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CNN International: MSF: U.N. Security Council Debates, Delays While Civilians in Gaza Die; Netanyahu Reveals Day After Plan for a Postwar Gaza; Saturday Marks Two Years Since Russia Invaded Ukraine; Navalny's Mother Says She's Seen Her Son's Body; U.S. Spacecraft Lands on the Moon. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired February 23, 2024 - 04:00   ET

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

[04:00:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're going to be announcing the sanctions against Putin, who is responsible for his death.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): I demand that my son's body be returned to me immediately.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The consequences of casting international humanitarian law to the wind will reverberate well beyond Gaza. It will be an enduring burden on our collective conscience.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are on the surface and we are transmitting and welcome to the moon. Houston, Odysseus has found his new home.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: Live from London, this is CNN NEWSROOM with Max Foster and Bianca Nobilo.

MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and a warm welcome to our viewers joining us from around the world. I'm Max Foster, Bianca off today, back next week.

It is Friday though, February the 23rd, 9 a.m. here in London, 11 a.m. in Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has unveiled a plan for the day after the war, the post-Hamas future of Gaza. More on that in just a moment.

But on the ground, Palestinian health officials say Israeli airstrikes killed at least 23 people in central Gaza on Thursday evening and the death toll could rise. CNN has reached out to the Israel Defence Forces for comment on that.

The A group, MSF, has been calling on the U.N. to deliver an immediate and sustained ceasefire in Gaza. The head of the group, also known as Doctors Without Borders, made an impassioned plea before the U.N. Security Council on Thursday. Christopher Lockyear accused the U.N. of repeatedly failing to address the conflict.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRISTOPHER LOCKYEAR, SECRETARY GENERAL, MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES: Meeting after meeting, resolution after resolution, this body has failed to effectively address this conflict. We have watched members of this council deliberate and delay while civilians die. The consequences of casting international humanitarian law to the wind will reverberate well beyond Gaza. It will be an enduring burden on our collective conscience.

This is not just political inaction, it has become political complicity.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: Negotiators are expected to meet today in Paris for the next round of work on a potential ceasefire and a hostage deal. Israel's war cabinet has agreed to send a negotiating team to meet with senior officials from the U.S., Egypt and Qatar.

Hamas's political leader wrapped up a visit to Egypt on Thursday, where they discussed the current state of negotiations. There's a growing sense of urgency to find agreement. Israel is threatening to expand its assault in Gaza's southernmost city, Rafah, if hostages are not released by the start of Ramadan, which is in just two weeks.

For more on all of this, Elliott joins us now. So this post-war vision that Netanyahu has for Gaza, take us through it.

ELLIOTT GOTKINE, JOURNALIST: It's kind of a crystallization of his musings over the past few weeks as to what Gaza must look like for this war to end.

And there are a few main points which we should probably look at as takeaways. First of all, Israel to maintain complete operational freedom in the Gaza Strip, he says, similar to what it has in the West Bank. He's calling for a de-radicalization of all institutions in Gaza, religious institutions, welfare institutions, educational institutions.

He's calling for the whole of the Gaza Strip to be demilitarized, except for the bare minimum of weapons that would be needed to maintain law and order. Also saying that Gaza should be administered by unaffiliated locals. In other words, people that aren't affiliated to Hamas or Islamic Jihad in so far as is possible.

Controversially, he's also saying that there would need to be a security buffer zone inside the borders of the Gaza Strip for as long as is deemed necessary. That's something the U.S. has expressed objections to. And also that Israel would control the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, something Egypt has expressed its opposition to.

There are a number of other things in there. No more UNRWA, the Palestinian Refugee Agency, where we know that the Israelis are already wanting that to come about. And also saying that reconstruction of the Gaza Strip wouldn't happen without -- would only happen, excuse me, with countries that are pre-approved by Israel.

But we already know from the United Arab Emirates and others, they have said that unless there is some kind of clear political horizon, a clear pathway towards an independent Palestinian state, they will not foot the bill for the reconstruction of Gaza.

FOSTER: And presumably this feeds into these hostage prisoner negotiation talks. What's based on that? Very positive, presumably, that Israel's sending a team to Paris.

