60 Minutes - 11/10/2024: The Shift, The War Reporter, Robo, Mysterious Russian Deaths

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

Days after President-elect Donald Trump won the election by moving nearly every county in the country towards the right, Scott Pelley travels to Northampton County, Pennsylvania to report on the shift. It’s the state’s bellwether county, which voted for nearly every president in the last century including President Biden in 2020 and President Trump last week. Why did Northampton flip this election cycle? Pelley speaks with longtime residents to find out. CBS News senior foreign correspondent Holly Williams turns the lens on a fellow war reporter on the frontline of the Russia-Ukraine war. She travels to Kharkiv to meet the fearless Andriy Tsaplienko, a Ukrainian journalist who is using his reporting to fight for his country’s survival. As Williams discovers, Tsaplienko’s relentless search for the facts serves as a powerful weapon to counter disinformation and propaganda. His battle to reveal the truth underscores the critical role journalists play in actively shaping the outcome of global crises where information is a battlefield. For centuries, the giants of the art world, like Michelangelo, have made a beeline for the world-famous Carrara marble quarries of Northern Tuscany, turning the white stone into marble masterpieces. Now, a fleet of robots has moved in, carving with pinpoint precision and sparking an art world fracas. Correspondent Bill Whitaker travels to Carrara and jumps into the fray: can a robot make art? While many contemporary A-listers are turning to robots for help, many of Italy’s hammer-and-chisel brigade are up in arms. They claim Italy’s artistic heritage is on the line. Correspondent Cecilia Vega reports from Spain on the unsolved shooting of a Russian defector in the seaside town of Villajoyosa. It's part of a pattern of recent falls from top floor windows, poisonings and accidental deaths of a growing number of enemies of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Vega investigates the suspected links to Russian intelligence services and examines how European governments are responding to Russian aggression on Western soil. Finally, she asks U.S. Intelligence officials whether Putin’s "War on the West" has reached U.S. territory. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Now she runs the place. My mother used to always say, got to vote Democrat. You know, they're for the poor people. You grew up in a Democratic household. Yes. But you just voted for Donald Trump. Yes. Inflation is down by more than half.

Interest rates are falling, mortgage rates are falling, wages are going up. Are you not feeling that? I don't feel it. No, I don't feel it. I don't feel it at all. Everybody I talk to, nobody's wages went up. For more than two decades, Andrei Tsaplenko has been a war reporter. He doesn't flinch at danger.

And maybe that runs in the family. What will you do if the Russians come here? She says that Russians will never come here. Never. We will not let them in. My mom. Meet Robo, one of the robots sculpting marble mined from a famous Italian quarry.

Watch Leonardo da Vinci's hat get adjusted. Not with a hammer and chisel, but with a 13-foot arm spinning and a diamond-crusted finger. So if you were doing this the old-fashioned way, hammer and chisel, how long would this take? Ten times more, at least. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim.

I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories and more tonight on this special 90-minute edition of 60 Minutes. There are very few things that you can be certain of in life. of 60 Minutes. With Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans, you'll pay the same thing every month. With all of the mysteries that life has to offer, a few certainties can really go a long way. Subscribe today for the peace of mind you've been searching for. Public Mobile. Different is calling. You've got unlimited access to music, but time? Now that's limited. The PC Insider's World's Elite MasterCard gets you unlimited PC Optima points,

free grocery delivery, and time back for what matters. Save time and earn $1,100 in average value each year. The PC Insider's World's Elite MasterCard. The card for living unlimited. Conditions apply to all benefits. Visit pcfinancial.ca for details. Value is for illustrative purposes only. With Arizona called last night, Donald Trump swept all seven swing states.

Six of them flipped from Joe Biden's column in 2020. So far, the president-elect has won just over 50% of the popular vote, and he made gains in key demographics, including the young, Latinos, and women. Republicans took the Senate and are on track to control the House. Tuesday, more than 80 percent of all the nation's counties move toward the right. The shift is decisive and leaves Democrats arguing over how they misread the people. To understand what just happened, we went to Pennsylvania, one of the places that made all the difference.

Political pilgrims seeking a vision of the future travel to Bethlehem. We're in Bethlehem, which is the heart of Northampton County in eastern Pennsylvania, a little county along the Delaware River. Midsize, a couple hundred thousand people, mix of urban, suburban, rural areas, all in a pretty centered location here in eastern Pennsylvania. And pretty perfect for picking presidents. For 25 years, Chris Borick has been conducting one of the leading polls of Pennsylvania voters. He's a professor of political science at Muhlenberg College, next to Northampton County.

It was an Obama County, then it was a Trump County, then it was a Biden County, and in 2024, it once again is a Trump County. How did Trump win? It's a Trump County. How did Trump win? It's a great question. You know, first of all, I think he had the wins on his side here from talking to voters. They're not in a great mood. They're not in a good place.

There's lots of good things happening in Northampton County. The economy is good, but they're feeling things in their lives that really trouble them. Housing prices here, grocery prices. I can't tell you how many times when I've talked to people about elections this year, they referenced eggs and the price of eggs. Egg prices doubled and featured on the menu of discontent. At the Nazareth Diner near Bethlehem, no one sees a sunny side to inflation,

high interest rates, and housing prices. The average tab here in 2020 was $24. Now it's $38. And that's the election in an eggshell. The prices have went up, obviously, because the food cost. And for a family of like four people, five people, I have them come in and say, oh my God, I spent $100 with the tip for breakfast? That's crazy.

Which it is. Yeah, 7.30 we open, 7.30 to 10. Roz Workheiser was a waitress 25 years ago. Now she runs the place. My mother used to always say, you've got to vote Democrat. You know, they're for the poor people. You grew up in a Democratic household. Yes.

