Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

South Korea Goes To The Polls To Elect New President After Yoon Crisis; Ukraine War Talks End With No Breakthrough; Ukraine Destroys 40 Aircraft Deep Inside Russia Ahead Of Peace Talks; Trump, Xi Will Likely Talk This Week; Latest Economic Forecasts Due Out This Week; Suspect in Boulder, Colorado Attack Charged With 16 Counts Of Attempted Murder; Witness Describes Aftermath Of Attack On Jewish Gathering; Nationalist Candidate Karol Nawrocki Wins Presidential Vote; Study: Glaciers On Track To Lose 40 Percent Of Their Mass. Aired 1-2a ET

Aired June 03, 2025 - 01:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[01:00:23]

ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN HOST: Hello and welcome to our viewers joining us from all around and to everyone streaming us on CNN Max. I'm Rosemary Church.

Just ahead, after months of political turmoil following a failed martial law decree, South Koreans are at the polls right now to choose their next president.

Maximalist demands and minimal negotiations. Why the peace talks between Russia and Ukraine seem to be at a standstill, even after Ukraine's strategic drone attacks deep inside Russian territory.

And later, a troubling new warning about the effects of climate change on the world's glaciers and the likely impact on our planet.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Live from Atlanta. This is CNN Newsroom with Rosemary Church.

CHURCH: Thanks for joining us. Well, we could know within the next few hours who will be South Korea's next president. Voters are going to the polls right now to choose who will succeed impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol. Liberal opposition party leader Lee Jae-myung is seen as the frontrunner. His main rival is conservative Kim Mun Soo.

The country is hoping to move on from months of political turmoil and division after the brief martial law declaration by former President Yoon in December. Yoon was impeached last year and still faces insurrection charges for sending troops to parliament. He denies any wrongdoing.

CNN's Mike Valerio joins us now live this hour from Seoul. Good to see you again, Mike. So what are voters telling you about the stakes involved in this critical vote that's still underway? MIKE VALERIO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Rosemary, no matter what political party voters are from, when they pass by us here in the heart of Seoul, in Gwanghomin Square, they're saying that they realize South Korea's key role in this portion of the world as a democratic bastion in East Asia, and they want both a reset and stability.

When we're talking about a reset to South Korea's democracy, imagine, Rosemary, we talked about it last hour, three acting presidents within the past six months, and that happening because the former president declared martial law, summoning troops to the National Assembly when he was perceived to be by himself and his allies in a political logjam, voters are saying they do not want to go back to a time like in the 1980s when they were fighting for democracy, when there were authoritarian governments in power. They say they're never going back to that.

And also stability, they need a trade deal with the United States. They need somebody who has captain of the ship to agree upon a trade deal. Let's hear from two voters who talked about what they were thinking when they went to vote earlier. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHIN KA-RAM, VOTER (through translator): I'm not in the generation that participated in the previous democratic movements, but I felt that democracy was under threat, and that feeling pushed me to come and vote today.

PARK RYEO-WON, VOTER (through translator): We shouldn't have to go through things like early presidential election again. It makes people exhausted. I think for the country to be stable, we need to avoid this kind of situation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VALERIO: So let's talk about the candidates, shall we? A quick primer into the world of South Korean politics. Lee Jae-myung Pronounced Lee Jae-myung in English. He's expected to win this contest. He's the liberal candidate from the Democratic Party. In brief, was formerly the governor of Gyeonggi Province, Rosemary, South Korea's most popular province.

Before that was mayor of Seongnam City, which you take the train about an hour south of here, you end up in Seongnam, a key part of South Korea's version of Silicon Valley.

Being from one of the liberal parties, he's in favor of government spending to spur economic growth, be it in AI or research and development. He wants more government spending, also a universal basic income, as he has in the past fashioned and likened himself as a South Korean version of Bernie Sanders.

In terms of foreign policy wants a firm commitment to the relationship with the United States, but also wants warmer, I repeat, warmer relations with both Beijing and to some extent Moscow and Pyongyang, which is a departure from the past. President Kim Moon-soo is the conservative candidate. He used to be a

labor minister in the Yoon government. The president who was kicked out office, sees, similar to the Republican Party in the United States, deregulation and tax cuts as a way of spurring the economy.

