's house. It did not.

But if that does happen, you can see a lot more than water cannons and teargas in the streets. And that is the big concern of those watching, from a human rights perspective, from a rule of law perspective.

And none of this, none of this gets to the core problem for Sri Lanka, which is that they are massively in the hole financially, to the point that people are struggling, hungry, sick and cannot get medicine, can't get fuel. And none of those problems are being solved when the country is in the midst of an absolute chaotic crisis, with no resolution in sight.

It's a big, big, big problem and it is hard to see right now what, you know, what the out rap is going to be here for Sri Lanka.

FOSTER: Padma, if we look at what Sri Lanka needs to do, it's basically a massive renegotiation, debt restructuring, working with the IMF. This is a long-term project and it does not seem as though these crowds will accept the current leadership to see that through.

Why do you think the president hasn't resigned and simply transferred his powers to the Prime Minister?

RAO: He did. He wrote a letter and sent it to the speaker several days but he dated it 13th of July and this was largely to ensure he could leave the country as a president so that he would enjoy diplomatic immunity and would be able to cross international borders without being held up.

But that was not to happen. His own immigration officials at Colombo airport didn't allow that to happen nor his brother, who is a U.S. citizen, go to (INAUDIBLE) was a U.S. citizen but he'd given up his citizenship to run for president in Sri Lanka.

But the United States refused him (INAUDIBLE) to be. So he had to find some way of getting out of the country. So he left at night very stealthily with the support of the armed forces, who have a history of loyalty to Rajapaksa because he was the defense secretary at the time in the civil war.

He is credited with bringing that war to an end and getting the armed forces a free hand in doing that. There were very many alleged human rights violations, which are yet to be cleared up. But the fact remains that the armed forces are not only loyal to the office of the president and the prime minister but particularly to Rajapaksa who they see as one of their own.

He used to be in the armed forces. Having said that he's out. He did leave a letter behind. The order of things is a big muddle. The constitution clearly says if the president resigns, the Prime Minister in office at the time automatically becomes the acting president.

And that is what many opposition politicians and the people on the streets did not want so the opposition politicians decided the speaker would take over as acting president and not the Prime Minister.

So we have a really peculiar sign this morning. The speaker was supposed to formally announce the resignation of the President. But he was waiting for the prime minister to resign first.

The prime minister didn't resign because he was waiting for the speaker to announce the resignation of the president first so he would go into acting presidency immediately.

So all that happened on the premises of (INAUDIBLE) announced an emergency and a curfew, which was necessary at the time because (INAUDIBLE) seems to have calmed down a little bit now.

But somebody had to put something to authorize the armed forces to lend a hand to the police, who were obviously not able to handle the crowds and couldn't go beyond tear gas and cannons.

And (INAUDIBLE) stays that way and peace and (INAUDIBLE) helicopters fling overhead and over (INAUDIBLE).

But as I said, it is highly unlikely that calm is going to be restored and he got the incoming crisis is certainly not going to disappear overnight.

FOSTER: I want to bring Will in.

As you've been reporting, how the protesters have breached the residences of the president and the Prime Minister earlier in the week. Today you were reporting the state TV has been taken over.

[05:40:00]

FOSTER: And now we have had confirmation that the Prime Minister's office has been breached as well. There are people firing off fireworks from inside or firecrackers rather from the balcony of the building.

I mean there is one thing for the residences to be breached but for the prime minister's office to be breached, it does not speak to control of the military and the police, if the prime minister's office can be breached.

RIPLEY: It's anarchy, essentially. Things are falling apart. Walls are crumbling down. The problem is, is that in order to restore calm in a situation like that, you do not have a whole lot of options, aside from deploying overwhelming force to suppress the people, who are out.

Or you allow them to take over these facilities and try to govern from an alternate location. The Prime Minister, now the acting president, he is not actually at the offices, was not at the offices when they were breached.

So we do not exactly know specifically where he is. The protesters may like to know where he is, because that might be where they want to go next. This is what happens when you have people, who are absolutely desperate, people who are so angry, people who are acting from hunger, from rage, from inability to work or to live or to heal if they are sick because they can't get medicine.

And yet they see the people in positions of power, who live in these lavish mansions and have all of these luxuries and then are still not following through with promises that they made.