But you just voted for Donald Trump. Yes. Inflation is down by more than half. Interest rates are falling. Mortgage rates are falling. Wages are going up. Are you not feeling that? I don't feel it.

No, I don't feel it. I don't feel it at all. Everybody I talk to, nobody's wages went up. But we had four years of this. I mean, four years. Gas was super high. Yes, it just went down now, but the past three and a half years it was up. The party in power is going to get blamed by a certain portion of the electorate for economic conditions that they don't like,

and sometimes it's just as simple as that. Anthony Salvato is CBS News Executive Director of Elections and Surveys. Who were the Trump voters? People who believed that things would be better, them being better financially, under Donald Trump, in large measure because they recalled a time before the pandemic when they said the economy was good, and that's how they were benchmarking their financial comparison. Number two, don't forget

about the MAGA base. There's the Republican base, and then there's the MAGA base within the Republican Party. These folks have a very personal connection to Donald Trump. Many of them turn out to vote just because he is on the ticket. Trump swept the swing states, but narrowly, about 1% in Michigan, about 2% in Georgia and Pennsylvania. Does this election represent a major realignment of the American electorate, or is it just an election with its own issues? I think it's a shift, but it's an important one, and not just in the battleground states,

but in places like counties in New York, in New Jersey, in Pennsylvania. And I think it also speaks to the kinds of changes in constituencies that we saw. Democrats didn't do as well, Republicans did better, kinds of changes in constituencies that we saw. Democrats didn't do as well, Republicans did better among young voters, among Latino voters. The historic support that Donald Trump got from the Latino community has been building over a series of election cycles.

Leslie Sanchez is a Republican political analyst and contributor to CBS News. What did you see on election night in terms of Latino support for Republicans all across the country? You have second and third generation Latino families who are living now in the middle class, working class families, very sensitive to inflation and prices, and very sensitive in their communities to an open border. Those two pressures together created a community that wanted change, and they fundamentally felt, if you talked to them, that the Democratic Party had left them. Donald Trump's Election Day support among Latinos jumped 14 points.

You voted for whom? I voted for Donald Trump. Latinos are 20% of the U.S. population now and the fastest-growing community in Northampton County, Pennsylvania. Ronald Corrales opened a barbershop 12 years ago, then a second, now a third. Some of his 20 employees changed their minds about Republicans for the first time. Democrats would have expected to do really well with Latino voters. Yes.

Donald Trump made a lot of inroads in this election, and I wonder why you think that is. The economy. The economy. I've been talking over the past couple of years to, like, people at one point, they were, like, so against him because of the comments or whatever the media was saying. But, you know, a lot of the Latinos are working-class people. They have families. You know, they help their families even outside the country as well. Corrales' late father immigrated from Peru in 1985 and was so thrilled to be in America,

he named his son for the president. Today, Ronald finds some common ground with Trump even on immigration. We still need immigration, but if we could do it the legal way, and hopefully President Trump will bring some kind of legalization to those immigrants because there's still a lot of good people out there that are willing to work and continue dreaming with the American dream. Speaking to families that live along the U.S.-Mexico border, this has been a

cultural and economic relationship on the frontera, like right there in the border area for over 100 years. But it no longer is balanced. This flood of migrants coming across, they feel that it's lawlessness. It's putting tremendous pressure on Border Patrol first responders and their families and their municipalities. Did Democrats take Latinos for granted? Absolutely. I think the party of my parents, the party of my grandparents, just assumed that Latinos, you know, as the community grew and our population grew, that we would just naturally fall in line with the Democratic Party. And in the last 10 years, about 10 percent more Hispanic Americans have moved into the middle class.

They are much more sensitive to these economic issues. We live on the margins still. So small ripples in inflation really have a dramatic impact. Do you think this is a lasting change beyond this election? I would argue absolutely. So the question becomes, if Trump can really meet those promises, bring inflation down, make things more affordable, and make these families feel more financially secure, he's going to have an ally for probably several election cycles going forward. When all the votes are counted, Vice President Harris is going to be several million votes short of where Joe Biden was in 2020. Why?

The Harris campaign lost the turnout game in many respects. We all knew going in that one of the keys here were people who don't always vote, new voters, people who skipped the election in 2020. The Trump campaign did a better job than the Harris campaign at turning them out. Those 2020 non-voters broke for Donald Trump. And Harris's turnout failed even on an issue Democrats were sure would be compelling, one that helped them in the 2022 midterms. They thought they would do better with women.

They did not. They thought that the abortion issue would drive more people to the Harris side. It did not. Another part of Harris' shortfall came after an advertising blitz targeting her support for transgender rights. Republicans spent $143 million on the transgender campaign to cast Democrats as out of touch. The party as a whole spends too much time in places like Washington and New York and Chicago and doesn't really spend time listening to people like my constituents. Democrat Susan Wild is Northampton County's representative in Congress, and she's thinking about the Democratic losses. If you are struggling to pay your rent or feed your kids, you don't have the privilege

of thinking about things like LGBTQ rights. Unless you've got somebody in your own family that's personally affected, you don't have the luxury of thinking about reproductive rights. Unfortunately, I think our party needs to figure out that not everybody is just thinking about these very important social issues. Wilde has served since 2018, and Tuesday, she ran for a fourth term against Republican Ryan McKenzie. She lost by 1.2% to a Trump disciple who had insisted that the 2020 election was stolen. We have a picture of you from 2021 lying in the floor of the House chamber as Donald Trump's supporters were trying to smash their way in. And I'm curious, did you imagine in this election that January 6th or Trump's felony convictions would have been disqualifying in the minds of most voters?