[01:05:03]

Also wants close ties with the United States and tough stances against North Korea. So to fill in the blanks, we are lucky enough to have Dr. Duyeon Kim with us, who is a senior adjunct fellowship member with the Center for New American security. So, Dr. Kim, thank you for being with us.

DR. DUYEON KIM, SENIOR ADJUNCT FELLOWSHIP MEMBER, CENTER FOR NEW AMERICAN SECURITY: Thank you for having me.

VALERIO: Let's talk about what this election is all about when we're talking to viewers from around the world. What else do they need to know about that's at play here?

KIM: Well, I think the vote right now today is all about South Koreans on both sides of the aisle fighting for democracy, what they think should be democracy. Democratic practices here. Of course, President Yoon Suk Yeol undermined democracy by declaring martial law, attempting it. Fortunately, he failed.

But for conservatives and some centrist voters, even they actually want to see a conservative president continue and continue to rule the country for the next five years. Because they actually see the frontrunner, progressive Lee Jae-myung, be anything but democratic. Because they've seen how he and his party that dominates the National Assembly. They've seen how they weaponize politics to actually try to destroy their opponent, try to paralyze the government.

And they're criticizing. They have criticized Lee Jae-myung. Even a prominent progressive politician has called Lee Jae-myung a monstrous dictator.

VALERIO: People should know in the international community that Lee Jae-myung is a very controversial, polarizing --

KIM: Yes.

VALERIO: -- candidate, very familiar to any South Korean. But I mean, hugely differing opinions about Lee Jae-myung.

KIM: Right. And the last presidential election, his nickname was Korea's Trump for his foul mouth, for deciding things on a whim, for not really having some sort of guiding star or ideology, but for deciding and making choices based on.

Critics say he decides based on what is good for him, benefits him personally and politically. And so this is where difficult to really predict exactly what his future foreign policy might be.

VALERIO: The conservative candidate criticized for perhaps not supporting the impeachment of the former president right after martial law.

KIM: Absolutely.

VALERIO: Some voters we've talked to said, you know what? Conservative party had its chance.

KIM: Right.

VALERIO: The former president declared martial law. It's time for a chance.

KIM: Right. And conservatives were split. The conservative party was split on whether to support or not support impeachment. But the broader South Korean public, they saw a divided conservative party. And that also -- that obviously taints the conservative candidate. It's unfair because he had nothing to do with it. But it still taints them because it's the second conservative president who was impeached and removed.

VALERIO: Let's talk about the future, wrap up our conversation. For all of our international viewers who are dipping into this critically important moment, what are the biggest challenges ahead? The economy, diplomacy, what's on your radar?

KIM: Right. So for the next president here in South Korea, the first order of business will have to be to restore stability, political stability, because it is so ideologically polarized here in South Korea. And the other, their first order of business will have to be to improve the economy, to improve the welfare of South Korean people.

And of course, with that comes with dealing with Trump's tariffs. Trump's tariffs has really not been an issue for this election because they have bigger domestic issues like the health of the democracy to deal with in this election. And also, Trump's tariffs have not directly hit the livelihoods of South Koreans yet, but it will. It's coming.

And so the next president will have to deal with that. Plus, of course, the North Korean nuclear threat, but also an aggressive China. And that's where South Koreans are also split. There are some progressives who are criticized for being pro-China. There are conservatives who are criticized for being too anti-China or too hostile to China, for example.

And so this is where the next president really will have to make a decision on whether it's going to align its approach with the United States and other democratic countries when it comes to dealing with other autocratic states or if they're going to choose a different path.

VALERIO: I was just told we have the luxury of a little bit more time. I want to ask you another issue is the American troops who are here on the Korean peninsula? There are just under 30,000American troops who serve as a check against China --

KIM: Right. VALERIO: -- and certainly protection for South Korea against North Korea. Can you talk about the different stances that these candidates have when it comes to continuing US Troops presence a few miles, a few kilometers away from where we're standing?

