will you abuse power, break the law or go after people after giving no answer, donald trump finally pledges to be a dictator on day one. plumes of smoke rising over gaza this morning as we are now hearing from freed hostages confronting the israeli prime minister in leaked audio. why she s angry at the israeli government. a killing spree in two major texas cities leaves six people dead and two police officers wounded. investigators say one suspect is behind all of that violence. i m sara sidner with john berman and kate bolduan. this is cnn news central. this morning a promise from donald trump to be a dictator. yes, with conditions, but a pledge, nonetheless and how he got there is even more telling. facing questions from sean hannity, not exactly a probing interrogation from edward r. murrow, but asked if he would abuse power, break the law or go after people watch how long it took trump to offer any answer at all. i want to be very, very clear on this.
russia s peace initiatives, they think thing a agreesgressioner the water, killing civilians. it is a reversal of the facts on the ground that we re hearing from president putin. and he complained that he tried to work with the west and all he gotcha was nato expansion. he doubled down on the idea of de-nazifying ukraine, says that they were protecting the ukraine kran people and west was closing its eyes to the murderous regime in kyiv. and he touted the strength of the russian economy which only shrank by 2.1% despite predictions of a collapse. although it is showing signs of strain now over the result of sanctions. imf predicts that it will grow in the first quarter but not by very much. and let s bring in our
industrial zone there, dnipro, power plants hit there. and 100 miles west of here, strikes there again hitting the power plants, knocking out the electricity. east of many cities you can see behind me, water and electricity is out. where the electricity goes, that affects the water pumping stations. they re working to repair those services but russia seems to be embarking on a war of attrition against electrical power generating facilities trying to wear down the infrastructure that will keep the country warm during the winter, christine. civilian targets caught in the cross hairs as well. nic, thank you so much. ukraine kran and russian officials meeting on a deserted highway during a swap of 200
first well, he said the first railcars coming from ukraine kran xw grain and left the region and perhaps traveling to even turkey since turkey is supposed to brokering the talks. and we heard around 600,000 tons of ukrainian grain have been stolen by russia since the beginning of this conflict. russia has denied that, kremlin spokesman ensaid wednesday that he doesn t think this is the reason for the food crisis, that there is really not that much ukraine kran grain at stake here. but the pressure from the international community to do something is mount. we had talked yesterday between laug sergey lavrov and his turkish counterpart and they did not make a breakthrough. but listen to this. this is a cold, callus and calculated siege by putin on in
attack by ukraine that could be used to justify a russian invasion. all this comes as u.s. troops are headed to eastern europe. in a show of support for nato allies worried about russian troops being amassed along ukraine s border. it includes troops from the 82nd airborne base in california. cnn international diplomatic editor nic robertson joins us. nic, i want to start with you. talk to us about what you re hearing from russia, what they are saying about these accusations about a false flag operation that may be in the works. yeah. calling them delusional. he said there have been so many of them lately that they keep coming one after another. we heard u.s. officials talking about a false flag operation. u.s. officials saying president putin was going to replace the ukraine kran leader with a