Global News Podcast - Has the Ukraine conflict reached a turning point?

Episode Date: November 25, 2025

The Ukrainian authorities say Kyiv has reached a common understanding with the United States on the key terms of a peace agreement with Russia. Moscow says it has yet to see the amended version of an earlier draft, which included many of the Kremlin's demands. Also: there's been heavy criticism of the Nigerian authorities after hundreds of students were abducted from a school last week. The US Government tells holidaymakers to dress properly at airports. And what's more important? A billion dollars' worth of shipwreck treasure or the preservation of an important underwater archaeological site? The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: [e-mail]

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. It's the coziest time of year on Britbox. Very cozy. That means basking in the ambience. I know the body's turned up. How often do people get murdered around here? Unboxing the unexpected. Well, we know it wasn't an accident.

And starting new traditions. I see you telling me to behave myself. Oh, shut up. Stream Britbox's original series based on best-selling novels, including Linley and a new season of Karen Piri. Smashing, smushy, breakie. It's all a bit warm. with Britbox. See holidays differently when you stream the best of British TV with Britbox.

This is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritson and at 18 hours GMT on Tuesday the 25th of November, these are our main stories. US officials tell the BBC Ukraine is ready to sign a peace deal, but Russia signals it could reject a modified plan. The bishop in charge of the latest Nigerian kidnap school says the authorities have done little to rescue his missing students. UN figures suggest a woman or girl is killed by a partner or family member somewhere in the world every 10 minutes. Also in this podcast. Air travel is a miracle of American ingenuity.

The US government tells holiday travelers to dress and behave properly at airports. Could we be at a turning point with the war in Ukraine? President Trump has already said he's optimistic, and US officials are now suggesting Ukraine could be ready to sign a peace deal. That leaves Russia. Can Moscow be persuaded to agree? Or will this latest diplomatic effort falter, as others have done before? I spoke to our diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams, who began by explaining how we got to this.

point. Well, it is a confusing picture, Alex, and I think listeners can be forgiven for wondering what on earth is going on. You had this plan unveiled in a rather clumsy fashion leaked late last week, an American proposal which many people really saw as a Russian wish list, possibly even drafted by the Russians. That led to a sort of sense of panic among Ukraine's European backers. We had a flurry of activity over the weekend. And by the end, end of yesterday, you had the Ukrainian leader, President Zelensky, saying that he thought that things were kind of moving in the right direction. I think we have seen a very concerted effort, especially by the Europeans, to modify, not to dismiss the American initiative, because frankly

standing in Donald Trump's way, they have concluded, is not the way to go. And in fact, the British Prime Minister, Kirstama, was talking about this, saying that there were elements of the original 28-point draft that came out last week that were seen as unacceptable, but that there was much that could be worked on. And so the idea is to try and influence American thinking. We've been here before. We saw it in the wake of the Alaska summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. We're seeing it again now with the Europeans trying to steer the process in a direction more favorable to Kiev. And that's really where we are now. At the end of the meeting in Geneva, over the weekend, a new draft has emerged. We don't know exactly what it looks like,

but the Americans have taken it to show it to the Russians in Abu Dhabi, and we're waiting to see what comes of that. Have we heard from Russia? Well, Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, has joined a chorus of Russian officials saying that they do not like any European meddling in this, anything that smacks of a European effort to get in the way of a process that the Russians thought they were conducting just solely with the Americans, that is regarded as deeply worrying for the Kremlin. In terms of what has changed, I think clearly the Europeans have tried to influence especially the stuff about Ukraine being told to give up territory in order for there to be a peace process. The European

draft, which emerged over the weekend, stripped all reference to territorial concessions and said that everything had to be negotiated. It also changed the size of the Ukraine's military are up from the 600,000 stated in the original draft last week to 800,000, and plenty of other changes too. But it is very much a work in progress. But I think now the Russians feel that maybe things are not heading in their direction. Paul Adams. So where might these negotiations leave Russia in the long term? After years out in the cold, could Russia be brought back from the international wilderness? My colleague Anna Foster spoke to the EU's foreign policy chief, Kaya Kallas,

and asked her if Russia should be allowed to rejoin the G7, making it the G8 again. No, definitely not. We can't go back to business as usual. I mean, how can you possibly imagine that all the destruction, all the killing that they have done? And also, I mean, all the breaches of the international law. And then we just look away and say, oh, it's nothing. We just go and continue as before. I think it is important to keep in mind why, you know, Russia is making a good face towards United States again, because they are actually under a lot of pressure.