Did I think it would change some people's minds? Yes. And I think it did. But I didn't think that was going to be the pivotal thing that would cost him this election. Why not? Back in 2021, I would have said there's no way he could ever run for president again. But over the last three years, I kind of assessed that it just wasn't going to be a disqualifier. Why would Democrats not turn out in the numbers they had before? I do think that there was a lack of enthusiasm about the top of the ticket. That part I think a lot of us didn't gauge and just thinking

that people were going to turn out to vote against Donald Trump was a miscalculation. Many Trump supporters told us they cringe at the things he says and the things he's done, but the economy to them is more urgent. And there's something more, a connection, an emotion, really, they find hard to put into words. Did you feel like he was someone you knew? Yes. Did you feel that he knew you? I feel he knows the American people and the working class, yes.

The working class of the 20th century built Bethlehem into the second largest steelmaker in the world. But today, the old mills are silent. Pennsylvania pollster Chris Borick told us a new economy and new politics are on the forefront of change. It was such a Democratic place for such a long time, and that Democratic Party doesn't exist. Those Democratic voters don't exist the way they long did in Northampton County. They have to revision what it's going to look like. Does that center on candidates? Does it center on issues? The answer is all of those things.

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Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck, available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. President-elect Trump has vowed to solve Russia's invasion of Ukraine with a simple negotiation. Tonight, Holly Williams reports from Ukraine and introduces us to a man who knows better than most how complicated that war is. For more than two decades, Andriy Tsaplenko has been a war reporter, travelling to conflict zones around the globe. Two and a half years ago, war arrived in his country, Ukraine. When Vladimir Putin sent Russian tanks and missiles across Ukraine's borders, Tsaplienko became a trusted source

of information from the front line. He's as fearless a journalist as they come. Some of Ukraine's military leaders told us they're surprised he's still alive. Tsaplenko told us he's fighting for Ukraine's survival, using his reporting and the truth as his weapons. Andriy Tsaplenko is battle-scarred and limping. Yet like his country, he refuses to stop. Close to Russia's border last month, he filmed Ukraine's 80th Air Assault Brigade. With Birch Forest as cover from Russian drones,

they showed him their American-supplied striker fighting vehicles. 19 tonnes of armour-plated steel topped with a.50-caliber machine gun. He reported that the strikers are helping the Ukrainians to storm Russian positions. One soldier said Russian landmines 15 yards away feel like a slight rustle against the armour. Being a witness of what's important going on right now, that's for me.

You like the front row seat of history. Even more, I'd like to be in the middle of the story and to share this with the audience. So they are also witnesses of what is going on. This is important. My channel, they always want me to be in the studio as an anchor, as a host. I always refuse to be like that because I'm a field journalist.

I feel myself in the studio like a doll in a box. Saplyenko's graphic accounts from the field for the privately owned channel One Plus One have shaped how many Ukrainians see the war. He's told stories of heroism, but also turned a critical eye on his own country, revealing how some Ukrainians paid bribes to government officials to avoid

the draft. Freedom of speech is very important. It's a crucial thing that helps us to win this war. A free media is helping you win the war. Free media system helps us to win this war and will help us to win this war. Because we fight not for the government. We fight not for a particular person like Russians do. They fight for Putin. We fight for ourselves and we fight

for our identity, we fight for our country and for values because we want this country to be free. That's it. Andriy Tsaplienko has some history with Russia. He grew up as a citizen of the USSR in the city of Kharkiv, even doing national service with the Soviet military in the late 1980s. But at home, he was listening to American rock music and told us he worshipped American democracy. In 1990, he posted leaflets with his friends calling for Ukrainian independence from Moscow.

It was a kind of real rebellion because we expected that KGB could come to us and knock to the door. That must have been dangerous. Yeah, we were waiting for the consequences, but fortunately there were no consequences at all. Instead, a year later, the Soviet Union collapsed. Saplienko told us he felt he'd finally been set free. In the new, independent, democratic Ukraine, Saplienko became an international war reporter, one of Ukraine's first. Beginning in the 1990s, he broadcast from Iraq and Afghanistan, Gaza and West Africa.

He told us he learned how easy wars are to start and how difficult they are to stop. In February of 2022, with over a hundred thousand Russian troops massed along Ukraine's border and 10 days before Vladimir Putin launched his invasion, we interviewed Saplyenko in central Kyiv. He'd experienced Russia's earlier invasion of 2014. I travel to the east, you know, almost every week. And there are some friends of mine here. He showed us the Wall of Remembrance, a memorial to those killed since 2014. Just days before the Russian invasion, we interviewed you and you said

Ukrainians have already made their choice between war and dishonour. Every window in this town will shoot at the invaders. And, Andri, that turned out to be prophetic. You were right. How did you know? I know my people. I...

Sorry for my emotion. We will live or we will die. That's it. I know my people and they are like this. Andrei Tsaplenko has come close to losing his life. Outside the town of Chernihiv in 2022, civilians were fleeing through a narrow humanitarian corridor. The Russians began shelling. And Tsaplienko took a shrapnel wound to his leg.

You know, I report from a lot of war zones, but I don't really take the same kind of risks that you take. Why do you take such huge risks? We are sitting in this studio. Do you think we are safe now? No, there is no safe place in Ukraine. We are under threat of Russian missile attack. You know, stop this recording, stop our lives, stop your peace, stop everything.

It's possible. Saplienko told us he sleeps around four hours a night and hasn't taken a day off since the invasion. His contacts inside Ukraine's armed forces are more than just sources. General Sergei Deneco is the commander of Ukraine's state border guard, a decorated war hero and one of Tsaplenko's closest friends. The audience that Andri reaches, we're talking about millions of people, he told us. He is really respected, both on the front line and by Ukrainian society.

