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Dramatic Aftermath of Odessa Strike; Germany Pledges Support to Poland in Event of Attack; Scorching Heat, Torrential Rains Globally; Spain's Snap Election; U.S. Dominate Vietnam at Women's World Cup; Berlin Police Find Wild Boar Instead of Lioness. Aired 3-4a ET
Aired July 22, 2023 - 03:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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LAILA HARRAK, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hello. Welcome to all of our viewers joining us around the world. I'm Laila Harrak. Ahead here on CNN NEWSROOM. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy vows to respond to Russia's attacks on Odessa.
Plus, much of Europe bracing for scorching heat.
And:
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am predicting they absolutely repeat. I don't think there is any doubt about that if they show up, which they usually do.
HARRAK (voice-over): Team USA did show up in their first match against Vietnam, moving one step closer to a World Cup threepeat.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Live from CNN Center, this is CNN NEWSROOM with Laila Harrak.
HARRAK: We begin with dramatic video showing the impact of Russia's back-to-back strikes on Odessa.
This is body cam footage of officers arriving at the scene. The officers realized several people were still trapped in the rubble and managed to pull them out. The wave of strikes on the Odessa region have largely targeted grain infrastructure.
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VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): In total, since the beginning of the week, more than 20 people, including two children, had been affected by Russian terror in the Odessa region alone. Only absolute evil can inflict such strikes. There will be a response.
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HARRAK: Moscow is raising the stakes, conducting live fire drills in the Black Sea Friday. Russia quit the Ukraine grain deal and said any cargo ship headed to Ukraine can be considered a carrier of military equipment.
The United Nations is alarmed as grain prices soar. A top U.N. official says more than 360 million people worldwide need aid. Some of them may now go hungry or even starve to death. Let's get you more now.
The collapse of the grain deal and now those intense attacks on the Black Sea ports.
What does this concretely mean for food security?
NADA BASHIR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is a huge blow to food security. We were in this position just a year ago. Real warnings of countries pushed to the brink of famine. Millions struggling as a result of the food security crisis.
And we are right back in that position, now that Russia has withdrawn from the Black Sea grain initiative deal. We have heard those warnings repeatedly from the U.N., from international partners. Many countries dependent on the grain exports from Ukraine.
There has been stark warnings. To put it into context, in the last year since that deal was struck, we have seen the export of more than 32 million metric tons of agricultural goods.
And the U.N.'s own World Food Programme has shipped over 700,000 metric tons of food supplies to support its humanitarian operations across the globe, including areas like Afghanistan and Yemen. So this is a real concern and we have had a stark warning from the U.N. humanitarian affairs chief.
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MARTIN GRIFFITHS, U.N. UNDERSECRETARY-GENERAL FOR HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS: For many of those 362 million people, it's not a matter of sadness or disappointment. It is a matter of threat to their future and the future of their children and families.
They are not sad. They are angry. They are worried. They are concerned. Some will go hungry. Some will starve. Many may die as a result of these decisions.
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BASHIR: Now we have heard from the Turkiye and United Nations. They are committed to reviving this deal. President Erdogan sees this as a vital initiative and he will continue talks with President Zelenskyy and President Putin.
HARRAK: Thank you so much.
Germany says it will stand by Poland in case of a potential attack from Wagner fighters in neighboring Belarus. Members of the Russian mercenary group arrived at a base near the Polish border earlier this week and are due to hold joint military exercises.
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HARRAK: Poland calls that a provocation and is deploying troops on its eastern side. Russian president Vladimir Putin alleged Friday without any evidence that Poland is plotting to seize parts of Ukraine and Belarus.
Meantime, Mr. Putin cracking down on dissent at home. Russian military blogger Igor Girkin was taken into custody. He was charged with extremist activity after criticizing Putin. News of his detention came as Putin slammed the use of cluster munitions on the battlefield.
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FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): With Ukraine now using U.S.-supplied cluster munitions to try and penetrate the Russian army's entrenched positions on the southern front, Russian leader Vladimir Putin ripping into the U.S. and its allies for aiding Kyiv.
VLADIMIR PUTIN, PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA (through translator): The whole world can see that the supposedly invulnerable equipment that the west boasted about is on fire. And technically, it is often even inferior to some Soviet made weapons.
Yes, of course, additional Western armaments can be supplied and thrown into battle. This, of course, causes us certain damage and prolongs the conflict.
PLEITGEN (voice-over): But while Putin tries to project superiority on the battlefield, at home, the Kremlin continues to silence critical voices, even some of those supporting their war.
Prominent military blogger Igor Girkin, who also goes by Igor Strelkov, arrested today, his wife said, after remarks blasting the lack of progress of Russia's military campaign in Ukraine.
The situation with a special military operation and in the country in general is deplorable, to put it mildly, he said. This is a result of actions of the incumbent power.