KIM: Sure. You know, actually, the progressive candidate, Lee Jae- myung, he is on the record for calling U.S. Forces Korea to be imperial forces because quite frankly, there are factions within the left, within the progressive base that actually do harbor anti- American sentiment and they're fiercely emotionally anti-Japan. And there are some factions that tend to be pro-China.

And so this is where, But the candidate Lee, in leading up to this election, he's modified his rhetoric.

[01:10:02]

He's modified his rhetoric to sound more centrist. He calls himself to sound more conservative because he obviously wants to win the centrist vote. But here again, it's really difficult to predict exactly how he'll approach America, how he'll approach the alliance and U.S. troops because, you know, again, you know, he's got strong foreign policy advisors, but he's also been criticized for taking matters into his own hands and deciding what's good for him personally and politically.

So we don't know if he's going to listen to his base, if he's going to take his own personal decisions or if he's going to listen to his foreign policy advisors. If Kim wins, I think we'll see more familiarity with South Korean foreign policy's strong alliance relationship with the United States.

VALERIO: Dr. Duyeon Kim, we are so lucky to have you. Rosemary, back home in America. We'll send it back to you. But a critical moment here in this part of the world. We will know who is the next president of South Korea in the next few hours, Rosemary.

CHURCH: And we'll all be watching very closely. Our thanks to Mike Valerio bringing us that live report from Seoul. Appreciate it.

Russian and Ukrainian officials met for a second round of peace talks in Istanbul on Monday, but the discussions ended nearly as soon as they began and without any major breakthroughs. Both sides did agree to work on a new prisoner exchange.

However, on the matter of a ceasefire, statements from both delegations indicate that neither side budged on their positions. Moscow, for its part, maintained its maximalist terms, which include Ukraine's surrender of four mainland regions that Russia attempted to illegally annex soon after the invasion in 2022 and the international legal recognition of Russia's control of Crimea. That is according to details of the peace memorandum reported by Russian state media.

Well, following Monday's meeting, the Ukrainian president revealed that his Turkish counterpart suggested a meeting between themselves, Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump. The direct peace talks came just one day after Ukraine's daring drone

strike operation targeting airfields deep inside Russia. The strikes damaged or destroyed dozens of Russian aircraft, according to the Ukrainian Security Service. Nick Paton Walsh breaks down how Ukraine carried out the operation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR (voice-over): A bird's eye view of humiliation. Ukrainian drones halfway across Russian Siberia seconds from hitting the Kremlin's most prized bombers. But the data was bad for Moscow. 117 drones hitting 41 long range bombers across Russia, a Ukrainian security source said.

A torn up skyline here in Belaya, exactly what Moscow dreaded and Ukraine needed a boost to its flagging morale, damaging Russia's war machine for sure, but maybe also its calculus in peace talks.

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT: Our Operation Spiderweb yesterday proved that Russia must feel what its losses mean. That is what will push it toward diplomacy.

WALSH (voice-over): Ukraine hit Irkutsk, 4,500 kilometers away from Ukraine, where Google Earth still shows similar propeller driven aircraft in the open. But they also struck Olenya right on the Arctic Circle. Similar planes also on Google. Another example of something that just was not meant to happen in Russia's brutal war of choice.

The how was as extraordinary Ukraine's security service head Vasyl Maliuk commenting here and releasing these images of the wooden mobile homes they used the roof cavities of to hide the drones. Before their release, once Ukraine said all their operatives were out of Russia.

The planes hit mainly the Tupolev 95 and Tupolev 22. Ukrainian source said. Aging easy to damage, hard to replace. They were partly behind the nightly terrors that beset Ukrainian civilians. Whether these strikes make a dent in this daily toll will take weeks to learn, but it may also damage the Kremlin quicker away from the front lines. Its pride hit hard.

Although state TV put on a fierce display of why Russia has been pummeling Ukraine so relentlessly. It may also too change its thinking, perhaps towards peace talks that continued Monday in Istanbul and of how long Russia can sustain this war if Ukraine keeps throwing painful surprises its way. Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHURCH: Joining us now is CNN political and national security analyst David Sanger. He's also the author of "New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West." Appreciate you being with us.