So you're fighting a war on the ground while Andri is fighting an information war by reporting the truth. Is that right? Of course. The truth, according to Tsaplienko, is that Ukraine is doing battle against evil. So I raised myself around two million dollars for Ukrainian military. It's not that much, but I think it helps. You're not an unbiased observer of this war. I mean, you're on one side of it. I'm not unique. I think every Ukrainian journalist

took his side in this war. We know that Russians treat us as information soldiers of this war. And we know that we will be killed if we are captured by Russians. So that's why we choose one side. Normally before this war you have to give two points of view to the viewers to help them to decide what's right, what's wrong. But it's not like this in this war. We still have corruption problems, what's wrong. But it's not like this in this war. We still have corruption problems. That's true. We still have problems in bad managing.

That's true. But we are on a good side of history. That's it. We protect values. This war is personal, and Saplienko makes no effort to deny it. In the city where he was born, Kharkiv, is personal, and Saplienko makes no effort to deny it. In the city where he was born, Kharkiv, residents are under near-daily bombardment by Russian missiles, drones and glide bombs.

More than a quarter of Kharkiv's residents have fled, but for those who've stayed, civic pride is non-negotiable. In Freedom Square, in the centre of Kharkiv, the fountains are still working. Despite air raid alarms like this one that sent us scrambling for cover. Nothing landed that day, but just over three weeks later, the building where we took shelter

was shattered by a Russian glide bomb. I'm just going to bring to my mother something. Oh, OK. On the outskirts of town, in a district that's frequently bombed, Saplienko took us to meet his mother, Valentina, a retired shopkeeper. She refuses to evacuate. What will you do if the Russians come here? I don't believe they will come here.

They shouldn't come. We won't let them in. She says that Russians will never come here. Never. We will not let them in. Never. My mum. Like around a third of Ukrainians,

Saplyenko and his mother speak Russian as their first language. Kharkiv is a majority Russian speaking city. Vladimir Putin says that the Ukrainian nation doesn't actually exist. He says that Ukrainians are really Russians. Is it possible that you're really Russian and you've been brainwashed? I've totally lost my answer actually. How can you brainwash identifying yourself? Nobody can force you to be identified as anybody. I mean, Vladimir Putin said that this war is to defend and protect people like you, Russian-speaking Ukrainians.

Protect from what? This is standard propaganda cliche. They want to kill us. They mostly destroyed Russian-spoken regions of this country. They turned them into a desert of debris and remains of concrete buildings soaked with blood. This is what they do, what they continue doing. Putin's blood-soaked invasion has cost the lives of over 100,000 Russian soldiers,

according to US officials. Ukraine's military death toll is now thought to be more than 70,000. The wall of remembrance has extended much further down the street. Andriy Tsaplienko told us the freedoms Ukraine only recently began to enjoy are what these soldiers died for, and the reason he keeps going back to the front line. We realise how vulnerable it is. It could be broken, it could be destroyed, because we live next to Russia.

We know how it works. That's why I do my news, I do my reports, I write my articles. So it's not a job for you, it's a calling. It's a calling, it's an obligation, it's a dream job. If you can help your army to win, if you can help your people to survive, you can be proud of your job. That's it. That's what I'm trying to do. In 1497, an ambitious 22-year-old hiked up to the quarries above the Italian town of Carrara, looking for a perfect block of marble. He searched for months until he found it.

His name was Michelangelo, and the marble became his immortal, the Pietà. Since then, many other giants—think Bernini, Canova— have put their chisels to Carrara Stone. Now, there's an upstart, and like his star predecessors, he goes by a single name, Robo. Robo is part of a fleet of robots shaking up the art world, carving with pinpoint precision and in record time. But not everyone is happy. One artist told us Michelangelo would be rolling in his grave. The jagged ridges of the Apuan Alps stretch for 30 miles across northern Tuscany. Even in summer, their dazzling peaks seem covered in snow. But get up close. It's not snow.

It's marble. Peel away the forest, wash away the soil. You'll find whole mountains of the most sought-after marble in the world. It's remarkable. Yes, we are now approaching the Ravaccione Valley, the valley where you can find the stones that Michelangelo used in the past. We were traveling with Giacomo Massari, the CEO and co-founder of Robator, a company that makes robots that sculpt.

Some of this is in the Statue of David. Yes. This was Michelangelo's old stomping grounds. that sculpt. Some of this is in the Statue of David. Yes. This was Michelangelo's old stomping grounds. We passed quarry after quarry. There are more than 600 above Carrara. The glare from the gleaming rock was intense when suddenly we hurtled into darkness. Look at this.

A tunnel cut straight into the heart of a marble mountain. We drove until we could go no farther. Our work starts from here. The first hard part is to get the stone. We reached what quarrymen call the cathedral. Yeah, let's try not to fall. The track down was slimy with marble mud. The cathedral, this is mind-blowing.

From the floor, walls of stone towered above us. Giacomo Massari told us Carrara's miners had hollowed out the vast cavern over 200 years. We had come to see Robitor's next project, a monumental block of marble about the size of a railway car, 200,000 pounds of flawless Carrara stone. You're going to move this block out of here? We are going to move this big boy out of here. How? There's going to be a couple of cranes and a huge truck to lift it.

