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Early Start with Rahel Solomon

Trump: Russia And Ukraine Should Stop Fighting At Battle Lines; Multiple Online Services Hit By Outages; Diwali Firecrackers Could Add To India's Pollution Problems. Aired 5:30-6a ET

Aired October 20, 2025 - 05:30   ET

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

[05:30:00]

CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So he is keen I think to push towards eventually a direct meeting with Putin although, of course, the Russian side has shown no readiness towards that.

I think obviously the moving target here is the U.S. position and we're getting a few more clues around how that meeting actually went.

I want to read you a portion of a briefing that Zelenskyy held with journalists on Sunday where he said look, "The position of the Russians hasn't changed. They want us to withdraw from Donbas -- not the entire East, but specifically Donbas, that is, completely from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions." He goes on -- "I made it clear that Ukraine's stance in this context remains unchanged. I explained this both to President Trump and to Mr. Witkoff." That's Steve Witkoff, Trump's special envoy.

"We understand Mr. Witkoff is simply conveying what Russia means. This does not necessarily reflect his own view, at least according to him. I made it clear to him that there are some misleading impressions."

So it is clear from that number one that Steve Witkoff was there and involved in the discussions and number two, that the U.S. side did try to put across the Russian position and Zelenskyy had to -- he's sort of hinting there -- push back.

But I think the important point and what we're hearing this morning from a Ukrainian source familiar with the situation is that they overall see this meeting as constructive -- is that Zelenskyy was able to bring Trump back around to the idea that at least as a starting point the conflict could be frozen along the current front lines without giving up more territory to Russia than they currently occupy. So that is a key point.

They didn't get the Tomahawks as promised but Zelenskyy is saying the issue is still on the table. And he is saying this morning that they are working on a contract for 25 Patriot. Now they aren't there yet. He is making it clear that they would likely be delivered over a number of years. But it would be a significant boost to Ukraine's air defenses, and it would send a strong signal as to their staying power in this conflict.

So going forward he's talking to European leaders. He's already been on the phone with Emmanuel Macron of France this morning and is expecting to meet with European leaders soon.

But, of course, as we hear more coming out of this meeting on Friday it is clear that the upcoming summit that we expect between Trump and Putin in Budapest will be another moment of great risk for Ukraine. Zelenskyy saying in that briefing on Sunday the U.S. president has decided to give Russia one more chance -- Brian.

BRIAN ABEL, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Clare Sebastian for us in London. Clare, thank you.

Coming up, Donald Trump's reaction to protesters denouncing his immigration crackdown, National Guard deployments, and attacks on free speech. That's ahead.

(COMMERCIAL)

[05:37:00]

ABEL: Welcome back to EARLY START. It's time for your business breakout -- checking some of today's business headlines.

Gasoline prices are falling across the U.S. According to AAA, the average price for a gallon of regular gas could hit the $3.00 mark for the first time in four years. It cites a number of factors, including lower demand, cheaper crude oil, and a mild hurricane season so far.

President Donald Trump is defending his bailout for Argentina. He told reporters Sunday the South American country is "fighting for its life" and shrugged off criticism his administration's $20 billion lifeline is benefitting Argentina more than the U.S. He also suggested that he's considering a deal to purchase beef from Argentina.

President Trump says he is not looking to hurt China with high tariffs amid ongoing trade tensions but is calling for a fair deal. In an interview with Fox News President Trump said China forced him to raise tariff rates earlier this month after Beijing tightened its rules for exports of rare earth minerals. The U.S. president says he'll be meeting with China's Xi Jinping in two weeks in South Korea on the sidelines of the APEC summit.

As the U.S. government shutdown enters its fourth week now more federal employees are about to be out of work. Today the agency overseeing the U.S. and nuclear stockpile will furlough about 1,400 people. That is the vast majority of its workplace.

And the Trump administration's agriculture secretary warns that the food stamp program will run out of money in two weeks. That would leave about 42 million at risk of losing vital food assistance.

Democrats say they want bipartisan negotiation, though Republicans are refusing to negotiate a deal to extend enhanced health care subsidies that millions of Americans rely on. Republicans, including the House majority leader, blame Democrats, using some divisive rhetoric.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: They want to reinstate free health care paid for by taxpayers to illegal aliens. That's $200 billion -- that's part of it. They want to -- they want to give money back to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. They want to take a half-billion dollars from rural hospitals. And they want to engage in all sorts of spending on foreign projects around the globe.

That is actually on paper. That's their kind of proposal and we can't do that.

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): We're talking about the largest cut to Medicaid in American history. Hospitals, nursing homes, and community- based health centers are closing all across America because of what Republicans have done with their one big, ugly bill. And now they refuse to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ABEL: The government shutdown is days away from becoming the second- longest in U.S. history.