They want us to see that and think that, you know, Ukraine is under a lot of pressure and they can't outlast. But actually, if you look at the facts, if you look how Russia's economy is doing, if you look how the sanctions on oil are working, if you look at the discussions that we have, on the Russian frozen assets and the reparations loan. Actually, they are very worried that, you know, they need to get the good agreement now. That's why they are asking for the territories

that they haven't even conquered militarily. That's why they are asking all these things. Our focus should be on Russia. Who is the aggressor in this case? Why do you think the U.S., and in particular Donald Trump, are doing this now? Do you think he, even after all of this time, understands the Ukrainian position?

No, President Trump genuinely wants peace, like also the Ukrainians and Europeans. I mean, you can't blame him for that. I think this is a very, very noble cause. Just the question is what really brings peace and what brings long-lasting and sustainable peace that we don't have, you know, future aggression. Do you think for him it's peace at any cost? Is that what he's pursuing? Well, it definitely wants to have.

have peace and wants to have it soon, this is true. And also Ukrainians want to have peace because their people are being killed and their energy infrastructure is being bombed. But, you know, if we want to end this for good, we really, really need to have concessions on Russian side. Because if you look at those points, I mean, the points shouldn't be, you know, how to make it easier for Russia to invade again, you know, to downsize Ukrainian army and all these points, but actually how to make it impossible for Russia to invade again. And that means, you know, honouring their international obligations, you know, downsizing their nuclear, their army, their military budget. All these things are the concessions that we need

to see from the Russian side. The EU's foreign policy chief, Kyakalis. There's been heavy criticism of the Nigerian authorities after hundreds of students were abducted from a school last week. More than 300 children and staff are now thought to have been kidnapped from the school in a remote part of Niger state, making it one of the worst mass abductions the country has seen. The Christian Association of Nigeria, which is in charge of the school, has said the authorities have made no meaningful effort to rescue the students. Bishop Boulas Johanna is the chairman of the association. Not much has been done. What we are on our own part, what we have done, It's a collation of this name so that we know exactly who are those who are

missing. That is what we have been doing. It will affect because people will be scared, especially the villagers. Like our school there now, if you notice that it was so difficult for us to get them, that is why it's so difficult to get in touch with them. More than 200 school children were kidnapped from the town of Chibok back in 2014. The Bring Back Our Girls' Movement drew global attention to those abductions. The organisation has urged officials to stop negotiating with kidnappers and prosecute those responsible for past security failures. Africa correspondent Maini Jones, who's in Niger State, gave us this update.

So at the moment, all we know is that the search operation to find those students is ongoing here in Niger States with the governor saying that they will leave no stone left on turn to find those children. I spoke to one of the parents in the community where this happened, a village called Papiri, which is incredibly remote, very difficult to get to. And he says that three of his children were taken on Friday. They haven't heard anything about how the search is going. They're incredibly anxious because they're worried that the kids were taken in the middle of the night,

wearing very little, and it gets quite cool in the evenings here. They're worried they could be sick, that they don't have enough to eat. So there's lots of anxiety around the search for the kids and the fact that we're not exactly sure how well it's going and how quickly this children will be found. Well, that is the key point today, isn't it? The church leaders in charge of the school are accusing the authorities of doing essentially little or nothing. Is that fair? For the members of the community and people who in this part of the country have had to deal with this problem past decade

and you have these periodic seasons where you get a kind of spate of kidnappings happening, there is a lot of frustration. For them, they feel like the government hasn't got a kind of comprehensive strategy to deal with this problem. You mentioned the hashtag bring back our girls movement. They drew attention to this issue over a decade ago when the chip of girls were taken. And they say that these latest kidnappings are not isolated incidents. They say they are part of what they call a systematic pattern in this region. And they want to see more done.

