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Trump Says, Call With Putin Will Not Lead To Immediate Peace; Trump Signs Ban Travel To U.S. From Several Countries; Videos, Expert Analysis And Witnesses Reveal New Details Of Deadly Gaza Aid Incident; Dust Plume From Saharan Desert Casts Haze In Caribbean; Hungry Elephant Raids Snack Shop In Thailand. Aired 12-12:45a ET

Aired June 05, 2025 - 00:00   ET

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

[00:00:00]

KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN HOST: Welcome to all of you watching us around the world. I'm Kim Brunhuber. This is CNN Newsroom.

A promise of retaliation, Vladimir Putin tells Donald Trump he will be responding to Ukraine's recent drone strikes deep inside Russia.

Plus, President Trump's new travel ban, why citizens from more than a dozen countries could now be barred from entering the U.S.

Plus, what a new CNN analysis of video, audio, and ballistics evidence reveals about a deadly shooting over the weekend near a food distribution site in Gaza. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry and hospital officials, 31 people are dead.

Donald Trump says he had a good conversation with Vladimir Putin about the war in Ukraine, but it wouldn't lead to an immediate end to the fighting. The call comes as peace talks remain stalled. The U.S. president says Putin vowed to retaliate against Kyiv for its drone attacks on Russian airfields over the weekend. A number of Ukraine's parliament slammed Trump's call with the Russian president as disgraceful and accused the U.S. president of failing to put pressure on Moscow to end the war.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is warning world leaders not to show weakness toward Putin, writing, quote, if the world reacts weekly to Putin's threats, he interprets it as a readiness to turn a blind eye to his actions. When he does not feel strength and pressure, but instead senses weakness, he always commits new crimes.

More now on the call between Trump and Putin from CNN's Nic Robertson in London.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: In the language that he used relaying what President Putin said to him, which was, quote, I have to respond, that's what he says, Putin said to him, I have to respond, really invites the possibility of a rebuttal or a comment to try another method. So, yes, that was very noticeably absent there. But I think we also heard more from the Kremlin about what happened in that phone call and the Kremlin's view on the state of peace talks with Ukraine. The Kremlin is saying, you know, to Volodymyr Zelenskyy's request for a leaders meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy, and Trump could be present and other leaders could be there. They're saying not now.

And the reason they're saying that the talks -- these talks aren't working and that the leaders meeting shouldn't happen is because they're accusing Ukraine of terrorism and citing these two attacks over the weekend on rail infrastructure inside of Russia where civilians died, and that it seems would've been very much part of Putin's conversation with Trump as well. Of course, washers in Kyiv and in Europe would understand that Russia, in a way, is the pot calling the kettle black because Russia, by day and by night, continues to bomb Ukrainian citizens, you know, through cities across the country.

So, if that was the narrative President Trump was left with, there's a glaring absence in what is relayed about it, because absent, as you say, was a rebuttal.

BRUNHUBER: I want to bring in Malcolm Davis, who's a senior analyst for defense strategy and capability at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, and he joins us live from Canberra. Thanks so much for being here with us.

So, as we heard, Moscow has promised reprisals. What could that look like?

MALCOLM DAVIS, SENIOR ANALYST, AUSTRALIAN STRATEGIC POLICY INSTITUTE: Well look, I think the first thing to do is make clear that I really don't think it's likely that Russia will turn to nuclear weapons at this point. This attack by Ukraine on the Russian bombers was quite devastating and has severely reduced Russian strategic bomber capacity, but it's not a justification across the nuclear threshold.

So, what Russia could do, I think, is dramatically escalate the conventional attacks on Ukraine, including against cities. They could also launch new offensives from the north. They're building up forces in Belarus that could threaten Kharkiv. And I think the third option that they might do is start attacking shipping in the Black Sea to try and starve Ukraine essentially of food supplies.

BRUNHUBER: All right. So, CNN spoke with the Ukrainian M.P., the chair of their foreign affairs committee who's visiting the U.S., and he said based on the readout of the call between Trump and Putin yesterday, that Trump is giving a green light, in his words, to Putin's retaliation. Do you agree?

