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CNN International: Israel Launches Lethal Strike on Jenin; Family of Slain Teen Calls for Calm; Ukraine: Troops Gaining Ground Near Bakhmut; Russia: 700K Ukrainian Children Taken from War Zones; Scientists: Grazing Method could Lower Emissions. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired July 03, 2023 - 08:00   ET

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

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MAX FOSTER, CNN HOST: Hello and welcome to CNN "Newsroom". I'm Max Foster in London. Just ahead Israel launches a large scale military operation in the West Bank town of Jenin. What are the latest on this developing story? And France assesses the damage of six nights of rioting following the death of teenage boy shot dead by the police.

But the calls to end the violence are growing, including from the family of the victim. Then a CNN exclusive Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sat down with Erin Burnett and talks about Vladimir Putin and the slow push to recapture territories occupied by Russia.

Well, Israel calls it focus, counterterrorism and operation. Palestinians call it a new war crime against our defenseless people. Deadly violence is flowing once again in the West Bank as Israeli forces launched a lethal military operation in the Northern City Jenin. The Palestinian Health Ministry says at least eight people have been killed and that number is likely to rise and dozens more are injured.

Israel says it was striking terrorist infrastructure in the densely populated Jenin refugee camp. Separately, Israel is bracing for protests today as part of the ongoing campaign against the government's plan to judicial overhaul. Police are warning protesters they won't be allowed to block access to Ben Gurion Airport.

CNN's Hadas Gold is in Tel Aviv. First of all, Hadas, just take us through this latest operation the Israelis went in pretty hard.

HADAS GOLD, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Max. This is a scale of an Israeli Military raid that we have not seen in decades now. We've been regularly reporting on these military raids across the occupied West Bank but especially focused on Jenin, which is really considered a militant hotspot.

But what we saw overnight this reached a new level of intensity in the way and the methods in which the Israeli Military use they were using airstrikes. This is how this began around 1 am. Israeli airstrikes using drone striking what they said was a command and control center for militants and this operation as you know is ongoing as we speak.

Now Israeli Military saying that they were specifically focusing on what they call terrorist infrastructure. They say they were focusing on everything from weapons manufacturing sites, they say that they destroyed an improvised rocket launcher. They all say that in general, their goal is to remove Jenin is what they called a safe haven for militants.

Now, ironically, our team we were actually in Jenin yesterday speaking with residents there and we could regularly hear Israeli Military drones buzzing above us, but those same people that we were speaking to yesterday are telling us now that they have never seen Jenin like this.

And so many people are recalling the days of the Second Intifada, especially because for the first time and so many years, there are now Israeli tanks on the outskirts of Jenin. They haven't entered Jenin but there are Israeli tanks on the outskirts of Jenin. Residents are also reporting that Israeli bulldozers are bulldozing the street.

Ostensibly, this is to try and find and remove IEDs that militants have placed because a few weeks ago during another Israeli Military raid in Jenin, several IEDs exploded, not only disabling and disarming certain Israeli Armored Military vehicles, but also injuring Israeli soldiers.

And back after that raid, the Israeli Military telling us that was going to change their method of operations because of those IEDs. And it appears that what we're seeing today is that change in operations. Now according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, eight Palestinians have been killed and at least in dozens others have been injured.

We have not yet heard claims from militant groups on any of those killed or injured and Israeli soldier was injured as well. That's according to the IDF. And we know that exchanges of fire are still ongoing right now within the last hour. So the IDF saying exchanges of fires are ongoing at a mosque and that they carried out another airstrike.

They're saying to remove, "a threat", they don't specify what that threat is? Now, this is still an ongoing situation and the main question right now is, how long will this continue? Will the Israeli Military be in Jenin? And will this spread to other parts of the occupied West Bank.

And potentially Gaza, the militant group Hamas, the militant group that runs Gaza, has called on all of itself, they say to engage and strike Israel in any way possible. So again, the question is, will this be a sort of one day contained Israeli Military option? Israeli Military saying they don't plan to stay in Jenin forever.

They want to get in and out. But there is the potential that this could turn into something so much bigger. And again, people keep thinking back to the days of the Second Intifada, because those were the scenes we're seeing once again with the scenes of airstrikes and tanks some like, Max.

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FOSTER: Can I ask, also, this question of a demonstration is obviously completely separate all back to this judicial reform and the protests continue?

GOLD Yes, so we are actually just outside Tel Aviv Ben Gurion Airport where protesters are expected to arrive and mass right around 5, 5:30. Now their goal is to really disrupt operations here shut down the airport. And this is a continuation of the months of protests we've been seeing against the plan judicial reforms.

That would really completely change how Israel Supreme Court operates. Now, protesters are still coming out this despite the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, has said that he is walking back from some of the more controversial aspects of this judicial reform, namely the one that would have allowed the Israeli parliament to overturn Supreme Court decisions.