It's not clear exactly what more could look like. The Nigerian government is saying that they've spoken to the American authorities. They've decided to put together a joint security venture to exchange, intelligence and potentially be supplied with weapons who've reached out to the State Department to get confirmation about this. This follows a high-level meeting in Washington, D.C., between Nigerian and American officials. It's not clear that that would change the situation either, but it does signal a willingness on the Nigerian authorities to maybe look outside of their borders to try and find a solution. And we were talking yesterday about the plan to hire 30,000

new police officers. That can't be done overnight, can it? No, absolutely not. It is. takes a really long time and the problem with police in Nigeria having lived here almost seven years myself is that they're often incredibly underpaid and that leads to issues with, you know, low morale, corruption. The government said it wants to hire 30,000 more police officers. Will they be paying these police officers more money? How will they be encouraging them to kind of stick with their duties? Because one way policemen make their money at the moment in Nigeria is protecting in VIPs, where they can get tips and bonuses at the end of the year. So the government has these plans, but it's not clear that they have the budgets to

implement them, and that may be a challenge for them. Iene Jones. The human brain develops over five eras, according to a new study, with adult mode not starting until the early 30s. A team from the University of Cambridge found the brain ages in five distinct phases, with turning points at 9, 32, 66 and 83. It's the first study to identify these changes in neural wiring, tracking changes from infancy to old age.

Dr. Alexa Mosley, post-doctorate research associate at Cambridge University, led the study and told us about the shifts. It's different for each point, and these, of course, are just averages. So around 9 years old, we're seeing this shift. There's quite a lot going on each one, for example, from infancy through nine years old, we're seeing the brain become less efficient. But from 9 to 32, we're actually seeing that flip and the brain's becoming more efficient. We're looking at large, what we call white matter tracks, which are the big connections in the brain

between different regions. And those appear to be strengthening and weakening. We know from past work that the way the brain's wired is related to important outcomes in things like neurodevelopment, mental health, and neurological conditions. and what we are establishing in our study is that the brain is organizing in a distinct manner at different ages. And so this might give us some insight into why the brain might be more vulnerable to different things at different points in time. We're hoping this kind of sets the stage for what we expect the brain to be doing at different points. So for example, we know that about two-thirds of people who are going to have a mental health disorder develop that disorder

before the age of 25. And from our study, we see that there's a continuous and characteristic way the brain's wiring from 9 to 32. And so the next question is, are those two things related? Dr. Alexa Mosley from the University of Cambridge in the UK. Now, with the US holiday of Thanksgiving just around the corner, an estimated 30 million people are preparing to fly to see their relatives. And they're being told to behave themselves on board, not by their parents, but by the US Department of Transport.

Stephanie Prentice has this report. Some of you might have noticed that we've launched a civility campaign. US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy at an airport in New Jersey telling his fellow Americans to mind their manners during one of the country's busiest periods for travel. You might not be able to find a seat as you're by your gate because of the number of flights that are going out or coming in. But I think we have to think about how do we do a better job.

We should say please and thank you to our pilots and to our flight attendants. The comments follow the release of a promotional video from his department, urging travelers to hark back to better times. Air travel is a miracle of American ingenuity. We build airports to launch a golden age of travel across the skies. We respected the dignity of air travel. The video shows archive footage of neatly dressed families

calmly traveling throughout previous decades, then takes a turn to the modern day. Using footage of viral moments posted online, including bare feet being used to scroll on an in-flight touchscreen, people beating each other with wet floor signs in an airport terminal, and many, many acts of violence, along with high-altitude hostility over key airline issues. Maintaining standards of dress was also suggested.

Whether it's a pair of jeans and a decent shirt, I would encourage people to maybe dress a little better, which encourages us to maybe behave all a little better. Let's try not to wear slippers and pajamas as we come to the airport. I think that's positive. Though one disgruntled passenger was quick to post that with current delays, he didn't intend to sleep on the floor of an airport wearing a three-piece suit. And California Governor Gavin Newsom responded with a photo of Sean Duffy's cabinet colleague Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., walking barefoot down the aisle of a plane.

Matters don't stop at the gate. Some travelers welcomed the civility message when it was posted on social media. Others pointed out that it comes after months of travel chaos in the U.S. due to the government shutdown, and a week after officials scrapped a plan to give passengers compensation for cash. cancellations and long delays, suggesting the better behaviour should come from the people who govern America. Stephanie Prentice. Still to come in this podcast. What's more important? A billion dollars worth of shipwreck treasure or the preservation of an important seabed archaeological site? The things that we have

there are not important because of what they worth as economic value, you know, but because of what they can tell us. It's a familiar feeling for anyone who's been waiting for their ride home and they get the news that their bus or taxi or train or whatever has broken down. So you've got to wait for the replacement service. So though in this case, you're several hundred kilo-beaters up in space.

