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Global Protest Wave from New Delhi and Tirana to Paris and Rome; Trump Waives Some Sanctions under Lindsey Graham Act; Trump Says He Wants Ukraine-Russia War to End; CNN Investigates French Police Excessive Force Claims; Trump Fires New Press Secretary Five Days into Job; Pope Shows "Steady Improvement" Following Cancer Surgery; "Monarch's Journey" Exhibit Opens at New York Museum. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired October 17, 2026 - 04:00   ET

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

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WILL RIPLEY, CNN ANCHOR AND SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hello and welcome. I'm Will Ripley in Hong Kong. And this is CNN NEWSROOM.

Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy moves closer to European leaders. While in the U.S., president Donald Trump waives some of the sanctions set to go into effect on Russia.

France is bracing for more student-led protests today, as some government officials describe the unrest as a movement of urban violence.

And we're seeing the new pictures now of Pope Leo celebrating mass in hospital just days after lung cancer surgery. We'll have a live report on the pope's health.

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RIPLEY: We're getting the first response now from Moscow since the U.S. waived some of its upcoming sanctions against Russia. Top Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev praised the move in a social media post, saying economic talks between the U.S. and Russia will continue along with peace efforts.

Hours earlier, president Donald Trump waived some of the sanctions under the Lindsey Graham Act, which he signed into law last month.

The announcement came just days before the sanctions were set to kick in. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy took veiled swipes at Trump as he rallied support from E.U. leaders on Friday, Zelenskyy called them "real leaders" in an apparent dig at Trump.

Meanwhile, the U.S. president is denying any role in the slowdown of the Starshield satellite service in Ukraine. But a group of U.S. senators is pushing for an investigation into the matter. CNN's Nada Bashir is monitoring those developments and she joins me now live from London. Nada, it seems many Ukrainians no longer see the U.S. as a trustworthy

ally.

So what happens now?

NADA BASHIR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it certainly appears that way. And we have seen president Zelenskyy himself now attempting to shore up support and commitments from European leaders in the face of what appears to be growing fractures in the relationship between Ukraine and the Trump administration.

As you mentioned, we are seeing a huge number of shifts in terms of the Trump administration's approach to its support for Ukraine and it's -- in its mediation efforts between Russia and Ukraine. And this, of course, all comes ahead of the midterms and as concerns continue to rise domestically in the United States with regards to oil prices.

But as you mentioned, Will, we have seen on Friday that announcement by the U.S. president of a waiving of a slate of sanctions related to Russian fossil fuel sales.

This, of course, also just comes just days after the announcement by both president Trump and President Putin of a deal between the two leaders to allow for Russian diesel sales again in -- that is a flagrant violation, really, of the previous policies imposed by the Trump administration.

That is something that has drawn bipartisan backlash in the United States and sent alarm bells ringing across Europe, as well amongst supporters and allies of Ukraine.

And, of course, we've also been hearing that pressure being ramped up by the Trump administration on Ukraine when it comes to its war effort, calling on Ukraine to halt attacks on Russian oil refineries and energy infrastructure.

We, of course, heard that energy ceasefire, as it was phrased by the U.S. president, being announced, seemingly coming as a surprise to both Zelenskyy and President Putin. And that, of course, was not something that was sustainable.

We did see Ukraine seemingly adhering to the terms of that proposed deal, Russia continuing to target Ukrainian energy infrastructure and, in response, Ukraine has been clear that it will not abide by those terms and will continue to target Russian energy infrastructure in the face of Russia's own violations.

And we have been, of course, hearing from reporters, pressing the U.S. president on what appears to be a significant shift in his approach to Ukraine, in his approach to Russia. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Take a listen to what he had to say to reporters yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: You called Ukraine a disgrace for attacking Russia. You want Zelenskyy out. Have you forgotten that it's President Putin who started the war?

TRUMP: Well, you know, I know the details, OK?

And at some point I'll release the details.

[04:05:00]

But I don't care anything except for one. I want that war ended.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASHIR: Now, of course, there have been many questions as to what the next steps could look like in terms of U.S. strategy and foreign policy approach to Ukraine.

President Trump has maintained in some interviews that he maintains a good relationship with president Zelenskyy.

He has also said that the U.S. has not stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine, despite claims by the Ukrainian leader that a stop in intelligence sharing has prevented the Ukrainian military from being able to prevent further Russian military attacks.

That they have only been made aware of incoming attacks by the Russian military as missiles were flying over and into Kyiv. There have also, of course, been questions around what appears to have been internet restrictions via the Starlink satellite connection.

