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Ukraine Marks Four Years Since Full-Scale Russian Invasion; Zelenskyy Praises Ukraine's Resistance Four Years into War; Trump Pushes Back on Concerns About Potential Iran Operation; IBM Shares Plunge as Anthropic Unveils New Updates. Aired 9:20-9:45a ET
Aired February 24, 2026 - 09:20 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[09:20:00]
BECKY ANDERSON, CNN HOST, CONNECT THE WORLD: Hello, I'm Becky Anderson in Abu Dhabi. You've been watching Breaking News here on CNN. And we will keep
monitoring that story and get you the very latest next up here on "Connect the World".
I want to get you live to Kyiv, where Ukrainians are marking four years since the Russian invasion. It is 04:00 p.m. in the Ukrainian capital.
Plus, Iran expected to deliver a proposal to the United States in the coming days, ahead of talks in Switzerland. All that after this short
break. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ANDERSON: Well four years of war, hundreds of thousands of dead, battle lines virtually stalled. And as I speak to you right now, no clear
indication that Russia's war on Ukraine, its self-proclaimed special military operation is going to end anytime soon. Exactly four years ago,
Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on President Vladimir Putin's orders.
The Kremlin today acknowledging that Russia has not achieved Putin's goal of seizing the entire Donbas region. Ukraine's President spoke earlier,
saying his country has persevered through immense hardship and loss.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT: Today marks exactly four years since Putin started his three-day push to take Kyiv, and that, in fact,
says a great deal about our resistance, about how Ukraine has fought all this time. Behind those words stand, millions of our people behind those
words stand immense courage, incredibly hard work, endurance and the long path Ukraine has been pursuing since February 24.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANDERSON: Volodymyr Zelenskyy also laying flowers at a makeshift memorial urging U.S. President Donald Trump, to one day join him there and see
firsthand the struggles of Ukraine's people. Well CNN's Chief International Correspondent, Clarissa Ward joining me from Kyiv.
CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I want to start with the toll that this grinding conflict has had on the people of Ukraine. You
talked to President Zelenskyy about that in a wide-ranging interview that you conducted with him on this, you know, very gloomy anniversary.
Clarissa, what did he tell you?
That's right. Becky, we sat down with him for about 45 minutes, and before the interview, we were actually able to attend an intimate ceremony during
which he was presenting medals of courage and honor to some soldiers who had served, but often also to widows and orphans, relatives of those who
have fallen in this war.
And you can see from this clip that we're about to play that this all takes a very heavy emotional toll and weighs on his shoulders. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WARD: This woman said to me, I never want to hear the word resilient again. I am so over being resilient.
[09:25:00]
I am so exhausted. I am so broken. What do you tell Ukrainian people right now who are feeling that that they're done.
ZELENSKYY: -- very difficult. It's very understandable and painful that -- we want to end this war as quick as possible. And really, we -- each day,
we do all we can. I speak with all the partners. I try to negotiate. I'm asking different parts in different continents, help me to stop Putin but
if we will give him all he wants.
We will lose everything, just everything, our houses, our lives, our families, everything, because all of us, people will have to run away from
the country or be Russians.
WARD: As the war enters its fifth year, do you have any regrets? Do you have anything that you think, God, if I could just go back, I would do it
differently?
ZELENSKYY: Yes, some elements, of course, I'm a life person. Yes, of course, there are some moments, yes, but I will not tell it.
WARD: Fair enough.
ZELENSKYY: Not now, not now. I mean this. I don't want Putin to know some my weak moments.
WARD: But you've had them.
ZELENSKYY: Yeah, of course. Of course.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WARD: Becky, we also asked President Zelensky what he would like to hear from President Trump tonight when he gives his State of the Union address,
he paused for a really long time before answering, simply to stay on our side, clearly an emotional plea from one president to another at this very
uncertain and somber time, Becky.
ANDERSON: It's good to have you, Clarissa. Clarissa is on the ground where it is just before half past four in the afternoon there in Kyiv, in
Ukraine. Well, Iran may offer limits on uranium enrichment in its latest proposal to the U.S. That is what a source in this region is telling CNN.