[04:05:00]

GOTKINE: Absolutely. We knew that Bill Burns, the director of the CIA, was going to be in Paris along with his Egyptian counterpart, the Qatari Prime Minister. But up until last night, the Israelis hadn't said that they were going to send a delegation.

Now they have not only approved the sending of a delegation, they said they were waiting for confirmation that medicines they'd sent to be given to hostages in Gaza were getting to where they needed to get to. Not only have they approved the sending of a delegation headed up by the Mossad chief David Barnea, but also that they will give him more powers to undertake substantive negotiations rather than just being in listening mode. And I think that, together with the fact that Hamas had a delegation in Cairo earlier this week, the Egyptians and the Qataris together are the main mediators in all of this, of course.

Plus, you've got this pressure from the U.S.. We had Brett McGurk, the U.S.'s envoy to the Middle East, in Israel yesterday meeting with Netanyahu and others to push Israel to carry out these negotiations. The U.S. wants to, of course, forestall a ground operation in Rafah, and it wants to get this humanitarian pause in place in order to avoid that Rafah operation happening.

So there is now cautious optimism, I would call it, that some kind of deal can be done that would see a humanitarian pause in fighting, the release of some, maybe not all of the Israeli hostages, and also the freeing of some Palestinian prisoners, and of course, at least a temporary end to the fighting.

FOSTER: Civilians in Gaza are obviously much more focused on immediate relief. What's the situation there?

GOTKINE: The situation remains dire, Max, and we were just, you were just referring to the Secretary General of Medecins Sans Frontieres speaking to the U.N. Security Council and saying that inaction is tantamount to complicity, and describing situations where doctors, for example, are having to reuse gauze.

They've run out of the most basic supplies such as gauze. They're having to, you know, wash the blood out of gauze and then reuse them on other people. Obviously, there's a risk there of spreading further disease. We know from the World Food Programme that one in six children under

the age of two are acutely malnourished, and according to the United Nations Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, that pretty much the whole population of the Gaza Strip is at risk of famine.

So, the situation remains dire, and it's a function of the lack of aid that is going in, that there isn't enough aid going into the Gaza Strip, that is causing that breakdown in law and order that we described yesterday, and the World Food Programme suspending deliveries, for example. Because if there was more aid there, people wouldn't be so desperate to try to raid these trucks or indeed to steal items whose prices have rocketed as a result of the dearth of aid that's in the Gaza Strip.

FOSTER: Elliott, thank you so much.

Now, Jordan's foreign minister says Israel is being allowed to act in complete disregard of international law. He spoke during the fourth day of hearings at the International Court of Justice. The United Nations General Assembly asked the court to issue a non-binding ruling on Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories.

Jordan's representative says the aggression on Gaza must end.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AYMAN SAFADI, JORDANIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: No country must be allowed to be above the law. Israel is acting and has been allowed to act in complete disregard of international law. That cannot continue.

The occupation is unlawful. It is inhumane. It must end. Yet Israel has been systematically consolidating the occupation. It is blatantly denying Palestinians right to self-determination.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: Israel is not participating in the hearings, but in written comments said the court's involvement could harm negotiations for settlement.

The Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen carried out a number of launches on Thursday in their latest attacks in the Red Sea and the Middle East. A U.S. official says Israeli defenses shot down a missile fired from Houthi territory towards Israel.

U.S. and coalition forces shot down six attack drones that U.S. Central Command says were an imminent threat. The Houthis also launched two anti-ship missiles towards the Red Sea, one of which damaged a British-owned cargo ship and injured one person. The militant group says it's now using submarine weapons and threatens to escalate its attacks if Israel ramps up operations in Gaza.

Saturday marks the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The country's military is playing defense on the front lines and asking allies for more aid as Russian forces have made some notable advances in the east in the past few weeks. Help from the U.S. is still on hold after House Republicans refused to

take up a military aid bill before leaving Washington for a two-week vacation.

Ukraine's president says his forces will fight on as best they can.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT: Will Ukrainians survive without Congress support? Of course, some will, but we won't all.

And if we understand this price, if the world is ready for this.

[04:10:00]

OK, you will see it. But it's tragedy. It will be tragedy for all of us, not only for Ukraine, not only for Ukrainians. And you will see that they will go. Putin will never stay, will never stop. He will go through Eastern Europe because he wants it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: On the diplomatic front, Russia's foreign minister says Moscow is ready to talk about Ukraine with the U.S. But he says the negotiations must be open and honest. Meanwhile, the White House warning that Vladimir Putin is capitalizing on congressional inaction on Ukraine.