[01:15:06]

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Great to be back with you, Rosemary.

CHRUCH: So let's start with that audacious Ukrainian drone strike deep inside Russia that caused significant damage. One podcaster in the country calling it Russia's Pearl Harbor. So what message does this large scale Spiderweb operation, as Ukraine calls it, send to Russia, but also to Donald Trump?

SANGER: I think it sends a lot of messages to a lot of people. First of all, to the Russians, it told them the Ukraine war isn't over and that Ukraine had figured out how to fit, how to reach almost any part of Russia. Some of these air bases were pretty far out of range, thousands of miles from Ukraine in Siberia and so forth. Others were in closer.

The second was it showed remarkable carelessness on the part of the Russians who had lined up their Tupolev and other strategic bombers. These are bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons, sort of wingtip to wingtip, just sitting there as big open targets. And that's where the comparison to Pearl Harbor probably fits the best.

I think the third big lesson out of this is the Ukrainians took a huge risk. This is the first time they have hit something that is really part of Russia's nuclear weapons infrastructure. And I think the interesting question is how does Vladimir Putin react to that? I don't think he's going to take it just lying down.

And then the fourth one is just a lesson to us, Rosemary, because the way this was done, hiding these drones in a shipping container essentially, and having them sort of pop up close to the base, it's pretty easy to imagine having that happen to an American air base.

CHURCH: Right. And of course, that does take us to the peace talks in Istanbul where the Russians revealed their peace memorandum outlining their demands for an end to the fighting. What did you make of what they put forward? And was there any sign that Moscow serious about negotiating peace with Ukraine?

SANGER: Well, the meeting lasted about an hour, which tells you didn't have a whole lot to talk about. The Russians have not yet published the actual text, but we have a pretty good sense from previous encounters what's in it, including essentially that Ukraine turn over the four provinces, that Russia claims to be its own, that it vowed never to join NATO, that it never really challenged Russia because it would be restricted in the size of the military. they can keep.

I don't think any of those are acceptable right now to the Ukrainians, and I don't think it's an accident that they decided to do this attack just a day before those negotiations started up.

CHURCH: So how do you think Russia can continue its war of choice if Ukraine can launch more of these audacious strikes within Russia at any time, at a time of their choosing?

SANGER: Well, let's remember, first of all, harder to do the second time than the first. Right. They're waiting for you. But more importantly, this doesn't really affect the balance in the war itself. Russia is still occupying more and more territory, not very quickly, but grabbing it.

And it's not clear how quickly the Ukrainians could repeat the success of this attack. Their own stockpile of defensive weapons, of missiles, offensive weapons are all running down right now.

CHURCH: And how significant is it that Ukraine didn't tell the United States about its plan to do this? And what might that signal, do you think?

SANGER: Well, it's probably a good thing for the U.S. because I'm sure that the way the Russians are interpreting this is that the Ukrainians are degrading their nuclear infrastructure, particularly their nuclear delivery airplanes at Ukraine's behest.

And so it was interesting that almost everybody in the administration said to me simultaneously we had nothing to do with this. Now, maybe they didn't. I suspect they probably did not know in advance, even if they had an understanding of the general plan.

CHURCH: David Sanger, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate your analysis.

SANGER: Always great to be with you.

CHURCH: China and the U.S. are trading new accusations in the trade war.

[01:20:02]

But the White House says Presidents Trump and Xi are likely to speak by phone, perhaps this week in an effort to try to break the impasse. Details just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHURCH: Welcome back, everyone. The White House says President Trump will likely speak by phone with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping this week. Tensions are growing over the Trump tariffs, with China accusing the U.S. of provoking new economic and trade frictions. That follows President Trump's claim that Beijing has violated a trade truce agreed to last month.

[01:25:03]

U.S. financial markets closed slightly higher on Monday, despite Mr. Trump doubling steel and aluminum tariffs to 50 percent on Friday.

I want to bring in Justin Wolfers from Ann Arbor, Michigan. He is a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan. Great to have you with us.