Again, we had heard from Elon Musk that this is something that was up to the U.S. president and the U.S. military. Again, something denied by the U.S. president himself. And in the face of all of this, we've seen president Zelenskyy now closing his commitments with European leaders.

We heard him yesterday describing them as "real leaders," in his words, in what appears to have been a veiled dig at the U.S. president. And again, a new wave of sanctions being proposed by European leaders themselves, again, in the face of what appears to be a weakening response by the Trump administration.

RIPLEY: Nada, while you were talking a moment ago, we were showing video of that meltdown in the Oval Office last year. And it seems like this is now the worst crisis with U.S. and Ukrainian relations since then. And winter is coming.

And being out of Patriot defense missiles, not a good situation for the people in Ukraine, essentially defenseless right now from Russian ballistic missiles. Nada, thank you for reporting from London. I know you'll stay on this story and we appreciate you very much.

We're turning now to France, where France is bracing for possible unrest, more unrest as nationwide protests are planned once again for today. Student-led demonstrations have swept the country, going on several weeks now as protesters call for education reform. The French prime minister says the protests are no longer resembling a

student-led movement. Instead, he's describing them as a movement of urban violence. More than 60 marches are planned just for Saturday alone, with up to 100,000 people expected near Paris. So let's bring in CNN's Melissa Bell, who's standing by for us in Paris.

Melissa, you're on the ground there.

What are you seeing and what are you expecting to see in the coming hours?

MELISSA BELL, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We do expect a really big day here in France, Will, of protests. And this across the country. And you mentioned those students' protests a moment ago. This has really ballooned into something much bigger than that.

It isn't simply that you're going to have the unions, the public sector workers out here protesting and demanding urgent help to get France's welfare system back up, they believe, to the speed it needs to be at.

But you may notice behind me some of these Yellow Vests. You'll remember the Yellow Vest movement of a few years ago, back in 2018- 2019. It was Emmanuel Macron's first term. They had taken to the streets to protest against a proposed hike in the fuel duty.

And this had really crippled the country. Week after week, Saturday after Saturday, they'd come out in their high visibility jackets. And as you'll see, they're beginning to gather again.

The official start the protests here in Paris isn't for another few hours but already some of these high visibility jackets, in a suggestion that this, will, once again, again, harking back to those days in 2018-19, be a day of rage, really, on the streets of France and about much more than the welfare state, Will.

This is going to be about the cost of living. That is the official subject of this protest today.

Now officials had banned the march from going here to either the Elysee Palace, the presidency or to Matignon, the seat of the prime minister. Instead, the march will go from here at Republique, toward the north of Paris and Place de Clichy (ph). But already elsewhere, Will, in Rennes and Lyon (ph), we've already seen scuffles with the police.

RIPLEY: I see some police vans behind you there.

How are authorities preparing to respond to this?

BELL: I think with a great deal of firmness. That's what we heard from the interior minister yesterday speaking to this, saying that any violence would be extremely harshly dealt with.

And yet what we have seen over the course of the last three weeks, one month, that these student protests have been going on and we've been having these regular barricades and these accusations of police violence, a distinct change in police tactics.

I saw it last week at Bastille, a much less heavy-handed approach. So I think it will be difficult for them today to try and ensure that the kind of violence that the interior ministry is already warning could get quite bad today, trying to prevent that.

But also trying to prevent any of the repeats that we've seen of some of that heavy handedness that has led to some 20 or so internal police investigations to try and figure out what could have caused such trouble in the case of the student protests, of course, where you were talking about children.

RIPLEY: It could be a busy day for you, Melissa Bell, there in Paris.

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Protests set to take place in the coming hours. We appreciate the update. Thank you very much.

You know, it seems like people's pent-up frustrations are really boiling over in a lot of places right now. There are violent protests sweeping across Albania, demonstrators there calling for the country's prime minister to step down.

Students have been organizing these rallies against the government. They're demanding education reform. Some of these protests have devolved into violence between police and protesters.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators are on the streets of Tirana earlier this week, some of them even set a government building on fire. Demonstrators have been shouting their contempt for the current government, saying they will not be happy until the prime minister, Edi Rama, is gone.

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ENEA, ALBANIAN PROTESTER: To resign as fast as possible before everything burns down. That's the only message I can say. We don't want to negotiate anything. We have been protesting. We asked him peacefully. He didn't want to. We now have been going violently. They are -- they are pushing us to the limits.

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RIPLEY: Students in Italy also taking to the streets. This is video from Friday when they were staging demonstrations in several cities. Now they're calling for more spending on public education and school conditions.

We saw students in Rome marching to the education ministry, some throwing firecrackers at the building with police standing guard.