[00:05:00]

DAVIS: Yes. And I think that what Trump should have done when Putin suggested he was going to retaliate strongly would've been for Trump to say, no, back down, this is not the way to go. I think that even if Putin had refused to consider Trump's advice, at least Trump would've been seen to be not giving the green light to an escalation of the war.

So, it happens from what we can see in the out the readout of that phone call, Trump really hasn't done anything to prevent an escalation of the war.

BRUNHUBER: Yes. All right, so we're learning more about Ukraine's audacious attack that prompted all of this. So, from any of the new details that are coming out about how this was carried out, what stands out to you?

DAVIS: Look, I think it's the first time we've seen containerized weapons being used in this way where you've essentially concealed the drones inside shipping containers on the back of trucks that then have been driven to the target and release the weapons. We've seen obviously the use of sophisticated communications links between the operators of the drones and the drones themselves, and I think that's been done over a significant distance.

When you look at the footage of the drone attack, you see the drones. Hovering over their targets the bombers, and picking out which part of the bomber to attack to cause the most destruction. That's really significant in terms of the ability of first person view drones to be able to attack with precision at great range.

BRUNHUBER: Yes. And Ukraine obviously is looking at technology, drones in particular, to counter Russia's manpower advantage, but there's been a huge cost in that manpower. We're just finding out exactly how much. A new study suggests nearly 1 million Russian soldiers have been killed or injured in the country's invasion of Ukraine, including a quarter million dead. I mean, staggering numbers.

DAVIS: it is. But from Putin's perspective and the Kremlin, he really doesn't care. I think that he's quite happy to throw massive numbers of people into these attacks on Ukraine. He's, in a way, at one level, he's fighting a very old fashioned war using, human wave attacks mass infantry attacks, an industrial type of war that we've seen, you know, in the past with the Second World War and the First World War. But on the other hand, you're seeing these devastating long-range missile strikes on Ukrainian cities and increasingly the use of drones by Russia. So, it's a very different type of war. But I think that from a human cost perspective, be it Russian soldiers or be it Ukrainian civilians, Putin doesn't care.

BRUNHUBER: Yes. And Ukraine trying to counter all this with that so- called drone wall, that they'll be facing possibly even more Russian ground attacks, according to a Ukrainian military official who works in the office of the president. Russia's planning to occupy the entire of Donetsk and Luhansk by September, occupy the rest of Kherson, establish a buffer zone by the end of this year. Is that realistic, do you think?

DAVIS: I don't think it's going to be on those timelines. I think the Russians have been, you know, sort of moving very slowly in terms of their advances. If, however, the Trump administration were to walk away from the peace negotiations, admittedly, the peace negotiations are going nowhere, but if the Trump administration walks away from the peace negotiations and takes with it U.S. military assistance and intelligence sharing, then that would put Ukraine in a much more dangerous situation and allow the Russians to make faster progress.

So, really, the ball is in Trump's court in this regard as to whether Russia can achieve its sort of victory that it seeks to achieve in Ukraine or not.

BRUNHUBER: Yes, and that's a big if, as you say there.

Malcolm Davis, as always, I appreciate getting your analysis on this. Thank you so much.

DAVIS: Thank you.

BRUNHUBER: President Trump has signed a new travel ban that will block people from several countries from traveling to the United States. The White House says the ban will take effect this Monday. It'll fully restrict entry by nationals from 12 countries, including Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Eritrea, Iran, and Yemen, people from seven other countries, including Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, and Venezuela will be partially restricted. White House says the president's ban fulfills a campaign promise to, quote, protect Americans from dangerous foreign actors who want to come to the US and cause harm. Here he is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: The recent terror attack in Boulder, Colorado, has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come here as temporary visitors and overstay their visas. We don't want them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRUNHUBER: Administration cites a number of reasons countries were chosen for the ban, including a large scale terrorist presence, failure to cooperate on visa security, inability to verify traveler's identities, and a persistently high rate of visa overstays.

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We get more now from CNN's Kaitlan Collins.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: We had been hearing this was going to happen. This is the proclamation that we just got from the White House with President Trump saying essentially that part of why this is happening is they were looking at the vetting processes that these countries have in order for people to come in and enter the United States. They don't believe that they are sufficient enough.