JUSTIN WOLFERS, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AND PUBLIC POLICY, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN: A pleasure, Rosemary.

CHURCH: So President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping are expected to speak sometime this week. We don't know the specifics after Trump threw a spanner in the 90-day trade war pause between the U.S. and China by accusing Beijing of violations. What's this all about?

WOLFERS: So an important part of that agreement is to give the Americans access to the rare earth minerals that are an important but not widely understood part of the manufacturing of a lot of advanced technologies. And Trump is claiming that the Chinese have not lived up to their end of the deal.

The difficulty for those of us who follow all of this stuff closely is that the president has a long history of claiming things and only occasionally are they true. So it's very hard to tell you with any certainty what's actually going on.

CHURCH: So what do you expect to come out of any talks between Trump and Xi at this time once they actually get underway? And who has the leverage in discussions like this at this time?

WOLFERS: So Karp might be getting before the horse there, Rosemary. Last time, in order to get Xi's attention, Trump raised tariffs on China up to 145 percent, and they still hadn't gotten on the phone. Finally, both sides decided to send emissaries off to Geneva to meet.

And on the way there, Trump continued to claim that he hadn't called Xi, and the Chinese claimed the exact opposite. So there's a whole lot of middle school cafeteria energy about who'll call who when and under what conditions. And it was certainly incredibly costly for the American economy for us to get that far.

So, look, if these two have grown up and they've now got each other's phone numbers and know how to call, I think that's probably good news. You asked a much harder question, raised me about who has the leverage.

And I think it's -- I just want to warn you, I'm not sure that's really the right way to think about this. When Americans fail to buy things from China, you yes, that hurts the Chinese factory that's not going to be making those goods, but it hurts the Americans who aren't going to be getting those goods.

A lot of what we import from China, things like machinery and equipment, are actually an essential input into American business. And so that hurts not only the Chinese, but also the Americans.

CHURCH: And Justin, we are also expecting a number of economic indicators this week, including the world economic forecast being published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. What are your expectations?

WOLFERS: I've had so much bad news lately. I don't really know what to expect, but I do know what to fear. Look, the global economy is coming for a real tumble since the Trump administration and it's all been because of this system of chaos, really, that's riddled out throughout the globe and has led one organization after another to cut their expectations for global growth. The good news, to the extent that there is some, is that Trump walked

from the very worst of his instincts, that the tariffs on China, which at some point hit 145 percent now all the way miraculously down to a merely exorbitantly high 30 percent.

So it really depends whether you're comparing yourself to the worst of our worst days or perhaps to happier days back when the world was happily trading with each other.

CHURCH: So overall, where do you see the U.S. economy going from here and subsequently the global economy?

WOLFERS: Yes. So, the -- when you asked me this last, Rosemary, it's about a month ago, and I think I told you I felt pretty glum about the American economy. That uncertainty was at post-COVID highs. That consumer sentiment was in the toilet, that producer sentiment was in the toilet. And we understood why all of this was going on, which was tariffs were on the way up just about everywhere.

What's changed since then is simply that the Americans have walked back the very worst excesses of the tariffs, particularly that on China. But if you look over the past couple of weeks, there's been a lot to worry about. There was the on again off again new trade war with Europe, which momentarily sent tariffs up to 50 percent. And then they came crashing back down all of two and a half days later. We've now got the steel tariffs and talk of the reciprocal tariffs coming back on.

[01:29:43]

So if you look at that recipe that sounds like more worry, more uncertainty, greater disruption to the world economy. And so the chances of a U.S. recession are not as high as they might have been a month ago, but they're still worryingly high.

The rest of the world looks like it's moving on, that its figured out that even if the United States is an unreliable trading partner, that there's plenty of other friends around the world.

The folks that are still very much caught up in this, they were going to be the America's closest neighbors and allies, being Canada and Mexico. If the U.S. economy goes south, so will they.

CHURCH: Justin Wolfers, appreciate you joining us and your analysis. Thank you.

WOLFERS: A pleasure.

CHURCH: Still to come, the U.S. president threw his support behind Poland's new president-elect. But is the Trump brand of populism really spreading through Europe? We will take a look at that.

