Europe Today: France counts cost of violence as Ukraine hits St Petersburg, Leningrad

Good morning, it is Monday the 19th of October. I'm Maeve McMahan and this is Europe Today, your morning update of European news and analysis, live here on Euronews. Coming up, from Lyon to Paris, Marseille to Rennes, France is still cleaning up scenes of devastation following the worst nationwide protests in years. Buildings were attacked, shops set ablaze and more than 2,400 people arrested. Our very own Euronews correspondent Estelle Nielsen-Julien and her cameraman were also assaulted and attacked. We'll be crossing to Paris for the latest. Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces have struck an oil terminal, a data centre and a bridge in St. Petersburg in a large-scale drone attack over the weekend. It comes as the European Union officially advances new negotiation clusters to bring Ukraine closer to the European Union, alongside the creation of a joint task force to tackle corruption and rule of law reforms. For The View from Kiev, we sit down exclusively with the EU ambassador to Brussels, Katerina Mathernova. Plus, 1,000 aid workers killed in three years. And now new warnings that modern conflict zones are turning into AI atrocity labs. We speak to UN aid chief Tom Fletcher, who warns that with so many cuts to overseas aids in his sector, more people will die. But first, to Paris, where student-led demonstrations over the cost of living and school conditions that began weeks ago have spiralled out of control, with violent groups hijacking the marches this weekend. The mayor of Paris said whole streets have been devastated, cars burnt out and shopfronts destroyed. In an address to the nation last night, the French President Emmanuel Macron pledged to catch all those responsible for the chaos. We all feel anger and shame. Seeing the streets of our cities ransacked like this is unbearable. Those who have destroyed property must pay. Those who have looted must make restitution. Those who have sought to bring down the Republic will be held accountable. And just this morning, France's Interior Minister, Laurent Nunez, has handed in his resignation, but the French President has refused it for now. For more on the tense situation, we can go straight to Paris, where Euronews international correspondent, Valérie Gauthier, is standing by for us. Good morning, Valérie. Now, our viewers know you as often reporting from war zones for Euronews. How does this destruction compare and what could the final cost be? Well, if we compare to wars, we have to keep things into proportions. But it's true that some of the scenes I've seen over the weekend are reminiscent of things I've seen in Ukraine, for instance. The destroyed buildings, the burned cars, buildings like this one behind me, this restaurant that was completely devastated on a Saturday night. So there is this feeling of desolation, the overturned streets, and things are quite gruesome throughout Paris since Saturday, and piles of burned bikes everywhere. So, yes, there is desolation and people are stunned by the sights of their city in this neighborhood around the Place de la République, for instance. And now the situation is still tense. As you know, the looting went on last night. I came back to the Place de la République early afternoon and was surprised to see the amount of police that was deployed there. And they were confronted and confronting groups of youth who had gathered on the square again. And it's, you know, continued with pursuits and tear gas grenades being thrown, more arrests. So tension is still running high. And President Macron spoke to the nation last night, Valerie. Has the government regained control of the situation at all? Well, the government is far from having regained control of the situation. We'll see what happens today. But the president was very focused on being firm towards those who perpetrated the looting and the destruction in France over the weekend. But he was also, you know, criticized for not saying anything about the solutions he would bring, the answers he would give to the demonstrators as concerns the cost of life, the high cost of life, or the issues in education, in health. So people are still waiting for those answers. He was also blamed for not saying a word about the young people who were wounded during the protest. There is a crisis cell that is being organized and it starts its meeting this morning. It will continue for several days. So the solutions are yet to be discussed and revealed to the wider public, which is getting quite impatient. OK, Valérie Gourier, thank you so much for that live update there from Paris and beyond France. the cost of living and housing crisis has been sparking unrest all across the continent. From Albania to Portugal, Italy to Spain, thousands have been taking to the streets this weekend declaring that soaring housing costs and inflation have left them suffocating. For more, we can bring in Professor Alberto Alemanno. He's a professor in EU law at HEC Paris. Good morning, Alberto. Thank you so much for joining us. Just did you see these protests coming first and how long do you think they could last? I would say Europe's youth protests are not one movement at the moment. They reflect shared anxieties about job, living costs in the future, and they are becoming violent, at least in some corners of Europe, which is complicating the ability of the youth to convey their message to political leaders. However, treating this protests as a teenage revolution or as a pan-European movement might be inaccurate and even misleading by fooling an image of Europe that is destroying itself, which I don't think is entirely accurate. You're right in pointing out that these protests are spreading across Europe, but I think their immediate cause differ from one another. And that's why I don't think we should treat them as one phenomenon. We are probably talking about different situations, different reasons that spark this protest with some imitation that is occurring among them fueled by media coverage. Well, how can politicians catch hold of the situation? As you've seen in France, the political response has not been