So, he is signing this proclamation, banning entry into the United States from 12 countries fully. He's restricting it from several others and basically cites those vetting processes as part of the reason here, and also saying that it is underscored and emphasized by what happened in Boulder, Colorado, and that attack by the Egyptian national suspect on Sunday there. And the president, and several points, as I was just reading through this, saying that certain countries have people who are more likely to overstay their visas if they come from a certain country to the United States, often we know we see that when people come and apply for asylum.

So, the president is taking this step, restricting this travel. It remains to be seen. What the impact of this looks like as we're hearing from the White House. And one line that I should point out from this proclamation is it says it does include exceptions for lawful permanent residents, existing visa holders, certain visa categories, and individuals whose injuries serves U.S. national interests.

So, there do appear to be some carve-outs here. It remains to be seen what that actually looks like, though, because of course everyone will hear this and remember the travel ban from President Trump's first term that he enacted within days of taking office and caused quite a bit of chaos at airports and ports of entry.

BRUNHUBER: The Trump administration is making another attempt to prevent Harvard University from enrolling more international students. The president signed a proclamation on Wednesday that suspends visas of new international students at Harvard.

Now, this comes after district court ordered the Trump administration not to make any changes to Harvard's international student visa program indefinitely. Harvard has been the prime target of Trump's ideological battle with a number of U.S. universities.

All right, still ahead, what a new CNN analysis of video, audio, and ballistics evidence reveals about a deadly shooting over the weekend near a food distribution site in Gaza. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry and hospital officials, at least 31 people are dead.

Stay with us,

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BRUNHUBER: Right now to the U.N. where the Trump administration is defending its veto of a Security Council resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. The U.S. was the only country to vote against the measure, which also called for the release of all hostages in Gaza. A U.S. State Department official called a measure shameful and non- serious, saying it draws a false equivalence between Israel and Hamas.

Israel's foreign minister thanked the Trump administration for standing shoulder to shoulder with his country and vetoing what he called a one-sided resolution.

A controversial aid operation in Southern Gaza is expected to resume after a 24-hour hiatus. The pause followed three straight days of Palestinians coming under deadly gunfire on their way to a food distribution site. The U.S. and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said it would take Wednesday to focus on logistical work to better handle the massive number of Palestinians seeking food. Also the foundation said to give Israeli forces the opportunity to make preparations on the access routes to the centers.

The first shooting was on Sunday. Palestinian Health Ministry and hospital officials say at least 31 people were killed.

CNN's Jeremy Diamond has new expert analysis of the sound, video and eyewitness accounts of what happened. We just want to warn you, what you're about to see is graphic. Here's his exclusive report.

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JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Palestinians take cover as pulses of automatic gunfire, crackle overhead. Others try and crawl to safety as explosions ring out.

For several hours on Sunday, this was the terrifying reality hungry Gazans faced as they tried to reach an American-backed humanitarian aid site in Southern Gaza, I can up.

We are bringing our food drenched in blood. We are dying to get food, Amin Khalifa (ph) says, amid a hail of gunfire.

The aftermath is grizzly. Bullet riddled bodies lie scattered on the beach as others emerge carrying sacks of aid these men died trying to get. Health officials and doctors report at least 31 were killed.

17 eyewitnesses told CNN it was the Israeli military that opened fire on the crowd. A CNN analysis of video from the scene, audio of gunfire and ballistics evidence all point to the Israeli military.

In Gaza, more families made to mourn. They lure us in just to kill us there, this man says. What's happening is wrong. Wrong. Why? Why are they doing this? We go there just to get our daily bread and they kill us.

In the pre-dawn hours of Sunday, masses of Palestinians began trekking down Al-Rasheed Street, hoping to be among the first to reach the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation site in Tel Al-Sultan before limited aid supplies run dry.

But as they reach the Al-Alam roundabout, a hail of gunfire forces people to the ground. Eyewitnesses say much of the gunfire came from tank mounted machine guns.

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We asked a forensic audio expert to analyze the gunfire in that video, and this analysis shows bursts of gunfire at a rate of 15 rounds per second. Weapons experts say that's consistent with the F.N. MAG, a machine gun used by the Israeli military and commonly mounted on Israeli tanks. Those experts say that rate of fire also appears to rule out weapons used commonly by Hamas. And then you have bullets like this one, which doctors at Nasser Hospital pulled from the bodies of the dead and the wounded. Weapons experts also say this bullet is consistent with the F.N. MAG.

