Return to Transcripts main page
CNN News Central
18 Killed In Kharkiv Hardware Store Attack, 48 Injured; Ukrainian Army Chief Pressures France To Send Military Trainers; Man Accused Of Burning Stranger In NYC Subway Station; MA Police: Suspect Arrested After 6 Stabbed, Including 4 Girls; 2K-Plus Feared Buried Alive Under Papua New Guinea Landslide. Aired 2:30-3p ET
Aired May 27, 2024 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[14:30:00]
KEITH BOYKIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I don't know what you could say to possibly convince the Trump supporters to see reality.
JESSICA DEAN, CNN HOST: All right, Keith Boykin and Joe Walsh, thanks again. Thanks for stopping by on Memorial Day. We appreciate it.
BOYKIN: Thank you.
DEAN: Coming up, Russia strikes a hardware store in Ukraine, marking the deadliest attack in the country in weeks. We're going to take you to Ukraine live. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: New today, a top Ukrainian military official is putting new pressure on France to send military instructors to train Ukrainian military personnel.
[14:35:05]
The move would mark a significant shift in a NATO member country's involvement in Ukraine's war with Russia.
This, as the death toll rises once again after a Russian strike on a hardware store in Kharkiv. Officials now say the blast killed 18 people and injured dozens more.
CNN chief international security correspondent, Nick Paton Walsh, joins us now, live from eastern Ukraine.
Nick, what's the latest on the ground there?
NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Boris, that death toll from Kharkiv, a staggering blast there. Ukrainian officials saying they found another unexploded Russian glide bombs nearby.
The death toll rising to 18. Nearly 50 injured. The smoke billowing out across Ukraine's second city. But today, a fascinating development in terms of what Ukraine's army
chief has been saying about the possibility of French military trainers.
Now we've been hearing for weeks how Ukraine's experience guaranteeing a manpower crisis on his front lines? Yes, after years now of war with the Russian who have a far larger population. And Ukraine is really struggling it seems, its ranks at the speed that it necessarily needs.
And part of speeding that up would be to get training for their troops done more efficiently here inside of Ukraine. Now they appear to have seized upon a willingness shown in the past weeks, potentially, from France's President Emmanuel Macron.
He was the first Western leader to talk about the possibility, in extremis, of France sending troops on the ground here in Ukraine. And a previous meeting back in February, according to Ukrainian defense officials, the idea of trainers being sent by France here was floated.
Now, Ukraine's military chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, has said he's been signing essentially internal paperwork, getting the documentation ready inside of Ukraine to potentially receive French military trainers.
Now, we ask the French about that. They didn't take the opportunity to say this simply isn't happening. They said they were discussing this and what the needs of Ukraine were, something, they say, that's been mentioned multiple times before.
So we've gone now, remarkably, Boris, for -- I don't know, cast your mind back 18 months ago -- from small arms anti-tank weapons being sent to Ukraine by the West than tanks, now F-16s, and now the possibility growing or certainly spoken about more frequently of NATO troops on the ground here.
And that'll be a phenomenal escalation if, indeed, it does happen. I should point out that Paris has not openly said no to this Ukrainian idea. We know how urgently Ukraine, indeed, needs it.
And in fact, too, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gainsaying another European ally, Spain, today, visiting Madrid, being told of a billion-worth of anti-air defenses and other weaponry that they would, indeed, end up receiving from the Spanish.
This is a trip that he had delayed after the Russian push north of Kharkiv, a new Russian offensive. He stayed around to try and be sure that was under control.
Everywhere we look, the news for Ukraine, frankly, bad on the battlefield. Yes, they're seeing some areas, the Russian advance slow. But in other areas, it, indeed, speeds up.
And the West now increasingly called upon to variegate the kind of aid it's bringing. And the idea of French military trainers being here unspeakable, unthinkable just a possibly six months ago, now being something Ukraine says it's readying documentation for. However, much is designed to pressure Emmanuel Macron into bringing this to fruition, where it just continually increases the debate about how involved NATO is going to be in this war in the end. It's a lot more than it ever thought it would be when Russia invaded over two years ago now.
Just to startling sign, frankly, of how long this is going on for and how more it's dragging the West in -- Boris?
SANCHEZ: Yes, it speaks to the desperation felt by Ukraine and its Western allies to respond.
Nick Paton Walsh, reporting from eastern Ukraine, thank you so much.
[14:38:58]
Coming up, a man accused of setting a New York City subway rider on fire has been arrested. Why investigators believe this was not an isolated incident.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:43:43]
DEAN: A man in New York is accused of throwing a flammable substance on a stranger in a subway station, burning him and then running off.
You're looking at video from an incident in February. And you'll see the suspect holding two objects with fire shooting out of them. Well, last - sorry -- this weekend, he was later taken into custody.
SANCHEZ: Let's bring in CNN's Athena Jones.
Athena, what are you learning about what happened?
ATHENA JONES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Boris. Well, certainly a scary incident. And police say this is not the first time this has happened. That's what that video from February shows.
But as of this weekend, Nile Taylor, 49 years old, is arrested. He faces eight charges, including assault, arson, and reckless endangerment for throwing a flammable substance onto a 23-year-old victim whose shirt ignited. The victim was burned. We understand they are in stable condition at the hospital.
This happened around 2:45 p.m. on Saturday at a subway station in downtown Manhattan. So not very far from here.
But as I mentioned, he is also, this man, Nile Taylor, the suspect in what the New York Police Department says was a similar incident in February where they say he was separately arrested on Sunday in connection with that incident.