adequate? Well, by now it is pretty clear that the French protests have not been foreseen or treated with due of care. They were largely anticipated and yet the police and the public authority were not able to handle, to prevent and to mitigate disaster. And there is also evidence suggesting that there has been some abuse of power with many thousands of arrests, some violence and accidents that could have potentially been foreseen. And that's why we've been hearing in the past few hours quite strong calls for inquiries in order to find out exactly what went wrong and to avoid this to happen in the future should these protests continue across countries in Europe. And have EU heads of state and government been too focused on issues like defence and security, far away from people's real-life struggles? Well, there are many instances in which we've been hearing students, the youth and even trade unions and workers claiming that there is something broader than the school issue here. We see that the capacity of most countries to spend for welfare state has been reduced, reduced by this major rush towards rearmament of Europe. And this is causing concern, concerns among different peoples of Europe who feel affected, in particular the younger ones, because they know that their future will be bleak compared to that of their own parents. We have a lot of polls suggesting that more than half of the youth in Europe believe that their future won't be as bright as that of their parents. And that, of course, is a very important message, which has been perhaps blurred out because, of course, it's the violence and those images that are, of course, dominating the headlines this morning. Professor Alberto Almano, thank you so much for joining us here. Now moving on, Ukraine has reportedly launched a major drone attack on St. Petersburg, striking an oil terminal and targeting a data centre and a bridge. The attack comes just one week after President Donald Trump announced an energy ceasefire, which has failed to halt strikes on energy infrastructure. For more, we're joined now here in the studio by our Ukraine correspondent, Sasha Vakhalina. Good morning, Sasha. Just tell us, what more do we know about this overnight attack and what does it mean for Trump's proposed energy ceasefire? reportedly two of the city's oil facilities have been struck by ukrainian drones and one of them indeed is being Saint Petersburg oil terminal it is important to note that this is indeed one of the largest oil terminals in russia now this attack over the weekend seems to put sort of an official end to Donald Trump's uh unilaterally declared energy ceasefire because Kiev did pause its strikes on Russia's energy facilities for a couple of days while Russia did not do that and including this night now where ballistic missiles launched at Kyiv and at Ukraine and Volodymyr Zelensky said that over just the past week Russia deliberately attacked Ukraine's energy and oil and gas sectors 76 times launching almost 2,700 attack drones 1.7 thousand aerial bombs and 66 missiles made now but that certainly would not please um Donald Trump and we heard overnight from him he posted on Truth Social another post saying that he is willing to put an end to this war in his own way he still believes in the energy ceasefire and he actually said that Russia and i'm quoting him here is doing very little if anything to help Ukraine and instead he said that Russia is helping the world and the United States when it comes to diesel and he again blamed Ukraine said that you uh Ukraine is deliberately using diesel refineries as target knowing how much they hurt the world diesel market he also blamed once again Volodymyr Zelensky saying quote he does not care and he does not want to end this war Donald Trump said now i spoke also exclusively to the US ambassador to Kiev Kateryna Mordvychka who has a very different view on that because she actually lives in Kiev and lives through every single Russian attack in Ukraine's capital what happened since the end of August of this year is that Kyiv became a true frontline city. And this is not only the nighttime attacks that we are almost used to, but the daytime attacks that started on the 27th of August are relentless. And people can't really imagine when they're outside that when you have an alert, kids have to stop studying, go to the shelter. Doctors stop carrying out medical procedures. Metro stops. With the intensified attacks by Russia since the end of August, Moscow has been using more and more as well of jet-powered drones, which are much harder to intercept, and very often the targets have nothing to do with the military. I think this is quite a specialty of Russia, is the attacks on civilian targets. And let's remind ourselves that attacking civilian targets is a war crime. It goes against the laws of war. So apart from aggressing peaceful country in the first place, the war crimes are happening on a daily basis. There is also diplomatic escalation happening these days between the United States and Ukraine, which is one of the important topics regarding how much more Europe can step in to help. With your experience, first-hand experience of living through all of that in Kiev, What do you communicate with your colleagues, diplomats and the European leaders here in Brussels? Europe has been and is proving itself to be really the steadfast, the most reliable supporter of Ukraine, both on the financial side and the military side. President Koshta was very clear that we are certainly not going to release any sanctions on Russia until the war stops. And also, you know, right now the European Union is carrying about three quarters of the financial support for Ukraine. And I think there is determination to continue, but we also will be talking to our like-minded partners to step up their effort as well. One of the aspects of Europe's bigger support and more of the European Union stepping in also comes to supporting Ukraine when it comes to Ukraine's right to strike Russia's oil facilities, refineries, to target Russia's money-making machine, the one that is financing the war. We have heard from Kaja Kallas, who told Euronews that Ukrainian strikes on