Global News Podcast - Concern in Europe after Trump and Putin agree to start Ukraine talks

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

Senior figures in Europe have accused President Trump of making unnecessary concessions to Russia ahead of peace talks on Ukraine, and a breakthrough is reported in talks to get the Gaza ceasefire deal back on track.

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Jackie Leonard and at 14 Hours GMT these are our main stories. The US defence secretary has denied that President Trump has betrayed Ukraine by pushing for a peace deal with Russia. Meanwhile Germany has accused Mr Trump of making concessions to Russia on Ukraine before peace talks have even started. And a breakthrough has been reported in talks to get the Gaza ceasefire deal back on track. Also in this podcast, a man has driven a car into a crowd of pedestrians in the German city of Munich

in what officials suspect was a deliberate attack. The fact that there are many injured is a slap in the face. We feel for the victims, we pray for the victims, we very much hope that everyone will make it." And researchers in Australia say a warming planet is changing the behaviour of crocodiles. We begin with Ukraine. As the third anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion approaches, there's been a flurry of activity from the US about ending the conflict. As you'll have heard in our last edition, Donald Trump has had a long phone call with President Putin of Russia and says he plans to meet him in person,

reversing years of the US isolation of the Russian leader. Mr Trump has also spoken on the phone to President Zelensky. The news of these conversations has been front and centre at a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels. Boris Pistorius of Germany accused the US President of making concessions to Russia before peace talks had begun. He said the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO should remain as well as the issue of losses of territory. Putin is constantly provoking the West and attacking us in a hybrid manner. It would be naive to believe that this threat will actually subside as a result of any peace agreement whenever it comes. On Wednesday, the US Secretary of Defence, Pete Hegseth, said it was unrealistic

to expect Ukraine to return to its pre-2014 borders and he downplayed the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO. But today he insisted the US isn't betraying Ukraine and it's time to move towards a negotiated settlement. We recognize the incredible commitment that has been made over many years and no country, as the President Trump has pointed out, has made a larger commitment to the Ukrainian mission than the United States of America, north of $300 billion.

So the United States has invested in stabilizing those front lines after the aggression of Russia. There is no betrayal there. There is a recognition that the whole world and the United States is invested and interested in peace, a negotiated peace. So what does all this mean for NATO and its position on Ukraine? Our correspondent Jonathan Beale is in Brussels at the NATO meeting. I think really what's changed is that you know NATO here have been presenting a united

front, that it supported Ukraine, it was providing military support in concert with the former US administration, and it was going to let Ukraine decide how this war would end, essentially. If there were going to be talks, that Ukraine had to be involved in those discussions and those decisions. And what we're getting now with a new administration is that the US, the White House, Donald Trump is in the driving seat. He's calling the shots not NATO as a whole, so that unity has been frayed somewhat. And we know that while the US administration has set preconditions on Ukraine, that it can't, for example, join NATO, they don't believe,

that they should not expect a return of all the territory they've lost to Russia, that there will not be US boots on the ground if there is some kind of ceasefire in which it needs to be policed, that that will not involve the US no security guarantees on that that that front. We haven't heard any same preconditions given to Moscow and you know what's happened here over the last few years as far as NATO is concerned is most NATO countries have isolated President Putin and Donald Trump has in effect rehabilitated to some extent President Putin by this phone call and by this meeting and the question still, the insistence here from NATO headquarters is that it must involve Ukraine but at the moment both NATO and Ukraine are on the sidelines.

And just briefly what else can we be expecting to see from this meeting? You know Mark Rutter has a difficult job trying to hold this 32-member alliance together, and he knows that to build bridges with the Trump administration, he is going to have to persuade allies to increase defence spending, particularly European allies. Now they have actually increased defence spending overall, with more countries, the majority now spending at least 2%, but Donald Trump wants them to spend 5%. That's going to be a much harder task, but he needs to build bridges and he sees that as a way of doing it, but to

expect countries to come up with 5% I think is unrealistic. That is not going to happen, but he is trying to push them further in how much they spend on defense and also how much support they give to Ukraine. But they are not at the moment NATO in the driving seat. That was Jonathan Beale in Brussels. So how is Ukraine reacting to the discussions about its future? Here's the view of Timofey Milovanov, who's a former economy minister. Before even the negotiations start, President Trump, without consulting with Ukraine, without consulting with the EU, makes decisions and accepts, gives out already to the demands of President Putin. So, you know, this puts everyone in a very, actually, vulnerable position.