The countdown and lift off of the Shenzhou 22 spacecraft heading to the Tiengong Space Station to rescue the three stranded Chinese astronauts. The original vessel, which is due to bring them down, had to be given to the previous crew after theirs got damaged by debris in space. I heard more from our correspondent in Beijing, Stephen MacDonald. Perhaps the best way is for me just to go through the sequence of events so people understand how potentially dangerous this all was. So there you have three astronauts or taikonauts, as they're sometimes referred to here.

And they were waiting on their Tian Gong station for the relief crew to arrive. The relief crew, they turn up, they docked their vessel on the Tangong station. And the theory is they have a bit of a handover, and then the original crew goes back to Earth. Now the problem is their capsule to return to Earth, was damaged by a piece of debris, which is struck and smashed a window, apparently, space junk or something along those lines. And so that capsule couldn't be used. They used the relief cruise vessel to get back to Earth, thus leaving the relief crew stuck up in Tian Gong with

no way to get home. Now, in theory, people might think it's not such a big deal because they aren't due to come back to Earth until next April anyway. But the problem is, what if something goes wrong with the station. What if one of them gets injured? They need a way to get out of there. And so they'll be feeling much better today because, as we speak, there's been a successful launch of an unmanned rocket, which has now enabled a return capsule to dock on the Tian Gong station, thus giving them a way out of there. As for the broken vessel, there's two options. One is to fix it, to send it back to earth. The other apparently is just to remove it from the station because it's taking up one of the docking points.

That's not ideal though because then you've got another piece of space junk flying around the earth, creating yet more debris, the type of debris which damaged it in the first place. However, for the astronauts up on that station, they'd be feeling much better right now than they were a few hours ago. Briefly, Stephen, it is easy to forget just how dangerous what these people do is, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely.

Everybody takes up for granted now that, especially the... Chinese space program, it's very efficient. They've been able to successfully send another rocket up there, but that rocket wasn't supposed to go till next year. What if it hadn't been ready yet? What if something went wrong with that rocket? What if it didn't successfully take off? So yes, indeed, it still is very dangerous in space and it shows why these competing missions, especially between the US and China, there is so much at stake in terms of what they're trying to do next, like to put another astronaut on the moon, for example. something that's expected very soon.

Stephen MacDonald. Data released by the United Nations shows that last year, 50,000 women and girls worldwide were killed by partners or family members. It's the equivalent of one woman or girl being killed every 10 minutes or so. These type of intimate partner killings

make up the majority of the even greater number of cases of femicide around the world every year, a grim set of data which the UN says show little sign of improving. Sarah Hendricks is Director of the Policy and Programme Division at UN Women and spoke to Tim Franks. Indeed. Today, in fact, marks the 26th year that we commemorate the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women Across the United Nations. And what we see is a very stark truth, and that is for more than two decades, the needle has barely moved with rates of intimate partner violence showing only a 0.2% annual decline. And the femicide estimates really deep in this truth. They show that for far too many

women and girls, the most dangerous place actually remains in their home. Themicides do not emerge suddenly. They are, in fact, the fatal final act in a deeply egregious continuum of violence that is visible, but it is too often ignored long before a woman is killed. And really today in this day of commemoration, too many of the women and girls are not actually here to mark this day. And we really owe them, I think, recognition of what these numbers are telling us, the lives behind them. And just very briefly, Sarah, I assume that these, I mean, these numbers, in truth, they're probably an undercount. Indeed, you are correct. We are seeing that data is needed and better data and statistics are required.

