Global News Podcast - President Zelensky calls for tough sanctions on Russia

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

Moscow gave a list of demands known to be unacceptable to Kyiv. Also: Israel condemns the UN's call for an investigation into Sunday's killings of Palestinians and why Paraguay could be South America's Silicon Valley.

This BBC podcast is supported money anywhere in the world. 12 million customers managing their international money with WISE can't be wrong. Download the WISE app today or visit So, there's room for your advisor. ASR does it. So, now you have room for your podcast. Strong words from President Zelensky after there's no breakthrough in the Ukraine peace talks. Israel condemns the UN Secretary-General for demanding an independent investigation into killings near an aid centre. Also in this podcast, Mr Solomon stated that he had been planning this attack for a year and he acted because he hated what he called the Zionist group. An Egyptian accused of attacking Jewish campaigners is charged with a hate crime. In our earlier podcast we reported that direct peace talks in Istanbul between

Russia and Ukraine ended after one hour. The Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky urged President Trump to take strong steps and impose further sanctions after the negotiations in Istanbul failed to result in a ceasefire. Mr Zelensky also said that Russia should never be allowed to keep the territory it had captured in Ukraine. The key to lasting peace is clear. The aggressor must not receive any reward for war. Putin must get nothing that would justify his aggression. Any reward would only show him that war pays off. At the meeting in Istanbul, Moscow presented a list of demands known to be unacceptable to Kiev.

According to Russian state media, these require Ukrainian troops to withdraw from four regions that Russia partly or largely occupies. Mr Zelensky's chief of staff has accused Russia of doing all it can to continue the war. But the two sides did agree to swap more prisoners of war and return bodies of dead soldiers. Our correspondent in Istanbul Hugo Bachege said that Russia would not budge. These are familiar demands because these are demands that Russia has been making for quite some time and these are demands that Ukraine say are unacceptable. So according to these terms that have been published by Russian media, they include a limit on the size of the Ukrainian military, a ban on Ukraine's membership in

any military alliance, in other words that Ukraine cannot join NATO, and international recognition of Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson as belonging to Russia and Ukraine's withdrawal from those areas, all those regions apart from Ukraine, are only partly controlled by Russia. So this will obviously be seen by Ukraine as proof that Russia is not really interested in reaching a deal, which has been the Ukrainian suspicion since the beginning of these negotiations. Yeah, because Ukraine's never going to agree to any of that, is it? It's impossible for Ukraine to accept any of those conditions, and Russia knows it. And Ukraine is already saying, look, Russia is not serious in these negotiations and more

pressure is needed. In other words, sanctions. And I think it will be very interesting to see how President Trump is going to react to these Russian demands, because he has put a lot of pressure on both Russia and Ukraine to reach a deal. Both countries are trying to show the support of the president's efforts for different reasons. Ukraine obviously wants to end the war and the killings and also needs American military support.

And Russia is interested in the easing of economic sanctions that have been imposed because of the war. So President Trump has been using stronger language recently to talk about Russian attacks but he hasn't taken action against Moscow and many believe that he is reluctant to do so. Briefly, are any more talks likely? Well there hasn't been any confirmation that a third round of talks is going to happen. What the Ukrainian defense minister who was the head of the Ukrainian delegation here in Istanbul, said was that the key points could only be resolved at a face-to-face meeting

between President Zelensky and President Putin, and he suggested that this meeting should take place at the end of the month. Hugo Bushege. In what turned out to be an incredibly close vote in Poland, the Conservative candidate secured victory in Sunday's presidential election. Now the Prime Minister Donald Tusk says he will call for a parliamentary vote of confidence in his coalition government. Our correspondent in Warsaw is Adam Easton. I asked him why Mr Tusk was doing this.

Well his candidate for president lost. He lost to his rival the right-wing historian, Karol Nawrodzki. And that's bad news for Mr Tusk's government because Mr Nawrodzki is widely considered to be a man who will wield the presidential veto to block Mr Tusk's pro-EU programme. Mr Navrotsky is a social conservative, a patriot, and in very many points it varies to Mr Tusk's more centrist, centre-right, liberal views. So Mr Tusk isn't in a great place, but surely this could go badly wrong? It could, but it should be a formality because the rules say that a

simple majority vote is needed to win a vote of confidence in the Parliament and the coalition government has more than a simple majority. Now the leader of one of the junior coalition partners who's also the parliamentary speaker, Simon Hawavnia, referring to rumours about this plan, this vote of confidence plan, before it had even been announced, said he thought it was a bad idea. He said the government doesn't need to do this.