The Israeli military said they did not fire at civilians while they were near or within the aid site. But that statement is misleading. An Israeli military official acknowledged Israeli troops did fire toward people about one kilometer away from the aid site. The Al-Alam roundabout where people were killed is also about one kilometer away from the site. This entire area with an Israeli military base right here is under Israeli control.

This post warns the Israeli military would be active in the area at the time of the shooting. It's from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which operates the aid site and closely coordinates with the IDF, alerting Palestinians that using the passage before 5:00 A.M. is prohibited. But they posted it at 4:00 A.M., as people were already being fired upon.

Eyewitnesses described volleys of Israeli military gunfire from snipers, tanks and drones beginning as early as 3:00 A.M. on Sunday. More were shot at 4:30 A.M. Others described being shot as late as 6:30 in the morning.

They were shooting directly at us everywhere, this man says, from the sea, from snipers and from all directions.

Four people were injured and one was immediately killed. I tried to stand up and escape or go back, but I was hit in my left side.

I've seen a lot of soldiers in this war. When they want to clear an area or warn you, they shoot around you. But yesterday they were shooting to kill us.

At Nasser Hospital, fear and pain are still etched across the face of 13-year-old Yazid Musleh (ph), who was wounded by gunfire from a tank his father and brother say was stationed near the aid site.

I saw the tank from afar, Ihab says. He was standing, waving his hands to the tank. And within seconds, gunfire was directed at him and he was lying on the ground.

Two days later, despite the dangers, tens of thousands of Palestinians continued to stream towards that same aid site, a testament to the hunger and desperation, still gripping so many.

And once again, in the early hours of Tuesday, dozens were killed en route. This time the Israeli military acknowledging it fired warning shots, and then opened fire, claiming suspects advanced towards troops in a threatening manner.

The military said it was looking into reports of casualties. It need look no further than this boy crying out over his mother's body, begging her to wake up. Today, she went to get aid. She went to get aid to feed us, he cries, and this is what they do to us? The Americans said, come to the safe area to get your aid. Who should trust them?

As for Amin Khalifa, the man who documented Sunday's gunfire, his quest for survival ended abruptly on Tuesday. He was killed while trying to reach that aid site once again. He was 30 years old.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

DIAMOND (on camera): The Israeli military declined to answer questions related to our findings. But as recently as Tuesday, the Israeli military's top spokesman, General Effie Defrin, categorically denied that the Israeli military opened fire on Sunday, saying it, quote, simply didn't happen. But after a week during which more than 60 people were killed while trying to make it to that aid site, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation now says it is having conversations with the Israeli military to, quote, support civilian safety.

Among them, a spokesman tells me that they are asking the Israeli military to, quote, enhance force training, and refine internal IDF procedures.

Jeremy Diamond, CNN, Jerusalem.

BRUNHUBER: Plumes of dust from the Sahara Desert are making their way across the Atlantic choking out sunny skies in the Caribbean. Well, more on the dust cloud when we come back.

Please stay with us.

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BRUNHUBER: Welcome back to CNN Newsroom. I'm Kim Brunhuber. Let's take a look at today's top stories.

Donald Trump has signed a proclamation banning travel from a dozen countries into the U.S. Seven others will have their travel heavily restricted. The president says the measure will help protect the country from dangerous foreign actors and that more countries could be added to the list.

At least 11 people were crushed to death as they tried to push their way into a cricket stadium in India. Officials say 33 others were injured Wednesday, as fans tried to break into a gate to join the celebrations of their team's victory in the Indian Premier League.

[00:30:04]

Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the incident heartrending.

Iran's supreme leader says Tehran won't stop enriching uranium. In a speech on Wednesday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei insisted it is key to his country's nuclear program. U.S. officials are negotiating with Iran on a new nuclear deal, but

sources tell CNN the talks are faltering. Iran blames what it calls incoherent and disjointed proposals from Washington.