As you'll know from our coverage, U.S. and Iranian officials are due to meet in Geneva on Thursday for what would be the latest round of nuclear
talks. All of this comes as U.S. President Donald Trump pushes back against reports that his top military leadership is concerned about a potential
conflict with Iran.
The president rejecting worries about the cost of a major conflict. Well, CNN's Paula Hancocks joins me now in a source in this region telling you
that Thursday's meeting in Geneva could produce, quote, war or a deal.
PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's a crucial, few days. It really is when it comes to this issue. The fact that they will be meeting indirectly,
potentially on Thursday, is key. We understand as well. One source familiar with what is going on telling me earlier this morning.
They were expecting Iran to give this deal, this updated proposal to Omani mediators at some point today. It's unclear whether that is still going to
happen, but certainly we are expecting within this proposal, according to this source, an acknowledgement that they have an ability to compromise
that there would potentially be movement when it comes to this uranium enrichment, which is the key sticking point in this.
Now we are expecting the plan, though, according to the source, to still point out what the foreign minister has been saying, Iran has the right to
enrich uranium, and they want to keep that right to enrich uranium. But we're also hearing Iranian officials telling Reuters that there is room for
compromise, that some of this highly enriched uranium might be exported, some of it might be diluted.
What we're hearing, effectively from the Iranian side, is that then there is a deal that can be done, and there are compromises that can be done,
whether it is what the United States wants, we don't know, because we've heard from the U.S. President Donald Trump, that he doesn't want any
enrichment.
ANDERSON: Yeah.
HANCOCKS: So, it's uncertain whether this significant gap between the two sides can be bridged.
ANDERSON: Next 48 hours does certainly feel incredibly important. Thank you. Well, an Iranian army helicopter has crashed into a fruit market in
the central province of Isfahan, killing the pilot, co-pilot, and two people on the ground, according to Iranian state media.
Emergency crews are on the scene, along with investigators working to figure out exactly what caused this deadly crash.
[09:30:00]
Well, coming up why Anthropic is sending jitters through the software market. More on that after the opening bell on Wall Street, which is --
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ANDERSON: All right. Welcome back. I'm Becky Anderson in Abu Dhabi. You are watching "Connect the World" from our Middle East programming hub here in
Abu Dhabi. We're 9 hours ahead of New York, where the bell has rung. The markets are up and running, and that is the picture we are seeing, a pretty
mix day.
Remember a pretty brutal session on Monday. There are real concerns about AI disruption, about tariff turmoil, uncertainty. Certainly, investor
concerns dragging these markets lower yesterday. Little bit of a fill up on the DOW there, but you can see the NASDAQ and the S&P are both lower,
today.
I want to turn to the stock, tech stocks specifically, and the software company, IBM, its shares down 13 percent on Monday. There was single day
drop since the year 2000 that decline in part driven by the artificial intelligence company Anthropic. Now it unveiled a sweeping set of updates
to its clawed platform.
A set of updates that are adding real fears that AI will wreak havoc in both the services and software industry, specifically CNN Business Tech
Editor, Lisa Eadicicco joining us live from New York. I just want to get you to walk us through this update from Anthropic, if you will, because the
very latest victim is IBM, but we have seen a significant fallout and route in other stocks in the sector. So, what's going on here, Lisa?
LISA EADICICCO, CNN BUSINESS TECH EDITOR: So Anthropic, this morning is announcing a slew of updates that it's really hoping will make Claude
better at a range of different types of jobs in specific industries, things like human resources, design, personal finance, a lot of different fields
that generally fall under the umbrella of knowledge work.
And this is interesting, because traditionally, where we've really seen the biggest impact from AI at work has been in software engineering. But what
Anthropic is hoping to do here is kind of replicate that success with different types of office work.
[09:35:00]
So, with this update, Anthropic says that Claude should be better at things like drafting job descriptions and onboarding materials and human
resources, for example, maybe developing creative briefs for design jobs. And this is all coming, as you said, as there have been a lot of questions
about what AI will mean about the future of work, and that's being reflected in some of the activity we're seeing in the stock market.
And Anthropic has said that its goal, of course, is not to replace human workers, that it wants this to be a complimentary tool, that it's not
trying to replace the services that a lot of these other enterprise software companies offer. But this is certainly coming in a pretty short
time frame, Anthropic launched its agent for general office work just in January.