It's unnecessary because we have a stable majority. And this is just a piece of political theatre, he called it, to show that the government can close ranks. So is this a political crisis or isn't it? It is a political crisis in the sense that the coalition government will be stymied. It will have a president who opposes it with a significant power to be able to block legislation. And Mr. Truss' popularity is already in decline because many voters see his government as being unable to deliver, as making very little progress.

So if that continues for another two years, that's going to seriously harm his chances of being re-elected in 2027. Some people think that Mr Tusk is already a lame duck and he's just heading towards elections and a defeat in those elections when they do take place. Adam Easton. Israel has called remarks by the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres a disgrace after he said that he was appalled by the reported deaths of 31 Palestinians near a US-backed aid distribution centre in Gaza on Sunday.

Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman Oran Marmsteinstein, said that Mr. Guterres had failed to condemn Hamas, which, he said, was the one shooting civilians. The UN chief had called for an independent investigation and for those responsible to be held to account. Israel doesn't allow international journalists from media organisations, including the BBC, independent access to Gaza. Our Middle East regional editor, Sebastian Asher, sent this report from Jerusalem. In a strongly worded statement, Mr Gutierrez said he was appalled by the reports and that

it was unacceptable that Palestinians were risking their lives for food. He called for the perpetrators to be held accountable. Palestinians said they were fired on by the Israeli military when they were heading towards an aid distribution centre in Rafa. Medics in the nearest still-functioning medical facility, Nasser Hospital, said they'd received many people with bullet wounds. Claire Monera from a medical charity, Medecins Sans Frontières, spoke to the BBC from Nasser Hospital describing what she called the hell that her Palestinian colleagues had had to go through to get aid from the distribution centres. We have countless staff who have lost family members that have been shot at these sites.

And if they manage to get that far to get food, then it's a fight for survival and it's only the strongest who can get anything. Women and children have no chance, they're disabled and they're elderly. There is no way they can reach these sites so the aid is not getting to the people who need it and they're desperately hungry. The IDF has denied firing on civilians while the group operating the new aid centres, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, described the witness reports as complete fabrications distributed by bad faith actors. Both the IDF and the Foundation have accused the media of spreading false news. But whatever the precise details of the incident in Rafah, it's clear that there were many

Palestinian casualties and that there are mounting questions over the way in which the new limited aid mechanism backed by Israel and the US is functioning. Sebastian Asher. The FBI has alleged that the Egyptian national who is accused of trying to set fire to members of a Jewish campaign group in the US state of Colorado had been planning the attack for a year. In a court filing, the bureau has charged Mohammed Solomon with a hate crime. He's accused of throwing two petrol bombs at the group on Sunday, yelling, free Palestine, and wounding eight people in the city of Boulder where they'd gathered

in support of Israeli hostages held in Gaza. The FBI also said that he had 14 more such devices with him. President Trump has called for Mohammed Suleiman to be deported. The acting US attorney for the District of Colorado, Bishop Gruel, said that anti-Semitism could never be tolerated. No one should ever be subjected to violence of any kind. But our laws recognise that such violence is particularly pernicious when someone is targeted because of their race, their religion, or their national origin. Mr. Solomonege that he did

was to throw Molotov cocktails at a group of men and women, some of them in their late 80s, burning them. Our Washington correspondent, Nomiya Iqbal, has more on Mohammed Suleiman. The Department of Homeland Security has told us that he entered the US on a B2 tourist visa back in August 2022. That visa expired in 2023, but then he applied for asylum also in 2022.

So this is why Donald Trump is now making a point of saying that he was here in America under Joe Biden. Now in terms of where the asylum case stands, you know, if it's been adjudicated, we don't know. We know that he has been charged with two first degree murder charges. It's not immediately clear why that is because officials say nobody died in the attack. Eight people were injured, four men, four women, their names have not been released, two had to be airlifted to hospital with serious injuries. But also just to add, he has been charged, just looking at the court filing, he's been charged with a hate crime involving actual or perceived race, religion or national origin.