Earlier, Larry Sabato, of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, discussed what it might take to get the American public fully outraged, like mass flight cancelations.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARRY SABATO, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: I think you put your finger on one of the scenarios that would very probably end the shutdown, and that would be air traffic controllers calling in en masse, at least at some airports, and saying they were sick, or TSA agents also not showing up for work. Because remember, those two groups in high-pressure jobs are not being paid. They haven't been paid since the very beginning of October.

[05:40:10]

So this is a very difficult time for tens of thousands of government workers, and that's going to show up. And when it starts inconveniencing the public or when benefits cut off -- and some of the food service benefits will be cutting off in just a few days -- then the Congressmen are going to start hearing from average constituents who may be even in their same party.

The key is whether average citizens and average party members start throwing in the towel and saying enough is enough. Lock yourselves in a room, order some pizza. Don't let yourselves out until you make up some kind of compromise that works. That will happen at some point but it's difficult to say when.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ABEL: U.S. President Donald Trump is calling the latest "No Kings" rallies a joke. He was referring to the massive crowds that gathered in every single U.S. state Saturday protesting what they see as the president's authoritarian agenda, but Trump is dismissing them altogether.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think it's a joke. I looked at the people. They're not representative of tis country. And I looked at all the brand new signs paid for -- I guess it was paid for by Soros and other radical left lunatics. It looks like it was. We're checking it out.

The demonstrations were very small, very ineffective, and the people were whacked out. When you look at those people those are not representative of the people of our country.

REPORTER: Mr. President, besides San Francisco --

TRUMP: I'm not a king. I'm not a king.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ABEL: And the president said they were quite small, but organizers say nearly seven million people took part in the peaceful demonstrations, which drew people from all walks of American life.

We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL)

[05:46:15]

ABEL: Welcome back. I'm Brian Abel. Here are some stories we are watching today.

President Trump is expected to impose new tariffs on Colombia in the coming hours as he accuses the country of drug trafficking. Tensions have been growing in the region as the U.S. carries out strikes in the Caribbean on vessels it claims are smuggling drugs. The president also announced Sunday that he was canceling all payments and subsidies to Colombia.

Jewel thieves strike the Louvre and Paris getting away with priceless artifacts from the Apollo Gallery. Officials say three to four suspects were responsible for the seven-minute heist. They used a truck-mounted ladder to break into a balcony window. Cultural treasures, including some of the French crown jewels, are missing.

Israel and Hamas are now vowing to stick to the terms of their ceasefire deal after accusing each other of violating it. Israel says two of its soldiers were killed by Hamas Sunday. That prompted Israel to launch a wave of airstrikes and temporarily halt aid deliveries.

Breaking news coming in to CNN. A number of online services are being hit by outages right now. That's according to downdetector.com which tracks internet disruptions. And this include Venmo, Snapchat, Fortnight, Facebook, Prime Video, and Amazon's cloud computing unit Amazon Web Services.

So for more on this I'm joined by Victoria Baines. She's a professor of IT at Gresham College and is joining us from Strasbourg, France.

And Victoria, what's your understanding of what's going on currently and just how massive this outage is?

VICTORIA BAINES, PROFESSOR OF IT, GRESHAM COLLEGE, FELLOW OF BCS, THE CHARTERED INSTITUTE FOR IT: Well Brian, it's early days and, of course, the big question is who might be responsible for this. Is it human error? Is it a cyberattack?

What we know is that lots of big, global services, including the ones that you've listed but also national banks, national tax services, telecoms providers -- they all rely on big cloud computing services like Amazon AWS, like Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud. Amazon has the largest market share globally. (INAUDIBLE) percent of the world's cloud computing and processing.

And so that means that when it goes down it goes down really big. But as I say, it's (audio gap). I can imagine that there are some really stressed security and infrastructure folks at Amazon right now trying to figure out firstly, what's gone wrong and secondly, who might be responsible.

(Audio gap) is really quite easy to find out. You know, what's the problem. And fixing it can potentially be also quite easy. Finding out who is responsible, whether it's just human error or whether it's malicious activity from a hostile actor -- that's the bit that takes more time.

ABEL: And Victoria, I do want to say that your microphone keeps on cutting out. I don't know if it's your connection with your earbuds or not. But I'm going to ask you another question and hopefully we can minimize that.

I do want to ask you what the fallout from this could potentially be as people work behind the scenes right now to get these networks back up.

Is there monetary issues that could be happening right now?

BAINES: Um, absolutely. So one of the things about having a company like Amazon run all of your cloud computing services is that they are so large -- one of the world's largest technology companies if not the largest -- that they can afford to hire lots of folks who work in security and who work in monitoring so that they can identify what the problem is.