This is the latest in a wave of similar student demonstrations across Europe. Many people out there calling for more teachers and calling for better schools. And more protests are also expected today in India. Police detained

the leader of the country's so-called Cockroach movement. Indian media are reporting that Abhijeet Dipke, a founder of the Cockroach Janta party, has been placed under preventative arrest.

Dipke called for a major rally in New Delhi on Friday. Protesters out there demanding the resignation of India's election chief. The youth- led movement believes that he removed 130 million names from voter lists and demonstrators say that favors the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi.

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AANCHAL SINGH, PROTESTER: They don't want people to come out in a huge numbers. But people are anyway coming out, so there is no use of detaining them. They will come back again tomorrow, just like us.

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RIPLEY: Turning now to U.S. politics and president Trump pushing ahead with his midterms blitz, rallying support for Republican candidates across the United States. He's heading to heading to Kentucky in the coming hours. That's where Mitch McConnell's Senate seat is up for grabs.

It comes after a stop in battleground Georgia. He was stumping there for GOP gubernatorial contender Rick Jackson and for Mike Collins, the Republican candidate waging an uphill battle to unseat Democratic senator Jon Ossoff.

The president mocked Ossoff's appearance while praising Collins, saying, quote, "he's all man." And he again made this pitch to drive his supporters to the polls.

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TRUMP: You have to pretend I'm on the ballot, OK?

The story is this. We get 49 percent more vote when I'm on the ballot, when I'm not on the ballot, I guess it's a compliment but people don't show up so much. You have to go out and vote. So pretend I'm on the ballot

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RIPLEY: President Trump's White House is now without a press secretary just before those critical midterm elections. His new hire, Katie Zacharia, had a rocky, widely panned debut on Tuesday. And then it soon emerged that she failed the bar exam and never retook it, even though she'd been repeatedly calling herself a lawyer.

CNN's senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes has more on what has been a tumultuous week in Trump world.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Katie Zacharia, the press secretary, has been fired. That is from sources familiar with the matter just five days after actually starting this job. Now we did catch up with President Trump to try and ask before we actually knew about the firing what exactly was going on.

Did she still have his confidence?

This is that exchange.

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I said, Katie, do you need this?

I don't think you need this. And we're talking about doing something. We like Katie a lot. I think she's been really, really treated very unfairly.

QUESTION: Are you saying you're talking about firing her or replacing her?

TRUMP: No. We're talking about I want her to have a good life. I don't want to have a life like she's planned in the last three days. She is being brutalized by the media.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Now sources pointed to a number of various issues. It wasn't just the briefing, which President Trump had seen but was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt on. It was also a number of other issues, including various interviews with FOX News in which it didn't seem as though she knew how to handle herself.

She -- he was talking to allies and advisers and many of them believed that she was in over her head.

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And President Trump tended to agree.

And you hear there -- I mean, in Trump world, it's very rare that someone gets fired and then has that kind of words coming from President Trump, clearly trying to give her a soft landing, trying to transition her out.

Everyone I've spoken to at the White House, they had nice things to say as well, that she was a very nice person but that she just wasn't ready for this job.

It was interesting that President Trump ended up conceding this given that he is the one who personally hired Zacharia after watching her on TV, growing somewhat enamored with her FOX News appearances. That's what sources have told us.

But yet he still was willing to cut ties or to let her loose after both the briefing and these various interviews, realizing that maybe she wasn't quite ready for prime time, as one source put it to CNN.

So right now, President Trump has says that he is not in a rush to fill the role of press secretary. Zacharia is going to be transitioning out of that role. He told me when we were on the lawn that there is a long list of people who want that job. We'll obviously see who he comes up with next -- Kristen Holmes, CNN, the White House.

(END VIDEOTAPE) RIPLEY: We're learning more details now about that deadly shooting at

an elementary school in Bend, Oregon. Police say the shooter targeted a special needs classroom and all of the victims were in that one room.

Police also say the 16-year-old gunman previously attended a special needs class at Silver Rail Elementary School. A father with two children at the school shot and killed the gunman but police say that man was not the only hero at the school on Thursday.

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CHIEF MIKE KRANTZ, BEND POLICE DEPARTMENT: In addition to the 36- year-old man who bravely stepped in to stop the suspect, I want to highlight another person whose heroic action we need to recognize.

A teacher in the classroom threw her cell phone at the suspect and then tackled him and fought to take the firearm from him. She was not injured in that incident but she almost certainly helped prevent more bloodshed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RIPLEY: We now know the identities of two of the shooting victims, 25-year-old Megan Lambert was the teacher killed at Silver Rail Elementary School. Her family said she loved the children and she loved being a teacher. Police also identified 5-year-old Rhoam Summer as one of the children killed in the shooting.