Norma Iqbal. Now to Sweden, where an official inquiry has uncovered evidence of serious irregularities going back decades relating to international adoptions. The members of the investigating team are calling for such adoptions to be banned. Your regional editor, Danny Eberhardt, has been following this story and told me more. This was an inquiry that was commissioned four years ago. There's a string of very concerning findings Alex that the lead investigator Anna Singa spoke even of a number of confirmed cases of child trafficking. Let's hear a little of what she said. So she was saying there that basically there have been a number of cases of irregularities

and that there have been confirmed cases of a trade in children in every decade since the 70s, mainly concerning private adoption. So she mentioned cases from Sri Lanka and Colombia in the 70s and 80s, from Poland in the 1990s, China also in the 1990s and 80s, from Poland in the 1990s, China also in the 1990s and 2000s. And she said children have also been adopted without parents' knowledge and consent. Now some of the parents, she said, did not understand the implications of consenting to the adoption. Many mothers, of course, would have come from poor backgrounds and that some children were

adopted after wrongly having been declared dead. And so there's all sorts of other problems, significant gaps in documentations, false information e.g. on dates of birth, names of the parents, reasons for the adoptions, things like that. And she said that the Swedish governments had known about these problems from very early on and highlighted also a conflict of interest really in private adoption agencies standing to gain from a high level of such adoption. So they've called for a public apology for victims and for financial assistance for people to travel to meet their blood relatives.

So serious stuff. Do we know how many children and families are thought to have been affected? Well they've talked about 60,000 people in Sweden having been adopted from abroad. So we're talking about countries like South Korea, India, Colombia, China, Sri Lanka, but other countries too, Vietnam, Chile, Thailand and Russia. And this peaked in the 1970s, so in one year in that decade, 1,700 people were adopted later on that drop down. So in this year, for example, only 14 people have been adopted. Danny Abelhart. Still to come in this podcast...

I think it'll be interesting to see where he takes Dior because it's traditionally a very romantic feminine brand. The luxury fashion house's new creative director in charge of both women's and men's collections for the first time. This podcast is brought to you by Wise. Wise is the fast, affordable way to get the currency you need at your fingertips. Tap the Wise Multi-Currency Card to spend pounds in London or download the app to move pesos to Mexico City. Wise always gives you a fair exchange rate with no markups and no hidden fees.

So when you send, spend or receive money with Wise, you'll get the real deal for your money anywhere in the world. 12 million customers managing their international money with WISE can't be wrong. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and T's apply. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the newly independent nation of Lithuania had a point to prove. Everything was political back then. We had a responsibility so that the nation could be even more united in such difficult times.

And their men's national basketball team did just that. Yeah guys, we are strong enough to play the vault. With a little help from the iconic American rock group, the Grateful Dead. You couldn't make this story up if you tried. Amazing sports stories from the BBC World Service presents Bill Walton's The Grateful Team. Listen now. Search for amazing sports stories wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Austin Tice is one of three citizens from the United States who went missing during the civil war in Syria. He worked as a freelance journalist when he was detained at a checkpoint near Damascus 13 years ago. It was long believed that Mr Tice had been held by President Assad's regime, which was toppled from power last year. Top secret intelligence files uncovered by the BBC as part of an ongoing investigation by Josh Baker for a podcast series have now confirmed this. He's been in Damascus and told my colleague Luke Jones more about the case. So in many ways if you conjure up in your mind's eye Austin Tice is a bit like the American

poster boy. He was a student at a prestigious university studying law, a former American Marine captain who'd served in both Afghanistan and Iraq. And then in the summer of 2012, during a summer break, he took a sabbatical to go to Syria and report on the ongoing civil war there. Now, he filed for several different outlets while he was there and eventually made his way to Damascus where he was abducted and hasn't been heard from since. He was abducted just a few days after his 31st birthday. Abducted by who did we think at the time? Well this was one of the great mysteries of the Austin Tice case. Nobody knew. There were

theories that he'd possibly been abducted by part of the rebels who were fighting President Assad. There were theories that he'd been abducted by some sort of Islamist extremist group. But largely everyone felt and thought, including the US government, he was probably held by the regime of President Assad at the time, who ran a mass imprisonment program. To this day, more than 100,000 people are said to have disappeared into this prison system. And what we've been able to do is track down very secretive intelligence files that are specifically about Austin Tice. Not only that, but we've spoken to a number of people who are familiar with his detention. And what that has revealed for the first time is that Austin was indeed held by a paramilitary

group that were loyal to President Assad. And we've been able to also obtain information about his treatment during that period and sort of very much put to rest any idea that he wasn't taken by the Syrian government. There is still a big question, Mark, over where is he now though, surely? Indeed, this is one of the most painful things about the Austin Tides case. Many people want to see him return home safely. And when the Syrian regime fell in December of 2024, we all hoped that he would walk free from one of the prison cells, but he didn't. So the mystery of what happened to him is still very much out there. Now, as part of our ongoing podcast series, we've got many more answers to questions that are still out there. And we'll be continuing to look at this as we go forward.