In fact, for Femmicide specifically, we know that good data saves lives. And that's why UN Women and UNODC have jointly developed a statistical framework for measuring the gender-related killing of women and girls. And we're now working with countries to implement that. Sarah Hendricks from UN Women. It's being called one of the biggest criminal and human trafficking operations of modern times. In fact, it's reaches so vast that the UN An Office on Drugs and Crime has estimated that the so-called scam centres of Southeast Asia

generate an annual revenue of just under $40 billion. The operations in these centres involve defrauding internet and telephone users with romance and business cons. Myanmar is notorious for hosting scam cities, entire compounds built for the purpose of cyber scam operations, which are now the focus of a renewed crackdown. Ed Butler reports. Six months ago, along with my fixer E, I walked along the Moy River that divides Thailand and

Myanmar, looking across at KK Park. It was at the time a huge, imposing complex with high walls and razor wire, one of the region's most notorious scam centres. Today, the scene looks a little different. Last month, a Myanmar military plane bombed KK. Park, the attack on one small part of this complex caused chaos. Large numbers of foreign workers imprisoned inside managed to escape. Aid worker Judah Tanna has been helping to repatriate some of them. Hundreds of people were fleeing. From what we've been able to gather, the company bosses had actually fled the scam centers.

In this video received by the BBC, a small group of Ethiopians and Filipinos are ferried across the river. This was part of a daring rescue. Other videos posted online show migrants trying to swim across the river. Not all of them made it. Bodies have since been discovered downstream. The Myanmar military didn't stop with KK.K. Park. It's now started clearing parts of the biggest of all the Myanmar scam developments at Shwe Koko. The reasons why the military has chosen to counter the scammers in this way remains a little mysterious.

It says it's striking a blow for the rule of law. But activists say it has for years been taking a cut of the scam proceeds itself. These attacks are just an attempt to extort a bigger share of the profits, they reckon, or it's trying to appease its key regional ally, China, Judah Tanner again. China put out a request to the Myanmar group that they wanted at least 30,000 Chinese people to be rescued and sent home. What's clear is that the combination of this military action in Myanmar and the recent U.S. indictment and sanctioning of a Cambodian conglomerate

accused of involvement in scams, has represented a setback for one of the world's fastest-growing and most lucrative criminal networks. Ed Butler, with that report. The Spanish galleon San Jose sank off what is now the coast of Colombia in 1708 after being attacked by British warships. It was said to have been carrying one of the largest amounts of valuables ever lost at sea. Treasure hunters tried to find it for years. Ten years ago, it was located and, as everyone suspected, it was full of gold, silver, gems and jewellery worth at least a billion

dollars. Colombian scientists have now brought up the first objects from the ship, a cannon, three coins and a porcelain cup. There are arguments about who owns this horde, a battle that's moved to the courts. But conservationists think the wreck and its cargo, should be left where it is so they can slowly learn about the past. Mariana Carouillard is with the San Jose Gallion Project. She spoke to Rob Young. It's a great experience. I'm sorry, but I cry every time I talk about it.

Those subjects, we decided to work with them because they have information that was important for our investigation. That's why we chose only a few of them, and for a special reason, each one. The canyon, for example, we were looking for a date that we can work with and also some information on the inscriptions. For the coins, it's the same thing. And for the porcelain, we are trying to find out why we have Chinese porcelain in a ship

that's coming from America to Europe. So we've been working over a year. I feel like an ambassador of what's going on here. Is the plan to bring everything up? Of course not. We are just trying to answer the questions that we have in the project. As you know, in modern archaeology, we try just to work with the questions that we have. Also, in order to have stuff for the future, other people in the future are going to have different questions.

with the information that we're giving them. So you're saying that billions of dollars worth, of gold, of silver, of jewels will be left under the sea? We are not working because of the economic value of what we have there. The objects that we have, we are working so hard in Colombia to make people know that the things that we have there are not important because of what they worth as economic value, you know, but because of what they can tell us about the people who lived in that time. And I think that's worth more. The site is known as the Holy Grail of Shipwrex. Are you confident that its location will remain secret?

Because it's a state secret, isn't it? Nobody's allowed to know exactly where it is. Nobody is allowed. We must see the value of these places beyond economics, because we are trying to build a story about what you're asking me. and we only have answers if we have staff to study. If we don't have anything, what's left. Some objects without a context.

And the value of these objects is precisely the context around it. Ariana Karuya from the San Jose Galleon Project. And that's all from us for now. But there'll be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast, all the topics covered in it. you can send us an email. The address is global podcast at BBC.c.com. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.

Use the hashtag Global NewsPod. This edition was mixed by Gareth Jones and the producer was Michael Bristow. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritson. Until next time, goodbye. Thank you.