[01:30:53]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) CHURCH: We are learning new details about the attack on a Jewish gathering in Boulder, Colorado and the suspect accused of carrying it out.

Mohamed Sabry Soliman, an Egyptian national, made his first court appearance on Monday. He is accused of using a makeshift flamethrower and Molotov cocktails on a group that gathered in support of the Israeli hostages in Gaza, injuring 12 people.

Authorities have now charged him with a hate crime. He's also facing 16 counts of attempted murder. According to an affidavit, Soliman said he had been planning the attack for a year.

The Department of Homeland Security says he is in the U.S. illegally after his visa expired.

Well, we've been hearing harrowing accounts from those who witnessed Sundays horrific attack in Boulder. One man, who arrived just moments after the assault, took video of the suspect and describes what he saw at the scene.

CNN's Shimon Prokupecz has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Someone needs to finish this. Somebody is going to finish it.

Are you (EXPLETIVE DELETED) out of your (EXPLETIVE DELETED) mind?

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron Brooks arrived on scene moments after the horrific anti-Semitic attack at a march for Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado. Brooks returned to the scene for the first time with CNN.

How does it feel to be here the day after?

AARON BROOKS, EYEWITNESS: I'm not sure yet. This is the first I've been back. It's all cleaned up, as you can see. You know, it's like these things happen and these people just move on with life.

So I don't want to just move on. I want to make sure -- part of the reason I'm talking with you is I want to make sure that the truth is told. You know, I want to make sure that people know clearly this was an anti-Semitic attack.

I was here, I heard what he said. I heard him clearly say, you're burning my people or you burnt my people.

PROKUPECZ: He recounted those terrifying moments.

BROOKS: You can actually see some burn marks here, I think. Look at that.

He -- it was -- you can -- you can -- I think you can maybe see some burn marks still over there. But he was standing right here, and this is where he was yelling.

At one point, he flipped the top of one of his things and it's like, (EXPLETIVE DELETED), oh my God, is he going to do something with that? But I didn't back up when he did that at all. Again, I don't know what my instinct was or why I did that.

PROKUPECZ: Brooks said he's attended many of these walks supporting Israeli hostages. He did not come out for Sunday's walk, but eventually showed up.

BROOKES: I rode over here because I just felt like I need to go make sure my community is safe. I know that's not my job, but who else is doing it right?

The police -- I knew -- I figured the police probably weren't here. I immediately saw this guy standing here. The guy here, smoke here, blood over here, smoke coming -- literally coming from a human being.

JONATHAN LEV, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, BOULDER JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER: People are devastated, horrified, traumatized.

PROKUPECZ: Jonathan Lev is the executive director of the Boulder Jewish Community Center. He says he personally knows the victims, among them a Holocaust survivor.

LEV: How could you not be scared? How could you not have fear? Safety and security are a critical component of how we have to think about and respond to instances like this.

PROKUPECZ: And that fear given way to anger.

BROOKS: I can't believe -- I actually can believe we live in a world where this happens. I have three kids. I have a 24-year-old, a 21- year-old, and a son that just graduated from high school. This is the world we're living -- they're living in. This is the world we're leaving them. We have a job to make it as good as we can for them. And this shouldn't happen.

[01:39:50]

PROKUPECZ: As for the victims, two of them remain in the hospital. The Holocaust survivor -- she suffered some injuries to her leg, some burns to her legs. Her daughter was seriously injured. And for now, that is where her focus is at. She's just trying to take care of her daughter.

And as you can imagine, everyone in this community wants to hear from her, wants to hear her story because she's a sense of strength for many of them in this community as they begin the steps of coming together and healing.

Shimon Prokupecz, CNN -- Boulder, Colorado.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHURCH: Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk says he will soon call for a parliamentary confidence vote after opposition candidate Karol Nawrocki won the country's presidential runoff on Sunday. The nationalist politician will have the power to upend Tusk's centrist government by wielding a powerful veto.

Poland's prime minister has promised to enact democratic reforms which are now under threat. Tusk says his centrist party wants to show they understand the gravity of the moment, but do not intend to take a single step back.