Girkin is a former colonel in Russia's security service FSB and was the defense minister of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic in eastern Ukraine when the Malaysian jetliner MH-17 was shot down there in 2014.
Girkin was found guilty of mass murder in absentia by a Dutch court for involvement in the incident, which he has never acknowledged. While Girkin is considered a war criminal in Ukraine, he deems himself a Russian ultra nationalist who feels the war should be prosecuted even more brutally.
Putin's grip on power was only recently challenged by the uprising of the Wagner private military company and its boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin. Now the Russian leader wants to calm things down, CIA Director William Burns believes.
WILLIAM BURNS, CIA DIRECTOR: Putin is trying to buy time as he considers what to do with Wagner and what to do with Prigozhin. You know, Putin hates, in my experience anyway, the image that he's overreacting to things.
PLEITGEN (voice-over): But that doesn't mean Prigozhin is forgiven, Burns says.
BURNS: If I were Prigozhin, I wouldn't fire my food taster.
PLEITGEN (voice-over): Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Berlin.
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HARRAK: North Korea is said to have fired multiple cruise missiles toward the sea in the latest show of force against the South and the United States. South Korea said the missiles were launched early in the morning off the western coast of the Korean Peninsula.
It is the second time this week that Pyongyang has conducted a weapons test. And it all comes after a nuclear capable U.S. submarine made a port call in South Korea, a move that the North criticized as crossing a red line.
Greece is bracing for another round of scorching heat with temperatures expected to soar as high as 45 degrees Celsius for the next two days. Authorities have ordered all archaeological sites, including the Acropolis, to close for the afternoons. But the extreme weather is not limited to Greece.
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HARRAK: Let's go back to Italy, where 19 major cities are still on red alert due to intense heat. As the northern regions clean up from a wave of violent hailstorms. More than 100 people were hurt as tennis ball-sized hail fell.
Crews in Western India will continue searching for survivors in the coming hours following a landslide that killed at least 22 people. They had to call rescue efforts to a halt Friday evening due to poor visibility and still more heavy rainfall.
Still ahead, a possible changing of the guard in Spain. After years of center left politics, the conservatives are well positioned to win Sunday's parliamentary election. A live report from Madrid coming up next.
Plus this. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRAK (voice-over): Excitement building at the Women's World Cup as reigning champs Team USA breeze past Vietnam in their opening match. Those details and all the latest action coming up in a live report next.
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Spain may become the latest European country to swing to the Right. Voters will head to the polls in 24 hours to pick their next government.
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HARRAK: Opinion polls show the conservative Popular Party is poised to win the most seats. Socialist prime minister Pedro Sanchez called snap parliamentary elections after the coalition of his party and left-wing partners suffered big losses in May's regional and local elections.
But whoever wins will likely need to form a coalition to govern. Al Goodman joins us live from Madrid.
Good to have you with us. Talk to us about some of the challenges facing the incumbent, Pedro Sanchez.
AL GOODMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I want to show you a post office with this distinctive yellow sign. The post offices across Spain have had an outsized role in this. There is a record number of absentee ballots requested, 2.5 million. And 94 percent of those have been submitted.
So the post office is staying open very long hours. Many Spaniards are on the coast for vacations, which is why they wanted to vote absentee. The post office hired 20,000 more workers.
Now the polls, as you say, predicting a victory for the main conservative party but falling short of a majority. The likely candidate for that coalition government on the Right would be with the far right Vox party.
If that happens it would be the first time that a far right party has been in the Spanish government since the Francisco Franco dictatorship, which ended almost 50 years ago with his death.
Or will the socialist prime minister somehow redo things?
There has been a huge push here to be able to make a coalition himself with other leftist parties. Europe is definitely watching this because far right parties are advancing in Italy. In Finland, far right parties just entered the government. In Sweden, far right parties needed for parliament votes.
The European Commission president Ursula van der Leyen was in Spain less than a month ago and said that the European Union needs to do a better job so extremisms don't come in.
And Spaniards have been able to see the results of some of these main conservative party with the far right deals in local governments since the elections at the end of May, where the socialists were ousted, which prompted these elections.
And what Spaniards are seeing is that the far right is coming out saying there are doubters about the climate change. There are efforts to reduce gay rights and feminist -- attention on feminist and gender violence. So there are so many issues playing here as the Spaniards head to the polls on Sunday.
HARRAK: All right, Al Goodman reporting live from the Spanish capital. Thank you so much.
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HARRAK: In the Women's World Cup, Zambia and Japan are facing one another right now. Team USA got over its opening day jitters with an easy win over Vietnam, 3-0. The U.S. dominated, taking 28 shots at the goal. Vietnam had little recourse but to play defense and try to keep the score down.