It also says deepening military ties between Russia and Iran could bring new sanctions against Tehran in the coming days.

The U.S. is set to announce what's described as the largest single round of sanctions against Russia since the start of the war in Ukraine. They will come a week after the death of Putin critic Alexei Navalny and include more than 500 targets.

U.S. President Joe Biden says these new sanctions are being imposed directly against Vladimir Putin, who was responsible for Navalny's death. He met with Navalny's wife and daughter in California on Thursday, expressing his heartfelt condolences.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He was a man of incredible courage. And it's amazing how his wife and daughter are emulating that. And we're going to be announcing the sanctions against Putin, who is responsible for his death.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: Well, meanwhile, in Russia, Navalny's mother has finally been allowed to see her son's body. But she says authorities are insisting on a number of conditions before his burial, including a secret funeral.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) LYUDMILA NAVALNAYA, ALEXEI NAVALNY'S MOTHER (through translator): According to the law, they should have given me Alexei's body right away, but they haven't done it yet. Instead, they blackmailed me and set conditions for where, when and how Alexei should be buried. It is illegal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: CNN has a team of reporters covering all of the latest developments for you. CNN's Christiane Amanpour is in Kyiv for us and Nick Paton Walsh is in Kherson.

But first, we begin with CNN producer Sebastian Shukla, who's joining us from Berlin. Very powerful statements coming from Navalny's mother.

SEBASTIAN SHUKLA, CNN PRODUCER: Yes, that's right, Max. It's been a week since Alexei Navalny died in Russia's high north in that Arctic penal colony. And since that time, Alexei Navalny's mother has been on the hunt to make sure that she is able to get his body into their possession. And we heard from her last night just about what the terms of getting the body back to the family may include.

Have a listen again to what she had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NAVALNAYA (through translator): Yesterday evening, they secretly took me to the morgue where they showed me Alexei. The investigators claim that they know the cause of the death, that they have all the medical and legal documents ready, which I saw. And I signed the medical death certificate.

According to the law, they should have given me Alexei's body right away, but they haven't done it yet. Instead, they blackmailed me and set conditions for where, when and how Alexei should be buried. It is illegal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SHUKLA: After Lyudmila Navalnaya made that statement, we heard from Alexei Navalny's aides, who said that actually the death certificate statement listed his death as natural causes. And what we appear to be seeing now is a concerted effort by the Kremlin and the Russian authorities to dampen down any funeral plans that may well be for Alexei Navalny.

Navalny's mother saying that she was offered a private plane to take the body back to Moscow, that his body would not be allowed to be stored anywhere centrally within the Russian capital. And that even the option to -- one option of a cemetery that was put forward was ruled out completely before agreeing on a second one.

Max, what the message seems to be here from the Kremlin is that they are looking to avoid any particular protests or outpourings of grief for the passing of Alexei Navalny.

FOSTER: Yes, in terms of what's happening on the ground, obviously, it's so defined, isn't it, by U.S. aid, where do we stand on that?

SHUKLA: Yes, in Ukraine, as we come up to the second anniversary and into the third year of the war in Ukraine, there is a huge aid bill, which is still stuck in Congress that is desperately needed by President Zelenskyy and his armed forces as they try to combat what we have seen in recent days, in particular, as small advances from the Russian side on the battlefield taking areas, strategic, small but strategic towns like Avdiivka in the Donetsk region.

But as we look ahead into this year, Max, there is growing concern, I think, about a potential change in the White House, the failed counteroffensive that happened last year, which Ukraine desperately needs to look to try to reverse.

[04:15:03]

But also, for the Ukrainian army itself, they have new leadership under General Syrskyi. What will he bring? And how will he be different from his predecessor, Valerii Zaluzhnyi? Max.

FOSTER: Sebastian Shukla in Berlin. Thank you so much.

Ukraine is taking heavy drone fire ahead of Saturday's second anniversary of Russia's brutal invasion, Shukla was talking about there. Kyiv says three people were killed in Odessa after drone debris crashed on a building and caused a fire earlier this morning. At least eight others were injured in central Ukraine, where a drone made a direct hit on a residential building. Kyiv says it shot down 23 of about 30 drones launched by Russia.