And we've already seen a variety of updates since then, this one today, for example, there was another similar update just a few weeks ago, and then,
of course, some updates that make Claude better at cyber security as well. So, we did see some similar shakiness in cyber security stocks recently.
ANDERSON: Yes, fascinating out there, isn't it? We're also getting some new details on a deal between Meta and the chip company AMD, and this is for
some $60 billion worth of AI chips. This is a massive win for AMD. It is also adding to concerns about what are these circular deals, or seemingly
circular deal?
I guess we should actually call them circular deals in this industry. Can you just explain what's going on here?
EADICICCO: Yes, so Meta and AMD are partnering on a deal that will give Meta 6 gigawatts worth of computing chips to power its AI infrastructure.
And as you mentioned, this is just the latest in a string of deals we have been seeing over the past year as tech giants continue to pour billions
into AI infrastructure.
And Meta says that this deal, that these chips will go towards building its super intelligence products. And that is really key here, because I think
one thing that's pretty unique to Meta in this situation, when we're talking about building out AI infrastructure, is that it's primarily to
help it build out its efforts in super intelligence, its own products.
So, I do think that does ramp up some pressure on Meta to show that it's delivering on those products, whereas other companies in the space that are
pouring money into AI, like Microsoft and Amazon, for example, are major cloud providers, so I think a lot of the pressure for them is more about
their clients in addition to their own products.
And while this is a lot of money and it's a big deal we're talking about here, it's also not necessarily surprising, because Meta has said it does
plan to ramp up spending and capital expenditures for the year 2026.
ANDERSON: Good to have you, Lisa.
EADICICCO: Thanks for having me.
ANDERSON: -- a pleasure. And we are back after this quick break folks. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:40:00]
ANDERSON: Paramount Skydance upping its offer to buy Warner Brothers Discovery, CNN's parent company. It is the latest move in what is a bidding
war for some of Hollywood's biggest assets, which include franchises like Harry Potter and Game of Thrones.
Netflix, which has an offer on the table for part of the company, will be given the chance to match the latest bid from Paramount. CNN's Chief Media
Analyst Brian Stelter, joining me now. This bill keeps getting ratcheted up. Just walk us through what we know at this point.
BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: Yeah, Paramount has raised its bid, but we don't know by how much. Paramount had been offering $30 per share
for all of WBD, including CNN, but WBD has been rejecting that offer and siding with the Netflix offer instead.
As viewers probably know, Netflix is trying to buy Warner Brothers and HBO, basically the entertainment assets from WBD, but not trying to buy CNN or a
suite of cable channels. So that progress -- that process is moving forward. WBD breaking itself into two pieces, Warner Brothers and HBO going
off to one side and ready for Netflix to take over, and then the cable channels like CNN going off to the other side.
That's all supposed to happen this summer. But Paramount continues to make a play for the entire company. And we know the new offer is somewhere north
of $30 per share, probably $31 or $32 a share, although just double duck in my phone. Paramount has not yet commented on what the offer is.
Now, most importantly, Netflix is probably going to come in and match that price in the next day or two. There's now a four-day window for Netflix to
match the price. So, the drama will continue surely into March, because that is when a shareholder vote is scheduled.
Ultimately, WBD is trying to figure out exactly how many billions these assets are worth. Paramount has indicated it's willing to pay more, but now
we actually might be about to find out how much Paramount is willing to pay. And then it becomes a question about whether these companies can get
it across the regulatory finish line, not just in the U.S., but also in Europe and in other markets.
One of the arguments, one of the big arguments involving these deals is about whether regulators will approve any of these deals. Netflix has
exuded confidence, saying it believes it will prevail. But just the other day, President Trump attacked Netflix because of board member Susan Rice,
who is an Obama and Biden veteran.
He said Netflix must fire Susan Rice, or, quote, pay the consequences, a direct threat that he might try to use the government's regulatory
apparatus against Netflix. So, a lot of question marks about that as Paramount continues to make this play for all of WBD.
ANDERSON: This just goes on and on, doesn't it, and we continue to watch. It's good to have you. Thank you, sir. We're going to take a very short
break. Your "World Sport" show is up after this. We will be back with more news after that.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:45:00]
(WORLD SPORT)
END