A feat not possible in Michelangelo's time, but then neither was this. Meet Robo, one of the brigade of robots taking over sculpture. We watched as Leonardo da Vinci's trademark hat was adjusted, not with a hammer and chisel, but a 13-foot zinc alloy arm and a spinning diamond-crusted finger. Water jets kept Leonardo cool. This was a week's work for Robo, with another two to go. So if you were doing this the old-fashioned way, hammer and chisel, how long would this take? Ten times more, at least. Ten times longer? Yeah, absolutely. Massari told us his mechanical employees, seven and counting,

don't sleep, get sick, or take holidays. He took robots off the automotive line and gave them bigger brains. And the robot will work all these ridges. Robitor's chief technician, also a sculptor, turns the artist's model into a 3D file. That generates a complex set of instructions that tells the robot exactly where to carve, right down to the last half inch.

How much of the work is done by the robot and the computer, and how much by the human artist? We are talking a very high percentage that can be done by the machining. Like how much? Like 99%. 99%? Yeah.

And the very final 1% that is the most important is still done by very skilled artisans in our workshop. Just one percent? But that one percent, Massari told us, can translate into months of human work. Still, we wondered, was using a robot a bit like cheating? If you have a robot doing 99% of the work, where's the artistry? In the idea, how you program the machine is a work of art because it's an artistic approach. You need to have a sculptural background to program the machine in the way that you want.

Massari says Michelangelo, like other A-listers, employed dozens of apprentices who worked anonymously behind the scenes. Now it's the robot's turn. But not every artist wants to admit they have a robot on the payroll. There was work we couldn't film commissioned by big-name artists who insist their identities remain secret. Why is that? commissioned by big-name artists who insist their identities remain secret. Why is that?

I think they are afraid, because most of the people, if you ask a direct question, do you like that this artwork is made by a robot, yes or no, nine out of ten will say no. Do you think that people would think the robot's doing all the work? Yes, but it doesn't make your idea weaker or stronger. If your idea is bad, you can make it with a robot or make it by hand. Still, the final artwork will be bad. But if your idea is good, if you make it with a robot or not, it will be still good. But Tuscan artist Michael Monfroni told us only a human touch can coax the divine out of a stone. And that sounds like this.

Monfroni told us Michelangelo would never lower himself to using a robot, and neither would he. And, he says, he despairs at seeing the master's work being copied by robots it's sacrilege he told us sculpting is passion robots are business monfroni first picked up a chisel at age seven learning the trade from his father. Now those skills are on the brink of extinction. You have said if you use a machine, you become a machine. Yes, because your mind is limited by the technology, he told us. It's only a computer program transmitted to the robot. You lose the satisfaction of having created a piece of art by hand.

Manfrone is not alone. The prestigious Sculptors Guild of Carrara is dead set against robots too. They warn that Italy's artistic heritage is at risk. There is a conservative mindset that wants to hold on to some imagined ancient way of approaching art that's mystifying to me. Barry X. Ball is a contemporary artist based in New York City. He uses eye-popping stone to make works that have been shown at major museums around the world. He's a regular shopper here in Carrara. These blocks go for about $300,000. And on a recent trip, he bought a robot, too. Ball told us he's come under fire for using them. I hear a kind of fear that's almost like they're going

to take our way of making sculpture away from us. Not trying to do that, we're trying to add to it. I know you've heard the criticism that this is cheating. What do you say to people who think that? Number one, they don't understand the process. They think we're pressing print and the robot is plopping out a sculpture. We're very involved in the middle of that as humans

with that creative process. But here it looks like... Ball told us the robot made impossible art possible. Take Michelangelo's Pietà Rondonini. He was still working on it when he died. Zoom in on the front of the sculpture. Using a scan of the unfinished work, Ball created something new.

Instead of the roughed-out face of Jesus, Ball gave the Son of God the face of dying Michelangelo. This is straight up and down. We need to tilt that back. Yep, exactly. He broadened the pedestal and more. I hope he's looking down on us, giving his approval. Then the robot got to work, peeling away the stone until Ball's new Pieta emerged. Ball left some of the milling marks visible. It's like you want people to know that the robot was a partner in this? It also gives this incredibly beautiful effect, which to me, the first time I saw a robot milled surface,

looked exactly like the fluting you see in Egyptian drapery. Ball told us he employs six finishers for every robot. His Pietà was shown at a museum in Milan. Carrara's miners pull out about a billion tons of marble a year from the quarries. Most is destined for kitchen countertops and bathrooms. Modern artists had begun to shun marble because it was too difficult to work and time-consuming. Robator argues the robots are reviving Carrara's artistic fortunes by doing the heavy lifting. To be honest, no one really likes the hard rough cutting. It's tough work,

running a saw, whacking away big blocks. So everyone is really excited to be able to let part of that go. Vermont-based artist Richard Erdman told us he added a robot to his team in Carrara about a year ago. After two back surgeries and 40 years in the business, he was ready for some mechanical help. The other thing about the robo which is advantageous is there are no mistakes. When you're hand cutting... No mistakes. No, when you're hand cutting with a diamond saw, it's a five inch blade, you're following your model with compasses, you could go too far if the cutter isn't skillful enough.

And that's a mistake. The Robo is perfectly accurate. Erdmann's sculptures are held by more than a hundred galleries and museums worldwide. In 1983, he made his breakout piece, Passage. You can almost push it now with your hand. It's so close to falling. A huge sculpture cut from a 700-ton block of Italian travertine. Working with a diamond saw, a jackhammer, and a polishing team, it took two years. Robo Erdmann says would have helped. It sounds like the robot is your colleague. It's not just a machine. When that arm is moving around, I'm really part of it. It's following your design. It's part of you. It's the machine that's beside the point.