Meanwhile, the city of Kherson has been free from Russian troops for more than 15 months. But as Nick Paton Walsh reports, life is still a grinding struggle and hope is often hard to find.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's night when it's loudest. Kherson has seen every stage of the war's two years invasion, occupation and liberation. Yet day is when the damage is clearest.

WALSH: Well, the Russians may be now on the other side of the river, but you can see the force of the explosions that hit here just by these tree branches thrown up here on top of a roof. And it feels kind of like a remote occupation through Russian drone strikes, artillery attacks as well. So many of the buildings around here, devastated.

WALSH (voice-over): But Russian positions are visible across the water. And on this side, freshly dug trenches show how worried Ukraine is still. Across the river, Ukraine sent troops months ago, their hopes of a lightning dash to Crimea stuck in this rubble. And this week, Russia raised their flag over the tiny Ukrainian foothold of Krynky. Kyiv denied they'd taken it and said drone footage showed the Russians fleeing.

Yet just meters from the Ruhr, a thousand of daily silent stories of survival in a city Russia cannot own, only crush with seemingly inexhaustible shelling.

At 4:00 a.m., we were woken by three shells. They landed 100 meters away.

WALSH: He's saying that they were first hit in November and that blew out the glass in this flat here. They moved to their mother's apartment over there and that basically saved their lives last night. Because the shrapnel from the mortar that landed here, went all the way up into the flat where they used to live.

WALSH (voice-over): In basement churches, the prayers are for basics.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translated text): To stay warm, to find bread, to have food. It's a hard path. But we keep walking it.

WALSH (voice-over): Spilling out into the light part of a thousand people still in this district of the city, when before the war, there were 30 times that. Sophia (ph) has outlasted her six siblings and gets food for her adult daughter.

SOPHIA (through translated text): I want to get on time to another food distribution. Yesterday they gave chocolates and a hot meal. Today who knows? There were roses here, everywhere. So many roses.

WALSH (voice-over): As Putin's war enters its third year, there seems no end to a million tiny unseen agonies.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking Foreign Language)

SOPHIA (through translated text): Welcome. My eyes hurt. But my deepest desire -- I don't want anything, anything but the bright sun.

WALSH (voice-over): The old radio brings bad news of Russia assaulting Krynky.

SOPHIA (through translated text): Those bastards, they jumped on us.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translated text): They already took Krynky.

SOPHIA (through translated text): No they didn't. I just heard that they didn't. It's hard, there was a fight there today.

We will not push them back. Why? They will push them back, why not?

WALSH (voice-over): The war in every home, the normal, the boring, still targets today and tomorrow.

Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, Kherson, Ukraine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: A U.S. spacecraft has touched down from the moon for the first time since the Apollo era.

[04:20:00]

It wasn't a flawless landing, but NASA is celebrating.

Plus, we're taking a close look inside the spacecraft that made the lunar landing. It's what is expected to do during that mission just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What an outstanding effort. I know this was a nail- biter. But we are on the surface and we are transmitting. And welcome to the moon.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Houston, Odysseus has found his new home.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: That standing ovation as the Odysseus lander, known as Odie, touched down on the moon. This is the first time in more than half a century that an American-made spacecraft has done just that.

We're told the Odysseus is upright and it's been sending back data as well. We are awaiting the first images. CNN's Kristin Fisher takes up the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KRISTIN FISHER, CNN SPACE AND DEFENSE CORRESPONDENT: Intuitive Machines has just made history as the first private company to successfully land a spacecraft on the surface of the moon. Its Odysseus lunar lander is standing upright, according to the company, and is successfully transmitting data, although we're still waiting for those first few pictures.

Now, this was really a tense final few moments for this mission. Just a few hours before landing, Intuitive Machines announced that there was an issue with Odysseus's navigation system. It wasn't working, but in a spectacular example of a public-private partnership, it just so happened that one of Odysseus's, or Intuitive Machines', paying customers, NASA, had an experimental piece of equipment that did the exact same thing as this broken piece of navigation software.

And so engineers on Earth were able to patch up a fix and allow Odysseus to safely navigate that treacherous terrain on the south pole of the moon, dodging craters and boulders to find a safe space to land.