That is the video we see there. He's accused of throwing a lit container, as we see two containers, of flammable liquid at a group of people standing on the platform at another subway station, very close to here in downtown Manhattan.
[14:45:03]
He faces charges of attempted assault, reckless endangerment and arson. No injuries were reported.
And this sort of thing is very rare. The subway serves more than three million customers a day. It's lower than it was before the pandemic. But still, three million people. This is not something that happens every day. But it's still concerning for anyone who rides the subway.
DEAN: Oh, for sure. And, Athena, did the NYPD give any motive for this attack? I think people always go, but why? Why would he do something like this?
SANCHEZ: Yes.
JONES: No, no motive yet. We'll have to find out. We don't yet know also when this suspect will be in court. CNN has been trying to find out whether he has a lawyer.
But still, this -- we know that subway crime -- arrests, I should say, by the NYPD in the subway have gone up by more than 50 percent, at least during the first quarter of this year.
Most of those, though, are dealing with gun violence or fare evasion. This sort of thing, exceedingly rare, but it's the kind of thing that gets a lot of attention and makes people who are already nervous to ride the subway more nervous -- Boris, Jessica?
SANCHEZ: Athena Jones, thank you so much for the update.
We want to focus now on some of the other headlines were watching this hour.
We're getting a first look at the suspect in a Massachusetts stabbing spree. That is 26-year-old, Jared Ravizza. He's now in custody after six people were stabbed Saturday in separate attacks that police say are likely connected.
The first of those incidents was at a theater where four young girls were stabbed. Their mom -- or the mom of three of them, I should say, spoke with our Boston affiliate, WCBB
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LISA DEMBOWSKI, CHILDREN STABBED: Nope. So they were the only four people in this movie theater. They had just sat down. They had just got their concessions.
And I guess he came up behind them in the row. They were like in the second row and he came up behind them. My oldest was leaned over to get something. He got her in the back. And then my other daughter in the top chest. And then my last daughter across her arm. Laughing the whole time. And then got their friend and then ran off.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SANCHEZ: After the theater attack, two McDonalds workers were stabbed at a restaurant. Ravizza, apparently, may also be linked to a death in neighboring Connecticut.
DEAN: Also two cruise ships set sail from the port of Baltimore this weekend, the first since the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed two months ago. The bridge fell after the cargo ship, "Dali," collided with it, killing six people and temporarily paralyzing shipping and cruise liner traffic.
Also, Nicki Minaj is apologizing to fans outside her Manchester, England, hotel. She told the crowd she's sorry for having to postpone her U.K. concert Saturday night due to her arrest in Amsterdam on allegations she was carrying drugs.
And we are just now beginning to realize the scale of a tragic landslide in in Papua, New Guinea. Ahead, how the death toll from this disaster may be far higher than was originally feared.
SANCHEZ: And tomorrow, history is set to unfold in a Manhattan courtroom. Lawyers are set to offer their closing arguments in the criminal trial of Donald Trump. We'll discuss in just moments.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:52:35]
DEAN: The death toll from a massive landslide in Papua New Guinea, appears to be far worse than initially feared. More than 2,000 people are believed to have been buried alive, according to officials.
Friday's landslide happened in a remote mountainous region. And as CNN's Ivan Watson reports, rescuers had been struggling to reach that area.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It has taken days for authorities in Papua New Guinea to come to grips with the scale of the destruction from a deadly landslide. They now say that the death toll could have grown into the thousands.
(MOANING)
WATSON (voice-over): An outpouring of grief in a village community where the government says more than 2,000 residents could be trapped under deep rock. Many of the people in these highland villages buried as they slept when a massive landslide hit overnight Friday.
Satellite pictures from before and after show the sheer size of the landslide.
(MOANING)
WATSON: The rubble is so deep that few victims have been recovered. EVID KAMBU, LANDSLIDE SURVIVOR (through translation): I have 18 of my
family members buried under the debris and the soil that I'm standing on, and a lot more family members in the village I cannot count.
I am the landowner here. Thank you to all those who came to help us. But I cannot retrieve the bodies. So, I'm standing here helplessly.
WATSON: Yambali Village in Enga Province is an extremely remote part of Papua New Guinea. Help has been slow to arrive through mountainous terrain thick with jungle. The terrain unstable even for rescue workers.
Without heavy lift equipment, desperate people have done what they can.
SERHAN AKTOPRAK, CHIEF OF MISSION, U.N. MIGRATION, PAPUA NEW GUINEA: They are using digging sticks, spades, agricultural forks, and their hands, of course.
WATSON: A small amount of aid has arrived but the landslide has destroyed the main road into the village.
And aid workers say violence between local tribes has made the journey even more dangerous. Over the weekend, eight people were killed, and houses and shops burned along the road to the disaster site.
JUSTINE MCMAHON, COUNTRY DIRECTOR, CARE INTERNATIONAL: An evacuation area has been established. Two emergency medical centers have also been established. And the defense force plans to bring in heavy equipment tomorrow.
WATSON: Papua New Guinea has called for help as it comes to terms with the scale of the disaster. The United States and close neighbor, Australia, have offered support.
[14:55:05]
But, in this stricken community, hope for rescue is dwindling with every passing hour.
WATSON (on camera): Part of what is so tragic is the timing of this disaster. The landslide took place at around 3:00 in the morning local time. That is when most of the members of these rural communities would have been asleep in their homes.
Back to you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
DEAN: Ivan Watson, thank you so much for that reporting.
Still to come, severe storms bring deadly tornadoes to parts of the south. And there's more dangerous weather on the way. We're going to tell you where.
CNN NEWS CENTRAL continues after this break. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