How difficult was it to get that information, some of those top secret files, that you were able to learn a bit about what happened to him? I mean, these files were extraordinarily difficult to come by, including speaking to some of the people we've been able to get. My colleague, Sara Abedat, had spent years cultivating a network of Syrian intelligence officials. So once we went to Syria during the fall of the regime in 2024, we were able to get to a very specific facility once they'd be guided to an area where these files were contained and begin viewing them. And it wasn't only files about Austin, there were files on a plethora

of foreign nationals who'd been detained. And just finally, Josh, what has it been like for you reporting there under this new regime? How has it struck you? Well, look, Syria is somewhere that is very dear to my heart. And under the old regime, I was never able to go to Damascus because my previous reporting, the likelihood is I would have been arrested. Now, having been there since the very start of the new government in Syria, I can say that the situation has been very different and their attitude towards the press for the most part, I would say, has been very positive.

We get access to places we need to go, we are able to travel about, but look, this is a new government, progress is not linear, there are going to be challenges and we need to all watch and see how the situation develops going forward. There's still a long ways go and this government has to do a lot to prove itself, but the early signs are positive. Josh Baker and the revelations about Austin Twys feature in the new upcoming series of Josh's I'm Not a Monster podcast. Series 1 and 2 are already available and you can hear them wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Search for I'm Not a Monster. The Malian city of Timbuktu has been a seat of Islamic learning and scholarship for centuries, a key city on the Saharan trade route north to Marrakesh. It's also been a place of wealth and political and military power. More than a decade after they were forced out of the city, on Monday Islamist rebels launched several attacks on army bases and the airport. The military junta said the attacks had been thwarted, killing 13 rebels. It's not confirmed its own casualties. Islamist violence in Mali and its neighbours in the

Sahel region of Africa has been on the rise, displacing millions of people. I heard more about this latest attack from BBC News Africa's Chris Iwaka. The Jihadis targeted a military base and military airport within the city that have been shelling and gunshots. And it's also coming just a day after the Jihadist group claimed that they assaulted another base in Boulikese, also in central Mali, where they claimed that they killed about 30 soldiers, although that figure has not been confirmed by the Malian army. This Boulikese attack is not the first time we've seen previous attack in October 2019. Between 40 or 80 soldiers, Malian soldiers, were

killed in that attack and it was seen as one of the deadliest attack by jihadis on the country before the attack on Sunday and then the Timbuktu attack today. As a matter of fact Timbuktu had fallen in and out of the hands of the jihadist group between 2012 and 2013. In 2023, the jihadists also laid siege, a blockade over the city, restricting access. And that was the time that the Malian junta pushed the United Nations forces out of Mali. From that time until now, even with the support of Russia-backed Wagner group, Mali has not been able to really cope with the suite of attacks from the jihadist

group. As you say, many attacks, but the latest in the city of Timbuktu. Why Timbuktu? It's a hugely important place in Islamic culture, isn't it? Yes, it is. As a matter of fact, Timbuktu is a very, very historical city. It is also a religious site where it is regarded as a city of 333 saints, where some highly revered religious scholars and clergy were buried. Timbuktu also had the first university in West Africa but it has also now seen huge destruction as a result of these various attacks falling into the hands of Jihadi's group. It

seems that the Malian military has not been able to defend the city most of the time when attacks like this happened. Chris Iwaka. The small South American nation of Paraguay has big ambitions to become a tech and innovation hub. It has a reliable source of renewable energy thanks to the Itaipu Dam, a huge hydroelectric dam on the Paraguay-Brazil border, which politicians and business leaders hope will be a selling point. Jane Chambers has been meeting the people hoping to turn the country

into the Silicon Valley of the region. I'm surrounded by green fields, buildings and uniformed officers. This is currently an army barracks in the capital of Sancion, but the government's planning to build a digital park here. What the president wants is to transfer the country, transfer into a place where the innovation grow with some ingredient that we have here that is not common in every place. Gustavo Villate is Paraguay's minister of technology and communication and he's passionate about the opportunities the site could provide and what the country can offer digital industries.