And so that is what happened. It took a little bit longer than the company thought to communicate with the spacecraft, but it is sending back data now. And this is now the first time that any American spacecraft has landed on the surface of the moon since the end of the Apollo program back in 1972.

So it's a win for NASA as a sponsor of this mission, but certainly a win for this Texas-based company, Intuitive Machines. They were able to do for about $100 million what NASA was able to do with the Apollo program with a much larger budget. So some big cheers from that mission control room when the landing happened.

[04:25:00]

And now we get to see what Odysseus can do on the surface of the moon for the next week or so.

Kristin Fisher, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: Well, a tremendous achievement. Has many people wondering what took the U.S. so long to get back to the moon? We asked retired astronaut Leroy Chiao.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LEROY CHIAO, NASA ASTRONAUT/PH.D. (RET.): We won the so-called space race. We beat the Soviets to the moon. We landed all the, you know, the 12 astronauts that were able to set foot on the moon. And we kind of declared victory. And there was really no political reason to spend the money to keep going or to go back in the intervening years. It's a little bit surprising, but when you think about it, you know, all decisions basically come down to politics in the end. And so then if you think it from that perspective, then it makes sense.

To me, it makes a lot of sense to go to the moon before you go to Mars -- or go back to the moon, I should say, because we haven't been there in, like you said, over 50 years, certainly not with humans. And, you know, it's we have to kind of relearn how to land humans on the moon.

We need to test out building a habitat on another planetary body and, you know, test our rovers, our spacesuits, our habitats, you know, train crews. You don't necessarily want your first astronauts on Mars to have never operated in that kind of reduced atmosphere, reduced gravity environment before.

And the reason you do it on the moon, the moon is only about three or four days away. If you have a problem, you can get your crew back quickly. Mars, on the other hand, even at closest approach when the planets are lined up, it takes around six months one way. So if you have a problem like Apollo 13 did going outbound, you're going to be over a year before you get your crew back.

So you want to make sure everything's going to work before you go ahead and do that trans-Mars injection burn.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: So what is exactly on board this commercial spacecraft that has landed on the moon? What's expected to happen during the mission as well? CNN's Tom Foreman takes a closer look at that.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We really know at this point is that this is on the surface of the moon. What shape it's in? What it's capable of doing? Those are the questions that still have to be answered.

We know that it had certain devices on board. For example, these, this is called a laser retro reflector array. The point of this was to install these basically on the moon so that when other craft came down, they had reference points to guide themselves in.

There was also equipment on board to record the lunar surface reaction to this craft coming down so they have a better idea of how it would react in that area to landings. To observe radio frequencies that might naturally occur that could interfere with future equipment, and the Embry-Riddle Eagle Cam. This could prove very important.

This was thrust off about 100 feet, 30 meters above the surface. It was a camera designed to take a bunch of pictures in about six seconds of the craft landing on the moon, designed by the students and faculty at Embry-Riddle. Those pictures could be very, very important if there is any damage to this craft.

What about the science that they're hoping to do? Well, of course, if it will work, they still want to find out about water in the regolith, which is the surface of the moon, all that gray sand and rock, all those things. They want to be able to see how much water might be there. Can you convert it into liquid oxygen for rocket fuel or into regular oxygen for breathing? Can you drink it? Is there enough of it? They want to look at the sunlight there.

They get a lot of sunlight in some of the high areas down here. That could generate a lot of power. That's why this area is so interesting to exploration right now.

And because of all this, it might be the area where you could have sustained human presence. And why does that matter? Because some believe that maybe a permanent base here could be an important link to traveling on to Mars sometime in the next couple of decades. We'll just have to see how well this lander can actually perform now that we know it is on the moon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: And staying in space for a moment, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured a strong solar flare on Thursday. That bright light, a white flash seen at the upper left of the sun's surface. The space agency says these solar flares, which are intense releases of energy from the sun, have the power to impact radio communications, also electric power grids. And they do pose a risk to spacecraft and astronauts as well. The flare is classified as an X6.3, X being the most intense classification. The third strong solar flare as well in the past two days.

Ahead, the destruction in Ukraine. Ordinary citizens are mounting their own resistance to the war by simply buying books or listening to the radio.

Plus, the world's top diplomats wrap up their summit in Brazil. What they're saying about the war in Ukraine, also the ceasefire in Gaza.