He recently said that it's completely off the table. But for these protesters, they say that's not enough, because there are other issues at hand, namely, how judges are selected? There are other issues, legal issues in hand. And also I think this protest movement has also developed into something more also a protest movement against this government.

This is the most right wing religious government in Israeli history. The question we're going to see today is how many protesters show up in the Israeli policing they're trying to limit the number of protesters are trying to keep them cordoned in a certain area, or the protests are saying they're going to come and they're going to try and shut down the operations in any way that they can, Max.

FOSTER: OK, Hadas, thank you. It appears things may be coming down after almost a week of violent protests in France. The grandmother of the team who was shot and killed by police last week, called for the violence to stop on Sunday. There are more than 150 people detained overnight and around 300 cars were set on fire.

But those figures are a sharp decline from what we've seen over the past several days. The Mayor of one Paris suburb says his family was the target of an assassination attempt. French President Emmanuel Macron plans to meet on Tuesday with 220 Mayors who've been dealing with the violence in their communities.

CNN's Nic Robinson joins us live from a Paris suburb. And there is a backlash isn't there to the level of violence and the level of damage done as well, costing millions of euros?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, just one tiny example, 99 town halls like the one behind me had been damaged to varying degrees, some far worse than this, the Interior Minister today announced $22 million dollars to repair just the CCTV systems, providing surveillance around the town halls. Of course, the overall damage bill is going to be much, much higher. As you say the violence does seem to be coming down is certainly what we witnessed on the streets last night. Riot police were out but they had less of the sort of cat and mouse chase had had the previous night with protesters.

Overall, a metric that I think is useful to look at to get a sense of how the violence is trending 352 fires last night 871, the previous night, about 2500 the night before 38, 3900 almost the night before that. So you can see the level of violence is coming down.

But also that's because this is very, very, very high level of police presence and Nahel's grandmother spoke over the weekend and echoed I think what we've been hearing from a lot of people and also from the government, that it is time for the violence to stop.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NADIA, GRANDMOTHER OF SHOOTING VICTIM: I blame the policeman who killed my grandson. I'm the grandmother I blamed the policeman who killed my grandson. That's all I want. The police they are here. Fortunately, they're here and the people who are breaking things that tell them stop, stop. They use Nahel's death as a pretext. Now they must stop.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTSON: And the part of what she says that's resonating is what she went on to say which is you're destroying buses, your mother's use the buses referring there to the protesters because so many of the protesters are young, the government set of 2000 people detained. The average age has been 17.

We've heard that some people arrested as young as 13. The message from the President over the weekend, President Macron was, you know, to parents, you know, keep your minors in the house, keep the young children in the house, don't let them go out and protest.

So she also said his grandmother also said, you know, don't destroy the town halls, your mother's are using the town halls, speaking to people here and other places where we've been to where there's been violence. That's what people say its yes the government needs to change things.

It needs to do things differently. The police need to do things differently. But also it's not right to go out and destroy the property that we all rely on in our daily lives. So I think that message, everything combined the tight security, their desire to get back to normality. This is beginning to take a little hold here, Max.

FOSTER: OK, Nic Robertson in Paris. Thank you. U.S. President Joe Biden has scheduled to travel to Europe next week for a three nation tour. First, Mr. Biden will meet with a British Prime Minister and King Charles in the U.K.

[08:10:00] Then he travels to the annual NATO Summit held in Lithuania this year where Russia's war on Ukraine will be high on the agenda. Finally Mr. Biden will stop over in Finland for U.S. Nordic leaders meeting now, to Russia's war in Ukraine and Vladimir Putin facing the greatest threat of his authority in two decades last month with the Wagner rebellion.

CNN's Erin Burnett sat down with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an exclusive interview and asked him about Russia's response to the short lived uprising. Here's what he had to say.

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ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: Mr. President, you know, you recently said that you have dealt and I'll quote you the way it the way it quoted with different Putin's it's a completely different set of traits in different periods. Now, of course, he's faced a rebellion and attempted coup from Yevgeny Prigozhin. Have you seen any changes in how you think he's acting in his behavior since the attempted coup?

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE: Yes, we see the reaction after certain Wagner steps. We see Putin's reaction, it's weak. Firstly, we see he doesn't control everything. Wagner is moving deep into Russia and taking certain regions shows how easy it is to do. Putin doesn't control the situation in the region.

He doesn't control the security situation. All of us understand that his whole army is in Ukraine. Almost entire armies there, that's why it's so easy for the Wagner troops, to march through Russia, who could have stopped him. We understand that Putin doesn't control the regional policy, and he doesn't control all those people in the regions. So all that vertical power he used to have just got crumbling down.