We have the youngest population, we have a lot of green and renewable energy, we have lower taxes. They were unwrapping maps in front of us with some plans. The idea is to have the students, the public sector and the private sector all in one place. The Minister thinks the private and public sectors working together is a key ingredient to help the country grow as a digital hub. And there are plans to build a technology university to train young workers. But Yate thinks the digital park will be ready in the next two years. So how much will it cost and how will it be financed?

We are planning right now to invest here in this area around 20 million dollars for first stage. But the idea is that the private company to come here to invest. Paraguay's natural resources are another unique selling point for the country. The Itaipu Dam is a huge hydroelectric dam between Brazil and Paraguay. This abundant and affordable energy is an important consideration for tech companies looking for sustainable and low-cost energy solutions for the massive energy demands used in AI and computing. I've come to meet Paraguayan Italian Sebastiano Ortés-Ciomorro,

the Director of Emerging Industries for Tiveri Corporation, a Finnish software and service company. If you want to install a technology investment like AI data centres, that source of renewable energy is very steady. Keep in mind, the hydroelectric power is energy is very steady. Keep in mind the hydroelectric power is both renewable and is steady. That comparing to other renewable energy sources like wind or solar that have its ups and downs makes it much more attractive for creating data centers or any other electro-intensive activity

that requires a steady electricity source. He thinks Paraguay's quest to be South America's Silicon Valley needs to be part of a wider collaboration across the region. I think it's very important to look at Paraguay not as an isolated entity. What you have is different countries that are not necessarily competing with one another but that have different strengths and that complement each other. Gabriela Sibyls manages the Venture Capital Division for Cybersons, a global investment

and technology group founded by her parents in Paraguay. She worked for various start-ups in Silicon Valley after graduating as a computer and neuroscientist from nearby University of California, Berkeley. In Latin America, because there still are a lot of infrastructure problems in the region, you don't necessarily have to build this super revolutionary technology or app. But because so many industries are still managed in a very traditional way, there are a lot of opportunities where by adding like a small layer of technology you can have an impact. The people I spoke to are pragmatic and accept that Paraguay has some way to go to build the necessary infrastructure and training

for their young workforce in order to put their country on the map. But they're united in their determination to capitalise on their assets and attract opportunities to the country. Jane Chambers The French luxury fashion house Dior has taken a bold step. It's appointed a British fashion designer, Jonathan Anderson, as its creative director for both its men's and women's collections. His move to Dior is part of a major reshuffling of jobs at global fashion brands following some resignations and forced departures as Ella Bicknell reports.

In recent years the fashion industry has seen its sales slump and now major brands are changing up their creative leadership. Dior follows in the footsteps of Chanel and Gucci by appointing a new creative boss. Jonathan Anderson replaces Maria Grazia Curie, the label's first female chief designer. Born and raised in 1980s Northern Ireland amid political unrest, Anderson turned to fashion as a means of self-expression. He's dressed styles like Ariana Grande, Harry Styles and Rihanna, designing the custom red look for her 2023 Super Bowl halftime performance. But arts journalist Charlotte Ambrose says it was his decade-long tenure at the Spanish label Lueve that cemented his reputation as a visionary designer.

Traditionally, it was known as a brand for its leather work, but for me, the way that Lueve was changed by Anderson, it became synonymous with eccentricity and silliness as well as modernity and high fashion. I think it'll be interesting to see where he takes Dior because it's traditionally a very romantic, feminine brand, definitely very traditional. So it'll be interesting to see the brand modernise and maybe for genders to be played with a bit more as well

in Dior's pieces and to reignite the brand's growth. In a statement Bernard Arnaud, the boss of Dior's luxury goods parent company, praised Anderson as one of the greatest creative talents of his generation and a key asset for writing the next chapter of Dior's history. And that will be put to the test later this month in Paris, the home of Dior, where Anderson will debut his inaugural collection. Ella Bicknell. 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 or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll and the producers were Peter Hyatt and Daniel Mann. The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Alex Ritzen. Until next time, goodbye. the WISE Multi-Currency Card to spend pounds in London or download the app to move pesos to Mexico City. WISE always gives you a fair exchange rate with no markups and no hidden fees. So when you send, spend or receive money with WISE, you'll get the real deal for your money anywhere in the world. 12 million customers managing their international money with WISE can't be wrong. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and T's apply.