This is CNN NEWSROOM, live from Hong Kong. We're following Pope Leo's health very closely and we know now that he had a phone call with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. We will check in with Rome with a live report next.

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RIPLEY: The Vatican says Pope Leo is showing steady improvement following his lung cancer surgery. New images show the pontiff standing up and celebrating mass in a makeshift hospital chapel.

He also spoke to Russian president Vladimir Putin by phone and raised concerns about the humanitarian situation in the Russian occupied city of Oleshky. CNN's Stefano Pozzebon joins me now from Rome.

So it's good to see those pictures, Stefano. He's, you know, he's all dressed, even though he's just had surgery a few days ago.

Are you hearing anything about a timeline for when the pope could be released from hospital?

STEFANO POZZEBON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Well, we haven't heard a timeline for his hospital release. However, we do know that the Vatican has told us that Leo intends to lead the angelus prayer -- that is the prayer that the pontiffs lead every Sunday morning -- the upcoming Sunday.

So it's tomorrow here in Rome. He intends to lead it himself, which would show a remarkable recovery, considering that he announced the word that he was going to come to the hospital and have the surgery just last week on Sunday, in that -- in the last angelus.

Seeing him out and about and leading the prayers already less than seven days after the announcement would be clearly remarkable. We don't know -- we do not know whether that will happen here at the Gemelli hospital, where Leo is currently staying.

I can see, for example, from our live location that there are -- there were people praying in front of the statue of the late John Paul II, because there is eager expectation and anticipation around Leo, whether we will see him out and about soon.

However, we do not know where the angelus will be led but it will still be a remarkable recovery, clearly, Will.

RIPLEY: What are you hearing about this call with Vladimir Putin?

I know the pope was expressing concern about the civilians in Oleshky.

POZZEBON: Yes, it's interesting, isn't it?

First, it's interesting that this is the first phone call with a foreign leader that we have been informed about. We do not know whether this call was scheduled before. We do know that it's the second time that Leo and Putin have spoken.

But it's also interesting, the level of detail that the pontiff pressed upon the Russian leader, saying that he's following the situation very closely around Oleshky. And it's a city in southern Ukraine, in the region of Kherson, where Kyiv says that around 2,000 Ukrainian citizens are currently under siege.

And the supply lines for food and medicine have been cut. Kyiv has accused Moscow of deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe out of the situation in Kherson. And it's interesting to see the pope pressing on Putin with that level of detail less than two days after undergoing a lung cancer surgery, like you said.

We did speak with the secretary of state, the foreign minister of the Vatican, Pietro Parolin, when he came here to the Gemelli hospital. He told us that he hopes that Putin will bend to the pope's calls, Will.

RIPLEY: All right. Stefano Pozzebon, you could be camped out outside that building. You've been there all weekend. We really appreciate your efforts, staying on top of the situation with the pope.

POZZEBON: Thank you.

RIPLEY: Thanks very much. And we'll keep checking back in with you. Appreciate you.

Well, a New York museum ...

-- if the teleprompter will move up.

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We have an AI teleprompter here. OK.

A New York museum's exhibit -- oh, now it's changing.

A 2,000-year old Roman marble -- oh, it's changing again. All right, this is what happens with technology, folks.

A New York museum's exhibit is bringing the travels of monarch butterflies to life through art. "Monarch's Journey" opened at New York's American Museum of Natural history on Friday. It features illustrations focused on the butterflies' annual migration.

Every year, the monarchs leave the cold of the northern U.S. and Canada and head for central Mexico for winter. The trip can take as long as two months.

A 2,000-year-old Roman marble torso of an emperor could sell for up to $12 million at Sotheby's upcoming Magnum Opus auctions. It's just one of more than 600 works up for sale from a private collection, spanning art, antiquities, furniture and decorative objects.

The collection is expected to fetch more than $60 million in total. It's now on display in New York, with four auctions running next week.

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CALVINE HARVEY, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, SOTHEBY'S: The torso behind me is the highlight of the sale. This is a Roman torso coming from the first half of the first century. A.D. This is really a moment when they were looking at power.

How do you project power?

What's amazing, too, is that it was purposely done without a head so that, as emperors came through, you would place the portrait head on top of this incredible torso of power.

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RIPLEY: Torso of power. Nobody has said that about my torso in many years. Probably never actually. But anyway, thanks for watching. I'm Will Ripley, live in Hong Kong.

This is CNN NEWSROOM. "CNN CREATORS" is coming up next and I'll be back with more news in about half an hour.