[05:50:00]

But in terms of the impacts on companies' operations if we think back to what happened with the CrowdStrike outage last summer. So in July of 2024 you and your viewers may remember that a load -- 8 1/2 million computers went down because of one error in one line of code in a security update. So in terms of the impact on other companies' operations in terms of financial impacts, this potentially could be huge. What we haven't seen so much and what we didn't see with the

CrowdStrike outage is long-term financial impacts on the company that makes the mistake or the company that's affected by a data breach, and that's quite interesting. I think we fully expect that there will be a huge impact and that they'll never be able to recover their operations.

But what we see time and again is that, particularly with large organizations, they have the resources, and they have the infrastructure to bounce back.

ABEL: So speaking of resources, what's being done right now behind the scenes to get these networks -- all this technology back up and running? And is there a cause that might be more likely than another?

BAINES: Yeah. I mean, as we've seen, it's absolutely possible that human error can happen here. So mistakes in things like configuration. You know, just the wrong switches or people making an error in a line of code. I think when we see lots of different companies and providers affected that sometimes suggests that there's been an update in a particular tool or a particular service and that hasn't worked quite as it should have done. But as I said, we can't rule out malicious intent.

And what will be happening behind the scenes is that folks at Amazon will be looking to identify OK, is this a glitch? Is this something we did or has somebody got into our own systems and are they trying to create mischief?

ABEL: All right, Victoria Baines. Appreciate your expertise. Thank you very much for joining us.

And we will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL)

[05:56:30]

ABEL: Hindus around the world are preparing to celebrate Diwali. The Festival of Light begins today. But in a world more conscious of the environment there is one Diwali tradition that's undergoing some changes.

CNN's Polo Sandoval has the details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): Diwali, the Festival of Lights, is an iconic Indian holiday celebrated by the lighting of lamps, big family dinners, and in some places setting of firecrackers or crackers as they're called in India. Vendors in New Delhi -- they are stocked up with all types of illuminations to mark the occasion which symbolizes the triumph of light over darkness.

But some residents are worried that India's persistent pollution will once again put a damper on the festivities. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): I think we should not burn

crackers but rather spend a healthy and wealthy Diwali. The less the pollution the better it is for us.

SANDOVAL (voiceover): The air quality index in the country's capital has been hovering at levels considered poor or very poor ahead of the holiday. And each year the smog gets worse around this time because of crop burning and colder temperatures, which trap pollutants in the air.

There are bans on traditional firecrackers in New Delhi to try to reduce pollution levels. But recently the Indian Top Court permitted the use of so-called "green crackers" for a limited time during Diwali. Some residents say it brings some of the joy back to the festival.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): It's a good order. Every year children celebrate Diwali with a lot of restrictions. This year they can just celebrate and that's why children are very happy.

SANDOVAL (voiceover): Manufacturers say the green crackers emit 20 to 30 percent less pollutants but that's still a concern for environmentalists who say the crackers may be cleaner and quieter, but they still give off some harmful emissions.

VIMLENDU KUMAR JHA, ENVIRONMENTALIST: Delhi already has a pollution baseline, you know, of being one of the worst polluted cities of the world. And each year we see on the eve of Diwali or the night of Diwali the air pollution index reaches almost 20 times worse than the pollution limits.

SANDOVAL (voiceover): Delhi's environment minister says preparations are underway to conduct cloud seeding after the holiday to clean up the air.

The lights of Diwali are once again shining but not without casting a spotlight on one of India's lingering health and environmental problems.

Polo Sandoval, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ABEL: The match between Tel Aviv soccer rivals Hapoel and Maccabi was called off on Sunday because of violent clashes between supporters. More than a dozen people were injured in the violence at Bloomfield Stadium. Rival fans throwing smoke grenades and fireworks onto the field before the match was due to start. Police say at least 100 pyrotechnics were launched.

The Toronto Blue Jays and Seattle Mariners will face off tonight in a winner-takes-all game seven for a trip to the World Series.

On Sunday, Toronto has to win to stay alive, and they dominated from start to finish. Addison Barger swatting that two-run homer in the third inning to put Toronto up 4-0. Vladimir Guerrero added a solo shot in the fifth as the Blue Jays cruised to a 6-2 win.

Monday will be Toronto's first game seven in 40 years and the first game seven ever for the Seattle Mariners. The winner moves on to the World Series where they will face the reigning champions, the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Well, the shorthanded San Franciso 49ers pulled out a gritty win against the visiting Atlanta Falcons on "SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL." Christian McCaffrey getting over 200 yards and two touchdowns on the ground and dropped the Falcons to 3-3. The Niners are up to 5-2 for the season despite missing Brock Purdy, Fred Warner, and Nick Bosa.

[06:00:15]

Well, that does it for us. Thank you so much for joining us here on EARLY START. I'm Brian Abel in Washington, D.C. Erica Hill takes over next when "CNN THIS MORNING" starts right now.