Russian, but this support of Europe can also put Europe and Brussels at odds and in trouble in its relations with the United States. Well, I would prefer not to comment on that. I look at it from the perspective of Kyiv and living there, and I certainly support the view that the High Representative expressed, because it's the fossil fuel industry that is fueling the war on the Russia side. And moving on from Gaza to Congo, South Sudan to Myanmar, attacks on humanitarian workers are on the up as funding for their day job is going down. And as the EU prepares its long-term kitty from 2028 to 2034, a fight is unfolding over how development, humanitarian aid and geopolitical priorities can be financed. For more, we sat down with the UN Aid Chief, Tom Fletcher, who passed through Brussels for the EU's first ever conference on the protection of aid workers. And we started by asking how bad their plight was. Take a look. Oh, it's been terrible. I mean, we've lost a thousand colleagues in the last three years. And so the question being asked at this conference is, how do we stop people killing aid workers? We shouldn't have to ask that question. I mean, the protection, the law is meant to be there to protect us. We've got our humanitarian neutrality. we should be able to go and deliver food, medicine, shelter without people killing us and yet a thousand dead colleagues in three years and the way people are being killed as well is even more vicious, more sophisticated it's terrifying and remember you know these are people who wake up they kiss their kids you know goodbye in the morning they're going out to work they're going into danger they know the dangers and somewhere else there are other people thinking how do we kill them you know I can't get my head into the mindset of the people who are killing aid workers and there's no accountability never investigations and the weapons as you said becoming more and more sophisticated including i was in kherson just recently in ukraine you know the drones being used there the ai drones that become more lethal as they get to the end of their battery life because they're programmed to find a target and to kill it what role will ai play going forward as you say it's already playing a role in ukraine also in the war in iran we've seen in these new weapons right now in sudan in somalia south sudan lebanon gaza so many of the places we're working people are telling us right now that they are an atrocities lab that these weapons are being developed that they're you know like a lab they're being experimented on with these new weapons and it's been becoming terrifying because you're getting these kill zones in which nothing can survive and meanwhile that's happening on the ground and here in brussels politically just last week we saw the eu summit there was lots of squabbles over the EU budget there's lots of talk of cutting development aid overseas aid what would that mean for these areas and of course fragile and conflicted states it would be devastating i mean we faced enormous cuts already in the last few years and as a result at least a third of the sector has had to be cut now i then go out to the field and i'm in places where i know that people will die because of the cuts because of choices i'm then having to make i was in Afghanistan recently where you know we've cut the clinics and so therefore women are cycling much further to get to give birth and as a result they're losing their kids because they're dying on the road you know again and again i'm holding children who i know will probably not survive because of the cuts i'm being forced to make so we desperately need this to be a budget of solidarity and generosity for the people in the world who need it most and that's one of the reasons i'm here and when you hear messages like those coming from France from Marine Le Pen whose party is doing very well in the polls ahead of those elections next year she's saying that she'll be cutting funds even to Ukraine what does that make you think? I've been in Ukraine recently. I've seen how great the needs are. I was in Kiev overnight when they had a terrible night, ballistic missiles, huge missiles landing all through the night. I was in Kherson up on the front line. I drove down what they call the road of death, where so many of these drones are attacking, hitting civilians. So those needs there are massive. And I think there are many politicians in Europe who make the case for cutting aid. But actually, if you're not dealing with these problems at source, then these problems will come in your direction. You can't put a tariff on a on a pandemic. You can't build a wall large enough to keep out the waves of migration that the climate crisis and the aid cuts will drive. So, you know, we'll keep on making the argument and hope that there are enough people of solidarity and generosity there to to see it through. And just finally, we're coming. Well, it's already one year since the ceasefire in Gaza coming into the winter. What does the situation look like there? it's grim and you know a year on from the ceasefire we have managed to get the hunger levels down so about half the number of people who were reporting going to bed hungry a year ago are saying they're still going to bed hungry but that's still almost half the population going to bed hungry you know we're being blocked from bringing in the shelter materials for the winter the the tents that people need um we're being blocked from all the work we need to do to clear the rubble in Gaza under which people's loved ones are still buried so they can start to rebuild their homes and their lives. So some things are improving. We've got 100,000 kids back into school, but those kids should never have been out of school. And now we're facing into a really, really rough winter. Well, that brings this edition of Europe Today to an end. For any longer reads, do visit euronews.com, especially on that unfolding story and situation over in France. Any comments or messages for us, you can always reach us, Europe Today at euronews.com. That is our email address. But for now, take care. Thank you so much for tuning in, as always, and stay with us here on EuroNews.