Listen to the excitement of these young fans as they cheer the U.S. to a possible third championship.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm so excited to be able to watch Team U.S., love all the players, love Alex Morgan, hoping, really excited to see them in person.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm very confident they can do the threepeat. I think they will win all of their games.
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HARRAK: Well, CNN's Angus Watson joins us now live from Sydney where much of this tournament is played.
Take us with you, Angus. Give us a sense of the atmosphere.
ANGUS WATSON, CNN PRODUCER: It's wonderful atmosphere here at a fan zone in central Sydney, where the crowd behind me is glued to this match. Zambia making its first outing at a Women's World Cup.
This game comes after Team USA, the team everyone wants to see. The favorites for this tournament, playing against Vietnam in a stern test, I must say, defensively. You mentioned there, the Vietnamese, who are well organized. They kept a lot of defenders behind the ball.
The rode their luck and made sure the score didn't blow out at all. The keeper from Vietnam, Kim Tan, will be a star in her home country. Many more shots at the Americans had on goal.
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WATSON: But ultimately, Sophia Smith scoring two in the first half. And captain Lindsey Horan scoring a goal in the second was enough for Team USA. Their next, a tough one against the Netherlands on a high.
But it could have been much worse, as you say for Team Vietnam making their first appearance at a World Cup. Takes you back to 2019. Team USA knows how to score goals.
HARRAK: They do indeed. Thank you so much, Angus. Greatly appreciate it.
Angus Watson reporting from Sydney.
Well, earlier I spoke with CNN sports analyst Christina (sic) Brennan about Team USA's chances making it all the way to the finals and winning. Take a listen.
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CHRISTINE BRENNAN, CNN SPORTS ANALYST: The U.S. is certainly one of the favorites, if not the favorite, to win its third in a row. But there's a long way to go. We will see other teams starting to play now.
These European powerhouses I think are going to make a lot of news: England, Germany; Spain had a great start; Portugal, the Netherlands. So it is -- France. I could go on and on.
And I think the U.S. is going to have to play better. Alex Morgan missed a penalty kick. Megan Rapinoe did not look sharp. So the U.S. will need to be better but the U.S. knows it has to be better than they were against Vietnam.
So if they progress and if they play better from game to game through the tournament, as the U.S. has done in previous World Cups, I think they will be in decent shape to win it all.
The world has caught up to the U.S. and, in the case of some nations, they have been really good for a long time, like Germany. So we will see how it plays out. But it will not be an easy task for the United States.
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HARRAK: Christine Brennan talking to me earlier.
Seven months after winning the men's World Cup, football icon Lionel Messi pulled off a stunning victory with Inter Miami.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Substitution (INAUDIBLE) Messi.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here it is.
Messi!
HARRAK (voice-over): In the final moments of Friday's contested match, the strikers scored the game winning goal off a free kick to give this new team a 2-1 victory. Messi said after the game he saw the goal and knew he had to score.
He added the win could boost the club's confidence as it competes in the league's cup tournament. Miami's next match will be on Tuesday against Atlanta.
Somebody get me a ticket.
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HARRAK: Farewell to the great Tony Bennett, a rare talent and an American original who embodied the very essence of cool. We remember him and his incredible career, next.
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HARRAK: Zoo keepers in Columbus, Ohio, got a surprise when Sully, who they thought to be a male gorilla, gave birth. She didn't need any procedures that might have led to the discovery sooner. They said a gorilla's gender is hard to tell when they are young.
The error became apparent when they found Sully cuddling her newborn. They think her newborn is also a girl. Now they are trying to identify the father.
Police in Berlin have been telling people to stay indoors. There have been reports of a lioness on the loose. So the cops went on the prowl big time with two helicopters, three police vehicles, 100 officers, infrared cameras, hunters and a vet.
Well, finally on Friday, the police called it all off. Not a single indication of any lion. They did, however, spot some wild boar and are left with a hefty bill for the search.
Happy birthday to Prince George. He turns 10 today. The photograph of Prince George was taken earlier this month by a professional photographer. That's according to a statement by Kensington Palace. His mother, Kate Middleton, has often taken pictures of her children during past birthdays.
The one and only Tony Bennett has died.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "I LEFT MY HEART IN SAN FRANCISCO") HARRAK (voice-over): Bennett won his first Grammy with this song, which he recorded in 1962. He later said he never imagined it would become a hit, let alone his signature tune.
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Well, he stood alongside Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme and Dean Martin as he helped create "The Great American Songbook." His smooth tenor earned multiple awards and countless accolades over an eight-decade career.
Sinatra once called Bennett the best singer in the business. In his later years, Tony Bennett was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. He was 96 years old.
Thanks so much for watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Laila Harrak. "GLOBAL CONNECTIONS" is up next. And I'll see you tomorrow.