The deal was not that the president leave the country and then the Prime Minister takes over. That is not what people said they wanted. They said they wanted the president to resign. They wanted the Prime Minister to resign. As of now, Max, neither of those two things have happened, at least in terms of official resignations yet.

There might be a letter but officially they have not heard of any resignation of the president yet. Maybe that will happen in the coming hours.

FOSTER: They control the state TV, so they're presumably in control of some of the messaging from there as well.

Will and Padma, thank you both very much indeed.

We continue to follow developments, breaking news developments, out of Sri Lanka.

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[05:45:00]

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FOSTER: More now on our breaking news. Major leadership changes in Sri Lanka amid the country's political and economic turmoil. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has now been appointed acting president of the country, a move that enraged protesters who were demanding his resignation over the country's financial crisis.

Protesters have seen breached the prime minister's compound, taking over his offices levels and they've also entered the state TV premises, urging safair (ph) not to give airtime to politicians.

This comes hours after the now former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled Sri Lanka for the Maldives before he was due to formally resign today as president. Earlier a state of emergency was ordered to the country's western province, which includes the capital after the police fired tear gas and clashed with protesters in Colombo.

Now elsewhere, Ukraine is claiming a victory in the south, even as the Russian forces continue hammering the country's east. On Tuesday more strikes pounded Ukraine second's largest city, Kharkiv. Further south, Ukraine is reporting heavy shelling and airstrikes in the Donetsk region as Russian forces look to capture the entire Donbas.

It comes as the death toll continues to rise from Saturday's brutal rocket attack on the town near the front lines in Donetsk. Ukraine says at least 47 people were killed and another nine were rescued from the rubble.

Let's bring in CNN's Scott McLean, live in Kyiv.

What's the situation, the latest on the ground there?

SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Obviously ears perk up when you hear anything about Enerhodar because this city is occupied by the Russians. It also has the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant. And so yesterday, according to the mayor, there were a series of explosions there.

The Russians said that this was a Ukrainian drone strike, which hit a building near to that nuclear power plant. The Ukrainians said they are not responsible for any kind of a strike on that city, saying that when they come to take it back, they will know.

But obviously there's plenty of concern when there is fighting in that city, since we saw some fighting there in the early days of war as well.

You mentioned also the situation in the southern part of the country. This is where the Ukrainians have carried out a missile strike that hit what they say was a weapons depot. The Russians say that it was some fertilizer.

But new satellite pictures show the crater in the ground is enormous. There is also plenty of damage, severe damage over a wide area to the buildings next to it. The Russians say that it was American supplied weapons that carried out this attack by the Ukrainians.

The Ukrainian President did not confirm that it was the American-made HIMARS system, the artillery system that was used. But he hinted at it, saying that the Russians, they are getting a taste of modern weaponry while they are stuck using weapons from the Soviet era, that are much older and much less effective.

But obviously the Ukrainians will need a lot more of those weapons if They are going to make serious progress and actually take back -- take back territory.

[05:50:00] MCLEAN: One other thing we are keeping our eye on, a court case today that is going to take place in a little over an hour from now. It is an appeals hearing for a 21-year-old Russian soldier named Vadim Shyshimarin. He was the very first Russian to be convicted in a Ukrainian court of war crimes, accused of -- convicted, I should say, of killing a 62-year-old man on a bicycle.

He was sentenced to life in prison. And his lawyer says the punishment does not fit the crime.

FOSTER: OK, that's the latest from Scott's from Kyiv.

We are continuing to follow the developments out of Sri Lanka. Some chaos and anarchy, one could argue, in Colombo, as various public buildings are being taken over. An update on that after the break as we continue to monitor the leadership crisis in Sri Lanka.

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[05:55:00]

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FOSTER: Major leadership changes in Sri Lanka in the country's political and economic turmoil. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has been appointed acting president of the country, a move that enraged protesters demanding his resignation over the country's financial crisis.

Protesters are since breached the prime minister's compound, taking over offices, entering state TV premises, urging the staff not to give time to politicians. This hours after the former president fled for the Maldives before he was due to formally resign today as president. A state of emergency was ordered for the country's western province, which includes the capital after the police fired tear gas and clashed with protesters in Colombo.

Close watches over this for you throughout the day. Thank you for joining me here on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Max Foster in London. "EARLY START" is next here on CNN.