Our correspondent in Kiev, James Waterhouse, is following developments. I think it's only been Ukraine really that has felt the pressure in what's been a bruising opening salvo from America in terms of how it sees lasting peace in this in this war. And I think privately the long held fears that Ukraine wouldn't be involved in the negotiations sufficiently are being realized when you look at the warm language between Washington and Moscow, when you look at the proposed meeting in Saudi Arabia, when you hear Donald Trump say it's interesting on the question of whether Ukraine is an equal partner, because we are

ultimately talking about the future of a country. That said, the missing detail on Ukraine being free with Russia within its borders, the very question of how a conflict line will be policed by foreign troops, there is missing detail. America said it's not nothing to do with us, but Ukraine will still, you know, I think politically still has plenty to play for. – What can President Zelensky do now to make sure that he stays in the conversation? – This is now the diplomatic challenge because at the moment it's hard to see how. If you have a summit in Saudi Arabia where you see Donald Trump with Vladimir Putin, who will be delighted that he is able to bypass Ukraine in these negotiations, a country he denies the existence of, it'll

be very hard for President Zelensky to then get his elbows up and get to the table and start asserting his wants and needs for a ceasefire. I think it is a reflection of geopolitics where superpowers wield the influence they do because of Ukraine's reliance on American aid notably because of the scale and speed it can be provided. America is therefore able to impose its terms on Ukraine more easily. The US is still going after Ukraine's natural resources in the deal in exchange for continued military aid. So it's really quite difficult. I guess the only positive from yesterday for Ukraine

is that this is the start of a very complicated path to peace. And when you've been in a full-scale invasion, when you're on the tail end of 11 years of war, people do want peace. Of course they do. People are tired of worrying whether their sons and husbands will come home. They're tired of wondering whether they'll survive the night under artillery. So, of course, peace is desired, but it's the terms of that peace which is so crucial for Ukraine.

Well meanwhile James we have seen some reports that the Ukrainian military are saying that there were 140 Russian drone attacks last night. What can you tell us? A little more than that other than that this is you know in the scale of things it's a larger attack than normal, but it's still something that Russia sustains. The night before there are ballistic missiles landing here in Kiev, the week before 14 people were killed on a missile strike, this missile strike on the central region of Poltava. This is what happens.

And so it is true that there is a heightened talk of peace, but Russia, you cannot see it from within Ukraine as Russia continues to act out its invasion. James Waterhouse in Kiev. As we record this podcast, details have been coming in of an incident in the southern German city of Munich where a car has been driven into a group of people at a trade union rally. Officials say 28 people were injured, some very seriously. Speaking at the scene, Bavaria's state premier Markus Söder said it was most likely an attack.

It is simply terrible, ladies and gentlemen, when you get the news that someone has once again driven a car into a crowd of people. The fact that there are many injured is a slap in the face. We feel for the victims, we pray for the victims, we very much hope that everyone will make it. Our correspondent Damian McGuinness is monitoring events from Berlin. What appears to have happened is that this was indeed committed on purpose. What the motivation is of the perpetrator we we don't know, but what appears to have happened according to police is that a beige Mini Cooper was driving behind this trade union demonstration, which was surrounded by police cars. So there was

security around the demonstration. Then the car, the Mini, started speeding up as if to overtake the police car. And then as it did, it rammed at high speed into the crowd of demonstrators. And so we now know that at least 28 people are injured, many of them seriously and some critically. And we're finding out more information about the suspect as well, who appears to be a 24 year old Afghan asylum seeker whose application for asylum had been rejected but he was legally in Germany he had a legal status here but of quite a temporary one so which meant his situation here was rather precarious and now police are really talking to him to try and find out what why he carried out such a terrible act. There are elections in Germany in what 10 days from now and

immigration is a key issue isn't it? Yeah that's right because over the last few months have been a number of attacks involving asylum seekers and most notably in January in the Bavarian town of Aschaffenburg where a kindergarten child was stabbed and a passerby also was killed by an asylum seeker and that sparked a huge debate around migration connected to criminality. It hadn't really been the case before then because I think mainstream parties had tried to calm this quite controversial debate in the polarised atmosphere around migration. But after that attack in Aschaffenburg, the conservative leader Friedrich Merz, who wants to be Germany's next chancellor,

went very hard line because his argument is he wants to undermine the poll numbers of the far-right AFD, which appear to be gaining traction on the back of these terrible attacks. And since then, we've seen a ferocious debate around migration. A lot of people have criticised it, saying it's very one-sided, and this idea of connecting migration to criminality so obviously stigmatises people with migration background. But either way, it's certainly a big, big debate in the political run-up right now and the fact that we've now had another terrible incident will certainly play into the debate and could well have an impact in the election results in 10 days' time.