A thick layer of dust from the Sahara Desert is traveling across the Atlantic, impacting air quality and casting a hazy veil over areas in the Caribbean.

CNN's Patrick Oppmann has more.

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PATRICK OPPMANN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The weather in Havana in June usually means bright, beautiful skies. But right now, at least, it's very overcast. Strangely so.

Over the last several hours, and certainly compared to the weather in the previous days, it is much grayer than it usually is here.

And the reason behind that is actually quite fascinating. A lot of what you see in the air behind me, this gray, overcast weather --

OPPMANN (voice-over): -- is dust that has blown across the Atlantic ocean, all the way from the Sahara Desert in North Africa. This is a yearly event, although you don't notice it so much as we are right now.

It's not a cause for alarm. Health professionals say unless you suffer from breathing problems and perhaps you do need to stay inside on days like this one, where so much dust has crossed the Atlantic Ocean as now in the air over us.

But otherwise, people are going about their daily routines. Life goes on here as normal. It does feel a little bit warmer. The dust apparently traps some of the heat.

It is a seasonal event. At the beginning of the summer, you see, at particularly when there's a sunrise and sunsets, that the air quality has just changed somewhat. This year it seems quite a bit heavier. I don't remember being so overcast in previous years here.

And so, it is something that is a phenomenon. It is something that is certainly quite impressive that all this dust is traveling across the Atlantic ocean. Now it's over the Caribbean. It will continue on from here, meteorologists say, and go into the Southern United States along the Gulf of -- the Gulf Coast of the United States and have an impact there, as well.

It's not necessarily an entirely bad thing. Yes, it -- it affects air quality, but it also means that --

OPPMANN: -- hurricanes, and hurricane season began on June 1st, are less likely to form when you have all this dust that is taking the moisture out of the air.

So, while that is one positive outcome of this, it is not going to last. Typically, in a few days or weeks, there'll be a lot less of this dust that we're seeing right now. And that, of course, will lead to the formation eventually of hurricanes.

Patrick Oppmann, CNN, Havana.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: All right. Still to come here on CNN NEWSROOM, a commercial Japanese spacecraft launched in January will only be attempting a tricky landing in the moon. We'll tell you why the trip took so long.

That and more coming up. Please stay with us.

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BRUNHUBER: A Japanese commercial spacecraft is hoping to make an upright lunar landing in the coming hours. Resilience launched on the same space rocket as Blue Ghost, made by a U.S.-based company back in January.

Blue Ghost made the first upright landing on the moon in March, but Resilience took a slower path to use less energy.

Ispace, the Japanese company that made Resilience, says the trade-off for having to wait so long is that multiple teams were able to gain experience in the mission control room.

If Resilience lands upright, ispace will be the first commercial company outside of the U.S. to pull off such a feat.

An elephant gave shopkeepers in Thailand quite a surprise when it wandered into their convenience store in search of some snacks. CNN's Max Foster shows us what happened.

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MAX FOSTER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: A sneaky trunk, the first sign of trouble for this shop owner in Thailand. A large wild Asian elephant, known locally as Plai Biang Lek, was feeling peckish. And this unsuspecting store was its target.

Shop owner Kamploy Kakaew, seen clapping, told CNN she urged it to go away, but it, quote, "just walked right up" to the treats.

CCTV footage shows the elephant quickly stuffing its mouth with tasty snacks, scooping them up with its trunk. "It was like it came on purpose," Kakaew said, adding, "I think it just wanted snacks."

The not-so-speedy raid lasted about ten minutes, with the cheeky male stealing about ten bags of sweets, along with dried bananas and peanut snacks.

Fully inside the store. At one point, just its tail can be seen wagging as it faces away from the surveillance camera and hoovers up the snacks. After grabbing a final trunkful, the elephant not-so-gracefully

reverses out of the shop, located close to a national park Northeast of Bangkok, thanks to the help of park rangers and Kakaew's coaxing.

[00:40:11]

"Back out. Go on," she urges. The shopkeeper seeing firsthand an elephant never forgets. In this case, where the snacks are stored.

Max Foster, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: I myself will be off to get some snacks right now. I'm Kim Brunhuber. WORLD SPORT is next. I'll be back with more news at the top of the hour.

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