It's friendly. We all love it. There's no way around it. Were you skeptical of the robots in the beginning? Yes, we were, but one has to embrace it. The business is changing so fast with a robo that an artist that does not embrace the robo in their work is really going to be the artist left behind. Erdmann says now his robo does about half the work. Then he takes over, polishing the marble until it glows and finishing those hard-to-get-at places that the diamond fingers

still can't reach. At least, not yet. For now, the sounds that Michelangelo would have made still ring out. The marble will be here for generations, but we wondered, how long will the sound. This fall, we are presenting expanded editions of 60 Minutes that run 90 minutes. Next up, we take you to the southern coast of Spain to investigate the brazen murder of a Russian defector. Mysterious Russian death syndrome is a grim turn of phrase used to describe the falls from top floor windows, poisonings, and unsolved shootings of President Vladimir Putin's enemies. But it's not just happening in Russia. Since the invasion of Ukraine two years ago, Putin's gone after his critics on Western soil. It looks like Putin has been allowed to get away with this. Has he? In many ways, yes.

So he's been able to poison and kill his way around the world for over a decade now with just some sanctions put on his government. I'm Cecilia Vega. Has mysterious Russian death syndrome come to America? Our story when we come back. Hit pause on whatever you're listening to and hit play on your next adventure. Stay three nights this summer at Best Western and get $50 off a future stay. Life's a trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. Visit bestwestern.com for complete terms and conditions.

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Kia, movement that inspires. The expression mysterious Russian death syndrome is a grim turn of phrase used to describe the falls from top floor windows, poisonings, and unsolved shootings of President Vladimir Putin's enemies. Since the invasion of Ukraine two years ago, he has used these methods to go after more of his critics on Western soil. Last month, the head of Britain's domestic spy agency, MI5, said Russia is on a, quote, sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets,

as part of what U.S. intelligence officials call Putin's war on the West. Tonight, evidence of this in one of the most brazen assassinations ever committed outside of Russia. Villa Hoyosa is a seaside resort town on Spain's Mediterranean coast. Many of the residents who live there year-round are from Russia and Ukraine. But this past February, the town whose name translates to Joyful Village was the scene of a horrific murder that made international headlines. Inside a parking garage, the victim's body was discovered riddled with bullet holes. It looked like a mafia-style contract killing.

One of the witnesses at the scene was the building's handyman, Ruben Ferrandiz. bullet holes. It looked like a mafia-style contract killing. One of the witnesses at the scene was the building's handyman, Ruben Ferrandiz. I was inside a section of the garage cleaning, and I heard a car speeding up the ramp really fast. Ferrandiz told us he checked the exit ramp of the garage, and that's when he saw a body lying face up on the pavement. We didn't touch him, but we saw he was already dead. Fernandes said he called for help. How many times had he been shot?

They opened up his T-shirt, and he had a bullet, one bullet, right in his heart. One in his heart, one in his ribs, and in his belly he had some. The lady from the ambulance said he'd been shot five times. Police later identified the victim as a 28-year-old Russian named Maxim Kuzminov. In 2023, Kuzminov bought an apartment inside this high-rise complex. His murder was not the first time Kuzminov had made international headlines. He was a military helicopter pilot in Russia who defected after being recruited online by Ukrainian intelligence officers. They helped him plan his escape. This is the helicopter Kuzminov flew on August 9, 2023, below radar so he wasn't detected as he crossed the front lines from Russia into

Ukraine. Kuzminov handed over the helicopter, seen in this footage from the Ukrainian military. He also gave them sensitive military equipment and top-secret Russian intelligence. In return, Ukraine gave Kuzminov half a million dollars and a new Ukrainian identity. It was a big victory for Ukraine, which had Kuzminov tell his story on national TV. What is happening now is simply a genocide of Ukrainian people, both Ukrainian and Russian people. I did it because I didn't want to be part of these crimes. I know exactly how this will end. Ukraine will definitely win this war because its people are very united.

Kuzminov's Ukrainian handlers warned him not to leave the country because of fears Putin would send a Russian military kill team after him. But he didn't listen. In Spain this summer, we went to the garage where Kuzminov was killed and saw for ourselves the bullet holes, the crime scene, and the placement of security cameras. We were told those security cameras recorded the murder and that the footage showed two assassins entering the garage and hiding in the backseat of their car behind tinted glass.

They waited for five hours for Kuzminov to show up to his parking spot, then they sprayed him with bullets. Did you not hear gunshots? No. Nothing? It hear gunshots? No. Nothing? It was completely silent? Nothing. I just heard the car leave in a big hurry, and that's when I came out. But I didn't hear any gunshots. What does that tell you about the weapons that they used?

That they used a silencer, because otherwise I would have heard the gunshots. The assassins fled the scene and burned the getaway car with an industrial-grade accelerant. This would have destroyed any GPS tracking in the car, hiding their trail. The remnants were discovered on the other side of a tunnel in a place so isolated the killers likely would have needed help from locals to know the location. This is not amateur hour. These guys know what they're doing, and they've probably killed people before. Michael Weiss has been researching Russian intelligence services for decades.

He's the U.S. editor at The Insider, an investigative magazine created by Russian journalists in exile. How was Maxim Kuzminov killed? So his murder bears all the hallmarks of a professional hit. We know that he was being surveilled for weeks, if not months, beforehand because the killers knew his movements. The weapon that they used, we don't know exactly if it was a pistol or what, but the ammunition was Russian, so a signature leaving something behind that at least telegraphs where it's coming from.

That sounds like a huge piece of evidence. It's leading back to Moscow, which they want you to know that. You know, they want to be able to say, you can't prove it was us, but come on, let's be honest, you know it was us. Kuzminov did not live a quiet life in Spain. A neighbor told us that he often drank at this local bar and was heard bragging about who he really was. Local authorities here in Villajoyosa are no longer in charge of the investigation into Kuzminov's death. That's now in the hands of the Spanish Civil Guard, the equivalent of the FBI.