Damian McGuinness. China is the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, accounting for around 30% of the global total. But new research shows that the country's coal plant construction surged last year to its highest level in almost a decade. This appears to conflict with President Xi Jinping's promise that carbon emissions would peak before 2030. Here's our China correspondent Laura Becker. There has been a lot of coal construction, in fact about 95 gigawatts of power, within the early half of 2024. Now that's the most coal-fired power plants that China has built

since 2015. However, this report also notes that there has been an unprecedented surge in renewables in wind and solar in particular. In fact, the report notes that China has installed more in wind and solar in almost one year than the United States has done in total since records began. And what this analysis seems to suggest is that they are concerned that this solar and wind capacity is being layered on top of coal production. It's not being installed instead of and they fear that the net zero target, President Xi has pledged that China will be net zero by 2060, might slip away from China unless that changes.

That was Laura Bicker. from China unless that changes. That was Laura Bicker. Still to come, a warning from the former chief executive of Google about artificial intelligence models being misused by terrorists and rogue states. An example would be the ability for the system to fool us. Another one, if it developed a desire to get access to weapons, especially nuclear weapons. Hamas has said it will now release three Israeli hostages on Saturday and is committed to the ceasefire deal with Israel. The announcement follows mediated talks in Cairo. The group

had said it would postpone the release, accusing Israel of breaching the terms of the ceasefire. Israel has said it will resume the war against Hamas if the hostages aren't released. Our correspondent Yolande Nel is in Jerusalem and has been following the story. Through the day we've had various positive signs that this latest crisis in the Israel-as ceasefire deal can be overcome. We know that Egyptian and Qatari mediators have been working on the areas Hamas has complained about, the amount of fuel going into Gaza, numbers of shelters, Egyptian sources indicating more heavy lifting equipment to move rubble is to go in. Hamas did put out a statement saying it didn't want the deal to collapse. It reaffirmed its commitment to implementing the agreement

as signed, including the exchange of prisoners. That's what it's calling Israel's hostages being exchanged for Palestinian detainees, according to the specified timeline, the statement says. So under that, we'd expect there to be these three hostages released on Saturday. And Israeli media was signaling earlier that the message that had gone from Israel is that it would accept three hostages being handed over and not stop the ceasefire, despite of course President Trump having proposed that high stakes ultimatum bring back all the hostages or the fighting starts. So we've heard from Israeli media, are we getting anything from the Israeli government

about what's been coming out of Cairo? I mean nothing officially from the Israeli government at this stage. I think it's still a bit wait and see and you know it may be that we find ourselves at the same stage tomorrow waiting to see you know if Hamas does publish this list of three names as we're expecting. I mean it's worth pointing out as well at the moment you know negotiations on the more sensitive second stage of the ceasefire deal are supposed to be fully underway in Doha. That is supposed to see a permanent end to hostilities, the return of remaining hostages. Instead mediators

have been really tied up with just trying to shore up this part of the ceasefire, the initial part of the deal, the Israeli negotiating team return from Doha on Monday after just two days. Negotiators also envisageha on Monday after just two days. You know, negotiators also envisaged there would be a third stage to the ceasefire, reconstruction of Gaza. But now what you've got is so much uncertainty about the future that's just increased under President Trump with his post-war plan for Gaza that envisages emptying it of its two million residents, building a kind of seaside travel destination there, of course totally rejected by Arab countries and many others around the world. That was your land Nell. Just how concerned should

we be about the advent of artificial intelligence? Very, says the former chief executive of Google Eric Schmidt. He's been speaking on the subject at the AI conference in Paris. He told my colleague Amol Rajan why the rapid development of the new tech is so groundbreaking and challenging for humanity. I actually think, and I know you'll think I'm insane, and maybe I am, is that AI is underhyped. We don't know yet if AI can build an AI Einstein, but we think that the computer can get pretty close to it. And that means that each and every one of us would have literally Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci

or pretty close in your pocket on your phone. It's a pretty big deal. Well, I'm very, very struck by the fact that anyone who's followed your career will know that as boss of Google, go back to nearly 25 years ago, you've generally been an advocate of technology and optimists, someone who tries to use