Earlier, my colleague John Vause asked CNN European affairs commentator Dominic Thomas about the election results. Here's their conversation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: Here's part of the Kyiv independents reporting from Monday, with Poland hosting over a million Ukrainian refugees displaced by the war. Ukraine was one of the dominant topics throughout the campaign.

Nawrocki drew criticism for stoking anxiety over Ukrainian refugees, echoing far right concerns about migration, rising living costs and security. And while this vote was -- it was a close race -- it doesn't reflect a shift in Poland, you know, where Ukrainian refugees were once greeted with piano players on the borders as well as open arms.

DOMINIC THOMAS, CNN EUROPEAN AFFAIRS COMMENTATOR: Well, there's definitely been a move from that open-hearted and welcoming spirit. But ultimately, what this election outcome confirms really is more continuity, which is in the semi-presidential system, there is a division between the head of state occupied by one political group, headed by Donald Tusk, and the office of the head of state here that is now going to be occupied by President Nawrocki. That, of course, is a continuation from the law and order backed exiting President Duda.

So in many ways, this electoral outcome reflects that kind of division between what we might call the legislative and the executive. And the big question moving forward is whether this balance of power will translate into a kind of political paralysis, or whether they will find some common ground to be able to work together moving forward.

VAUSE: Well, here's the pro-Ukraine pro-Europe prime minister Donald Tusk on how he plans to respond to the election of this new right-wing president. Here he is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TUSK, POLISH PRIME MINISTER (through translator): This is not change in the slightest, my determination and will to act in defense of everything we believe in together.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: The role of president in Poland doesn't actually come with a lot of executive power, but it does come with a veto as well as a leading role in shaping foreign policy. So despite what Tusk says and his determination to keep on keeping on, President Nawrocki could still play havoc in his agenda.

THOMAS: Yes, you're absolutely right that when it comes to legislating, that veto power, especially because Donald Tusk does not have a very robust majority in the parliament, that is a question moving forward.

Ultimately, the situation over the next two years is going to unfold in the broader context of the 2027 parliamentary elections, where Donald Tusk's party and coalition will be eager to hold on to power and the incoming president will be eager to establish control over both offices essentially of power.

And going into, therefore, that parliamentary election, someone is going to get credit for the circumstances in Poland at the time and someone is going to get blamed for that.

So it's clear that over a range of international foreign policy issues, there is some common ground when it comes to, for example, ending the conflict in Ukraine, recognizing that Russia is the aggressor.

But I think it's really more on the domestic front that havoc can be wreaked to the extent that that is where the appeal will play out going into those parliamentary elections over a range of domestic issues.

And the real risk for Poland, of course, there moving forward is precisely what Donald Tusk has been trying to combat, which is the erosion of the freedom of the press, the erosion of the independence of the judiciary, which have been issues with the law-and-order party when they've been in power over recent years, John.

VAUSE: Well, Nawrocki campaigned on bringing back normalcy, echoes of the Trump campaign in the United States.

[01:44:41]

VAUSE: It should be noted that the conservative group CPAC met in Poland last week as a show of support with Kristi Noem, the secretary for Homeland Security, telling voters in Poland, "Donald Trump is a strong leader for us, but you have an opportunity to have just as strong of a leader in Karol. If you make him the leader of this country."

It does seem that the U.S. president may now have doubled the number of friends he has in NATO, and this one could actually be quite influential when it comes to eastern Europe.

THOMAS: Yes, it absolutely is. You know, what's interesting in these elections is, of course, they're extraordinarily divided. We saw just two weeks ago in the Romanian election, the pro-Trump candidate did not win.

In the case of Poland, Nawrocki has emerged here as the leader going forward. So there's ambiguity here as to where that works out. What is clear is that the office of the president is, of course, the individual who represents the country on the global stage, who is a privileged interlocutor of President Trump, has his ear, has his support. That is impactful. It's impactful in terms of exacerbating the divisions that exist on the grounds of sort of heightening tensions between kind of far right, extremist political agendas and the liberal agendas that individuals and groups and parties are trying to push on the European front.