BURNETT: Do you believe he's fully in charge of the military right now when it comes to your front line and this counter offensive? Do you believe Putin is fully in charge of the Russian Military?

ZELENSKYY: I don't think he fully controls all the processes. He gives orders to the commander. It's understood. They are scared to lose their jobs. But he doesn't understand and doesn't control the middle layer of the Russian Military nor the lower rank officers and soldiers.

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FOSTER: You can see the full exclusive interview Wednesday 7 pm Eastern that's midnight here in London. Ukraine, it claims it's gaining ground in his counter offensive. A top Defense Official says its forces are advancing near the besieged City of Bakhmut and had retaken around 37 square kilometers over the past week.

Kyiv says Russia fires 17 drones into Ukraine overnight and 13 of them were shut down. This follows during the Texas weekend. Meanwhile, Moscow says it foiled a Ukrainian plots to kill the Russian backed Crimean Leader. According to Russia's security agency, the FSB, Ukraine recruited a Russian a man who tried to bomb his car.

Now Ben Wedeman is in Eastern Ukraine with the very latest from there. Their gains in some areas, and they're falling back in other areas. I understand them.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. In fact, in this -- , they ran the tennis -- , which is in the last part of the Luhansk region that Ukraine controls. Apparently, Ukrainian forces still holding that town are under intense pressure by the Russians. Now this is interesting because whereas in other areas, we've been reporting that the Ukrainians are making small incremental gains.

It appears that the Russians are on the offensive in that area, underscoring just the difficulty that the Ukrainians are facing while trying to pursue this counter offensive. That's well into its third week. Now, you mentioned the games the Ukrainians say they've made at this point.

It's only about 150 square kilometers in total, the amount of territory Ukraine has been able to fight back from the Russians. The Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said that it's hot everywhere. And in fact, what we're seeing is that, despite the brief disorder in Russian ranks during the Yevgeny Prigozhin's mutiny, that there doesn't seem to be any change in the disposition of Russian forces along the 1000 kilometer frontier.

Now, we've been hearing and directly from Russian prisoners of war talking about the difficulties that they have in terms of supplies of food of medicine, the poor quality of their officer corps. But nonetheless, despite all of that, it does appear that the Russians still have the ability not only to slow down to Ukrainian offensive, but to actually go on the offensive in other areas, Max.

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FOSTER: OK. Ben Wedeman, thank you. Still to come, Russia claims this removed 700,000 children from Ukrainian territory in order to protect them but Kyiv says thousands of children have been forcibly deported, more on that just ahead.

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FOSTER: The Russian lawmaker claims that around 700,000 children had been brought into Russian custody from conflict zones in the Ukraine. According to Grigory Karasin, their children were taken to Russia under a program aimed at protecting orphans and those abandoned during what Moscow calls its special military operation.

Ukraine, however, claims that thousands of children have been illegally and forcibly deported since Russia's war began. But the numbers are much smaller President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says around 19,500 children have been brought to Russia and that 371 had been returned to Ukraine. Clare Sebastian joins me now. First of all, why do you think Russia is putting this figure out there? CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, this lawmaker Grigory Karasin, veteran lawmaker he is the Head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the upper house of the Russian parliament. He seems to be echoing a number put out there last week by Sergey Lavrov who said that 5 million Ukrainian refugees were now in Russia and of them 700,000 children.

We don't know where they're getting this number, the disparity between that and the number of children as you pointed out that Ukraine that President Zelenskyy is accusing Russia of having illegally deported is pretty stark. But I think the point here we'll two things clearly are the point here.

One is that there is evidence that Russia despite branding this as an evacuation of taking children out of active war zones, bringing them they say in many cases with their parents and caregivers, there is evidence. CNN is actually spoken to some of these children and their parents that Russia has illegally deported children.

In some cases about 371 children, according to Zelenskyy have been brought back but there is thousands of children still illegally on Russian territory. And there is enough evidence -- , Max, for the International Criminal Court to have indicted President Putin and his children's rights commissioner back in March.

But Russia, this is the second point is not hiding this. They are making no attempt to hide this despite the fact that the international community views the illegal deportation of children as a war crime not only this lawmaker coming out there and talking about it and using it as a pretext to accuse Ukraine of mistreating children.

But Maria Lvova-Belova, the Children's Rights Commission actually sat for an interview several months ago with Vice News allowed herself to be asked outright, are you a war criminal? They are making no effort to hide this whatsoever. Their claim that this is evacuations, though, does not stand up to much scrutiny when you look into these cases.

FOSTER: In terms of you know, it's very difficult getting any sort of facts or trying to determine the exact details here but what do we understand about the children that have moved from Ukraine into Russia and how they're living?