But there is a gag order in this case, and authorities have said very little about it publicly, except to issue a stern warning. If it is proven that Russia is behind the death of Maxim Kuzminov, Spain will issue a forceful response. But so far, they've done nothing. We requested interviews with half a dozen local and federal Spanish officials about the Kuzminov case. No one would talk. His death was celebrated on Russian state television and by the former prime minister. When Russian reporters asked him about Kuzminov, he was blunt.

For a dog. A dog's death. A source close to the investigation gave 60 Minutes these photos of men who they say were identified by Spanish authorities as persons of interest who were in Spain at the time of Kuzminov's murder. 60 Minutes has learned the man on the left is a former KGB officer and the man in the middle, his relative, is a Russian police colonel. It's yet another indicator that the Russian government may be involved. Who do you think killed Maxim Kuzminov? I absolutely think it was the Russian special services. I don't think there's any doubt in

anyone's mind, least of all Ukrainians or Russians, that he was liquidated by Moscow. And it appears the Ukrainians are pushing back. In a bizarre twist straight out of a spy thriller, Kuzminov seemed to rise from the dead five months after he was killed. These pictures appeared this summer on social media, showing a man who looked like Kuzminov at an air show. 60 Minutes has learned it was likely a Ukrainian intelligence officer wearing an elaborate disguise, including a mask made to look nearly identical to the Russian defector. The Ukrainians were conducting their own misinformation campaign, trying to beat the Russians at their own game. Their goal?

To make the world think Kuzminov had survived the assassination attempt and was still working for Ukraine, a show to other potential Russians that they would be safe if they too defected. We confirmed that the real Kuzminov was buried in an unmarked grave in southern Spain. Why would the Spanish government not be screaming from the rooftops about a murder on their soil? Because it's going to lead to panic. If you're a tourist, you want a vacation in Alicante knowing that you might be collateral damage and some Russian assassins hit. Is this Western governments looking the other way in some cases? Very much so. Because the price of looking directly

into the eyes of the Kremlin is what? What's the risk? Well, there's also a fear of escalation. That's because there have been more than 60 mysterious deaths of Putin's enemies in Russia and Europe since the Ukraine war began, like gas executive Sergei Protosenya and his family who died in a reported murder-suicide in this villa in coastal Spain two months after the Ukraine invasion. And Dmitry Zelinov, who ran one of Russia's largest real estate companies, died from head injuries after falling downstairs in the French Riviera. Dozens more like this man have fallen out of windows or died in crashes in Russia.

It has European officials increasingly on edge about how much Putin gets away with. If we don't stop him at his borders, he will march on. Jovita Nalepshchina is the ambassador to the United States from the European Union and Lithuanian by birth. In recent years, we've seen Russia linked to a number of attacks on infrastructure around Europe. They have been accused of targeting arms, shipments, railways. What do you think is behind that? This is challenging the order, the stability of Europe, and actually testing.

Testing because they want to push to see how much they can get away with? Of course. All those sabotage, cyber, or attacks on critical infrastructure is actually happening on EU and NATO territory. They're testing how much they can move. President Biden, when he was making State of the Union this year, he said, like, if we don't stop Putin, he will continue because he's not the man of the goodwill. He understands only the language of strength.

In addition to the assassinations, Russia has been implicated in sabotage attacks, including a firebombing at a German factory owned by a leading weapons company, an attack on one of the largest shopping malls in Poland, and the cutting of an underwater gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea. Is Putin at war with the West? Well, of course, yes. We have to take him actually not only seriously, but literally. As a result of Putin's summer of mayhem, last month the EU announced a new type of sanctions aimed at the organizations and people that carry out violence for Russia. If it's proven that any Spanish or EU citizens helped the killers of Maxim Kuzminov escape,

then the sanctions could be aimed at them. The question is whether sanctions and diplomacy are working. You just have to imagine and think what could happen if we don't have neither sanctions, neither diplomacy, neither economic measures. The war would be in a different scale and a different attitude if we don't have the sanctions. But as we sit here today, is it fair to say that Russia is winning? Well, definitely not. We are on the winning side.

Have you heard anyone wanting to move to live in Russia recently? I think not. Is what Russia is doing in Europe a warning for the United States? It's the warning for everyone of us, that they are not really only in Ukraine with the war there. They are here. It's actually happening everywhere. So that's why we have to be vigilant, every one of us.

Is Vladimir Putin bringing his war on the West to U.S. soil? Next, a rare interview with the official who leads the legal fight against Russia at the U.S. Department of Justice. If the brazen assassination of Russian defector Maxim Kuzminov is a warning to Europe about Vladimir Putin's long, violent reach, what could it mean for the United States? Is the country prepared for Putin going after his critics on U.S. soil? It turns out he's already come close. Tonight, Matt Olson, the head of the National Security Division at the Justice Department, says he's concerned that what happened to Kuzminov in Spain could happen here. Mysterious Russian death syndrome. Accurate way to describe what's happened to some of Putin critics? Yeah, we're not really seeing things that are particularly mysterious.

They're all pretty black and white to you? I don't think Putin is trying to hide his hand. I think quite the opposite. I think these are, they're going after their critics, both to eliminate the critics, but also to send a stark and chilling message. He's not hiding his M.O. He's not hiding his M.O. He is going after them because he wants not just those individuals, but anyone who would think about doing the same thing to think twice and to be worried about what will happen to me if I go down that same path. Matt Olson's team at the Department of Justice has prosecuted nearly 60 cases in U.S. courts related to Russian disinformation, sanctions violations, and espionage since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I think we should be very, very concerned about

how aggressive Putin is being in going after the United States as well as our allies. As we sit here today, can you say whether there are Russian assets currently working in the United States right now? There certainly are Russian intelligence assets in the United States working on a range of threats to the United States. How much of a danger do they pose? They are engaged in repressing people who are critics of the Putin regime. And in between, they're conducting foreign malign influence. They're attempting to interfere in our elections and our politics. They are carrying out cyber attacks and putting our critical infrastructure at risk.