technology to advance human goals, human ends to satisfy human demands. And yet in your recent remarks, Eric, I'm very struck by the fears that you have about the potential of AI. For instance, you said in December 2024, the AI systems might need a kill switch. What did you mean? Basically, there's a set of things that we shouldn't really allow. An example would be the ability for the system to fool us, to deceive us. Another one would, if it developed

a desire to get access to weapons, especially nuclear weapons, Imagine that it starts to make copies of itself. It decides that it wants to propagate itself, even if we plug it off. There's a set of such things that we need to watch for in this technology. It's not capable of doing it right now, but there are signs that it might be capable in the future. There are people, Eric, who fear that actually

the whole dynamic that we've got for AI is the wrong one. It's a race, it's a competition, it's one that pits the US against China, against Europe, it's one where we don't have a system of global regulation, and it's also one where most of the innovation is being driven by companies rather than by states. What's your concern, if you do have one, about the current

dynamic? The truth is that AI and the future is largely going to be built by private companies. It has to do with the incentives and the money and where the talent is and how the world works. They're not going to be built in the equivalent of a Manhattan Project. So it's really important that governments understand what we're doing and keep their eye on us. We're not arguing that we should unilaterally be able to do things without oversight. We think it should be regulated. The real fears that I have are not the ones that most people talk about AI.

I talk about extreme risk. There's evidence that the models have knowledge that could allow, for example, a bad biological attack from some evil person. And I'm sure no one listening is evil, but there must be at least one evil person in the world who could take advantage of that in a really bad way. We want to make sure that doesn't happen. Part of the reason that we're all alive today is because people in the 1950s developed a whole strategy around nuclear containment.

The same is not true in computers. The current best idea we have controlling this proliferation is to make it hard for other countries and evil people in general to get access to the most powerful hardware. That's why the US export controls are so important. That was Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google. Researchers in Australia say a warming planet is changing the behaviour of crocodiles. A study of 200 wild crocodiles found that as temperatures have risen, so too have the reptiles' average body temperatures.

Simon Atkinson reports from Cairns. Unlike birds and mammals, crocodiles can't regulate their own body temperatures. So, when they get hotter, they need to change their behaviour. Scientists have been analysing data from sensors on wild crocodiles in far north Queensland since 2008. In that time, peak temperatures locally have jumped by 0.5 degrees Celsius, and the body temperatures of the animals has risen by more than 0.1 degrees. Previous studies suggest hotter crocs don't dive for so long, giving them less time underwater to ambush prey,

and that devoting extra time to keeping cool means activity for reproducing and staying safe from predators is reduced. The researchers from the University of Queensland and the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve at Australia Zoo will now focus on how a hotter planet is impacting the overall health of the region's crocodile population. Simon Atkinson in Cairns. Let's return now to US politics. Well, sort of. President Trump has made no secret of his desire to take over Greenland, an autonomous

territory in the Kingdom of Denmark. And since his re-election, he's also said he wouldn't rule out using military force to seize it. Now a satirical petition has appeared online offering to buy the US state of California for Denmark. Harry Bly reports. The petition on the website denmarkification.com promises to bring some Scandinavian charm to America's Golden State. It offers to introduce bike lanes and smørbord, which are traditional Danish sandwiches,

as well as changing the name of Disneyland to Hans Christian Andersenland, a nod to the famous Danish fairy tale author. It also claims to have reciprocal benefits for Denmark too, boasting California's 300 days of sunshine per year, its tech sector Silicon Valley, and the state's plentiful crop of avocados. Already the petition has attracted more than 230,000 signatures. Its creator claims to have the cast of Borgon, the Danish political drama, ready to lead

negotiations. California already has a connection to Denmark. The city of Solvang, which means sunny fields, was founded by three Danish immigrants in 1911 and promotes itself as the Danish capital of America. And that was Harry Bly. Now before we go, in our last edition, our science editor, Rebecca Morell, was reporting on a major archaeological discovery, a 2000-year-old Roman basilica found beneath an office block in the heart of London. And we were so excited about it, we completely forgot to mention that the person showing her around was the marvellous Sophie Jackson from the Museum

of London Archaeology team. Sorry Sophie, and thanks. And that's it from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast Sorry Sophie and thanks. the hashtag global news pod. This edition was mixed by Charlotte Hadroyd Toszemska, the producer was Vanessa Heaney, our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jackie Leonard and until next time, goodbye.