It's distracting to NATO. It's distracting to the European Union moving forward. And I think that in this particular case, it's President Trump who will be eager to kind of recuperate this victory as an indication of the kind of global nature and appeal of his presidential playbook, John.

VAUSE: And this kind of -- as a candidate, he was described as being very Trumpian or Trump-like. Where does that put him on the spectrum when you compare him to Hungary's Viktor Orban?

THOMAS: Well, I mean, I think that so first of all, Orban has a very long track record of involvement here in politics. I think that when it comes to the Polish situation, the willingness to be soft on Russia and Russian proximity is a -- is a dividing line.

Orban is far more committed to kind of being involved and close to that sphere of influence. I think that moving forward for Poland, extrapolating, extracting themselves from that kind of multilateral order, defense of NATO and so on and so forth is going to be very difficult, particularly in the context of the E.U.

Well, let's not forget, it's easy to be an E.U. skeptic when your country is the greatest net beneficiary of E.U. financial support, John.

VAUSE: Good point to end on, Dominic. Thank you so much for being with us.

THOMAS: Thank you so much.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHURCH: Still to come, scientists say the world's glaciers are in grave danger. And though we can't stop the problem, we can keep it from becoming exponentially worse. We'll explain.

[01:47:30]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHURCH: Welcome back everyone.

Scientists have a new warning about the effects of climate change on the world's glaciers. They estimate glaciers will lose nearly 40 percent of their mass relative to their size in 2020 and there's nothing we can do about it.

CNN's chief climate correspondent Bill Weir has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: If you think about it, a glacier is really frozen time. It is tens of thousands of snowfalls over centuries forming a giant frozen river.

And in Alpine regions, it is life or death. It's irrigation water. It's drinking water. Oftentimes, communities are built below these glaciers and lakes, so they're vulnerable to landslides, as we saw in Switzerland just last week.

But this new science out of the University of Innsbruck in Austria and other Swiss researchers looks beyond the year 2100. That's usually been the cutoff for scientists to predict what will happen at current rates.

But glaciers take a long time to settle, so they went beyond 2100 and found that even if warming stopped immediately, if everybody switched to skateboards and horses and stopped every smokestack in the world from belching planet-cooking pollution, we would still lose 39 percent of the world's inland ice permanently.

There's no scenario where anything refreezes on Planet Earth. So once it's gone, it's gone. But if we head towards three degrees of warming, if you look at the charts, that's the red line in this scenario. That means over time you lose up to 75 or more percent of inland ice.

And what scientists told us, that's the difference between adaptability and extinction for some places. In the Himalayas, they've been experimenting with creating artificial glaciers by spraying water in the winter and then creating these mounds of ice that melt over the summer.

Technology can help, but the biggest thing that needs to stop is planet-cooking pollution, fossil fuel pollution, which really just has political will on its side these days, not so much economics anymore.

But every 10th of a degree, the scientists point out, is life or death for inland ice. And it's going away drip by drip.

Bill Weir, CNN -- New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHURCH: And we'll be right back.

[01:54:18]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHURCH: Geologists say a huge volcanic eruption on the Italian island of Sicily that forced tourists to flee for their lives on Monday has ended, and the lava is cooling.

Mount Etna began producing explosions overnight. They could be heard nearly 50km away. The volcano then spewed hot lava until late evening. Everyone on the volcano has been evacuated safely. Mount Etna is one of the world's most active volcanoes and receives

1.5 million visitors each year. Experts say this is its largest eruption since 2014.

Well, it's that time of year for one of the world's biggest and messiest food fights. The Grand Tomatina Festival drew thousands to a farming town in central Colombia on Sunday.

Locals and tourists alike launched overripe tomatoes at one another, slipping, laughing and soaking in the pulp and chaos together.

The produce is donated by nearby farms left over from the harvest too ripe or bruised to sell. This playful tradition not only honors the crop that sustains the local economy, but also the people who grow it.

I want to thank you so much for watching this hour. I'm Rosemary Church.

I will be right back with more CNN NEWSROOM after a short break. Do stay with us.

[01:57:18]