Has it gotten worse since the war in Ukraine? I think essentially that the Russian intelligence services over the past couple of years have been on a war footing. We are working really closely with our counterparts in Europe, both on the law enforcement and the intelligence side, to make sure that we're sharing information, sharing intelligence, and sharing really best practices. Earlier this year, U.S. intelligence officials provided information that allowed Germany to stop a Russian assassination attempt before it happened, saving the life of a CEO of a German company that provides weapons to Ukraine.

But there have been many other plots that weren't stopped. The case of Maxim Kuzminov in Spain. Could something like that happen here? It was a particularly brazen act by the assassins to kill him in his garage of his apartment. You can never rule out, I think, that something like that can happen in any country, given how aggressive Russia's intelligence services have been. I will say that it is a focus of us in the Justice Department and the FBI to do everything we can to prevent that kind of activity. But the same thing almost did happen here in Miami in 2020. Russian defector Alexander Poteyev was followed and his car photographed in his apartment garage in the

Miami Trump Towers by someone hired by Russian intelligence. It was straight out of the same playbook as the Kuzminov killing, but here on U.S. soil. What is concerning to you about what happened in that case? The concern is that Russia actually tasked someone to locate and find this individual. The obvious next steps would be potentially to carry out some sort of operation, but luckily that was stopped before it happened. Alan Kohler retired in 2023 from the FBI as assistant director for counterintelligence. His team was responsible for the Poteyev investigation that led to this man, a Mexican citizen named Hector Fuentes.

Fuentes had studied in Russia and had a Russian family. Russia prevented his Russian wife from leaving the country, and in exchange for cooperation on that, Fuentes agreed to carry out some activities on behalf of the Russian intelligence services. The main one of those was to rent an apartment in a particular apartment complex in Florida, and then later to actually go there and do surveillance to locate the source's car. In Miami, a security guard saw Fuentes tailgating another car to slip into the parking garage.

Fuentes was later arrested and admitted he was working for Russian intelligence. He pleaded guilty to acting as a foreign agent. So in that situation, it all worked out. Right. There was no harm done. There was an arrest. Does that case tell you that Russia is this close from being able to pull that off? Oh, it certainly tells us Russia could pull it off if they really put the effort into it.

That is our concern, 100 percent, for that source and lots of other people inside the United States. So who was Alexander Poteyev, the man Fuentes was tracking? There's only one known picture of him from his early days in the Russian army, but Poteyev was a double agent working for the U.S. In 2010, a group of Russian spies was rounded up in the U.S. Alan Kohler led the FBI team that surveilled them for years as they lived seemingly normal lives, all while secretly passing intelligence back to Moscow. The case was the basis of the hit TV show, The Americans. We work for our country. The Soviet Union. In real life, Alexander Poteyev was their boss and ran the group of illegal agents from Moscow until he gave their identities away to U.S. intelligence and defected to Miami.

For that, Putin wanted him dead. Sources told 60 Minutes Poteyev is still alive and is in hiding, but Kohler warns that Putin is fully capable of killing an enemy on U.S. soil. Is it just a matter of time that that happens? The decision to do something like that is a calculus that has to be done inside of Russia. And they have to determine is the effort and the blowback they're going to get in the international stage worth the incremental benefit that they get from killing a certain individual. Kohler says the FBI has the resources to fight back against Russia in the United States,

but it can be very difficult to stop a determined assassin. So I don't want to make it sound like Russia's 10 feet tall and bulletproof, because they're not. But it's also not hard to kill somebody. You know, take the United States, for example. There's thousands and thousands of people that land from overseas every single day. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security, we can't track every one of those. It's possible that they could actually carry out those attacks without law enforcement, FBI, anybody else knowing

about it. If the Kremlin did want an opponent killed here in the United States, wouldn't they make that look like a suicide? They could, sure. And we may never know. That's what makes it so hard. That's what makes this work so hard, the business of counterintelligence and trying to counter what other countries are trying to do, is they deliberately try to obfuscate and hide their efforts.

So if they wanted somebody killed and they came in and did it without an intelligence tie and used maybe a conduit or a third party, it would be very difficult to figure that out. The Washington, D.C. death of a vocal Putin critic named Dan Rappaport could be one of those cases where Russia is trying to cover its tracks. Rapoport was a financier from Latvia with ties to Russia and Ukraine. He died after falling from his apartment building in 2022, about a mile from the White House. Rapoport's Russian business partner had died years earlier in a fall from his Moscow apartment that was caught on camera. Rapoport's manner of death is still considered

undetermined by D.C. police, and the case is still open. Retired FBI agent Alan Kohler told us D.C. authorities never briefed him on the case when he was the head of counterintelligence. My takeaway from Russia right now is the U.S. took its eye off of Russia after 9-11, when we all pivoted and really the world pivoted towards counterterrorism. But to dismiss them as an intelligence threat would be unwise for all of us to do. They're still at it in a very dangerous way. They're still at it in a very dangerous way. The same people are still in charge. They have the same capabilities and the intent to do all the things they've done in the past. It looks like Putin has been allowed to get away with this.

Has he? In many ways, yes. So he's been able to poison and kill his way around the world for over a decade now with just some sanctions put on his government. But he's still in charge, and his behavior hasn't changed. Did he get away with it? I mean, I think an objective observer has to say yes. I'm Scott Pelley. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.