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SEBASTIAN: So we only know some of the cases that we've been able to glean as a result of the reporting of our teams on the ground in Ukraine, Max, certainly we don't know all of the 19,500 that Zelenskyy has noticed, and certainly not the 700,000 that Moscow is now talking about. But there are instances like, for example, children being sent by their parents to summer camps.

For example, in Crimea that was only supposed to last a couple of weeks and then not being able to get them back until many months later. And even then they had to go and collect themselves through active war zones undergoing a lot of danger, and things like that. So this is something that is extremely murky, but we know that this is part of the backdrop to this ongoing war, Max.

FOSTER: OK, Clare Sebastian, thank you. So food for thought, in the beginning, there was buffalo grazing the land. Now filmmaker and Professor show us the lessons they can teach us to help save the planet. We'll return just a moment.

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FOSTER: Cows and other livestock have been major contributors to carbon emissions that warm up our planet. But now some scientists are saying that they can be part of the solution to combat climate change. A Chief Climate Correspondent, Bill Weir explains.

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BILL WEIR, CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT (voice over): In the beginning was the buffalo, tens of millions of them wandering the land munching wild grasses and using poop and hooves to create rich fertile soil up to 15 feet deep.

BILL WEIR (on camera): Look at this.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

BILL WEIR (voice over): But since Americans replaced buffalo with cows, generations of fertilizers and pesticides, tilling and overgrazing have turned much of that nutrient rich soil into lifeless dirt. But not on farms, where they graze cows, just like wild buffalo.

PETER BYCK, FILMMAKER/ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR: Well, so adaptive multi paddock grazing, amp grazing is a way that mimics the way bison have moved across the Great Plains. And so it's really about the animals hit an area really hard. And then they leave it for a long time.

BILL WEIR (voice over): Peter Byck is a Professor at Arizona State University. And he believes that if enough beef and dairy operations copy this simple hack, cattle could actually become an ally in the fight against climate change.

BYCK: I anticipate we'll get a lot of pushback. Because people are not thinking that cows can be a part of the solution.

BILL WEIR (on camera): Not only are you going against the grain of environmentalists who think meat is evil.

BYCK: Yes.

BILL WEIR (on camera): For lots of reasons, you took money from McDonald's for this.

BYCK: Yes, I asked for money from McDonald's for this. I wanted to go to big companies because if they don't change, we don't get there.

BILL WEIR (voice over): For his Docu series Roots so deep you can see the devil down there, big assembled a team of scientists. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Were really interested in insects that live in poop.

BILL WEIR (voice over): Experts and bugs, birds.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, --

BILL WEIR (voice over): Cows, soils and carbon. They spent years comparing five sets of neighboring farms in the southeast. On one side, traditional grazers who let cows roam one big field for months at a time and often cut fertilize grass for hay. On the other side, camp grazers who never mow or fertilize.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We open a gate they go through it takes five minutes -- roll up a wire.

BILL WEIR (voice over): And with a single line of electrical fence move their cows from one patch of high grass to the next.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not smelling fat.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is how easy it is, Peter?

BILL WEIR (voice over): While there's science is yet to be published and peer reviewed. Byck says early data has found amp farms pulling down up to four times the carbon while holding 25 percent more microbes three times the bird life and twice as much rain per hour.

BYCK: If it's 1000 acre farm, it's 54 million gallons of water. That's now washing your soil away versus soaking into your land.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Wow, look at this grass.

BILL WEIR (voice over): But this is also a human experiment to see whether data and respectful discussion can change hearts and minds.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This was grazed about 40 days ago. And this hadn't been fertilized in 12 years.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Awesome.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When we got out of spending money on fertilizer was huge. And I don't think that ever happened.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is such a stress relief. We just don't worry about a lot of it anymore.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And they you don't even fertilize when you plant your grain.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Awesome, It sounds crazy. But if we're letting Mother Nature do the work.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would it be an interesting thing if you didn't have to pay for fertilizer?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would that be --

BILL WEIR (voice over): Curtis Spangler is one of the conventional farmers in Roots so deep. And he says his mind was changed when he realized he now has a way to double his herd and quit his second off farm job.

CURTIS SPANGLER, FARMER: And right now we have to dump thousands of dollars into nitrogen every year that really if we just change a couple things might be able to save that money to put it toward other resources.

BILL WEIR (on camera): Is that something you're committed to doing now as a result of this project?

SPANGLER: Yes, we're really looking and seeing the benefits of it and how we can work it.

BILL WEIR (voice over): So as we hit the height of grilling season, a little food for thought.

BYCK: There is ways to produce meat that is not good for the planet. And there's ways to produce meat that's really good for the planet. And that's the nuance that's been missing.

BILL WEIR (voice over): Bill Weir, CNN, Jasper, Tennessee.

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FOSTER: There you go. Thanks for joining me here on CNN "Newsroom", I'm Max Foster in London. "World Sport" with Amanda Davis is up next.

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