Global News Podcast - Putin agrees to pause Ukraine energy attacks during Trump call

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, rejects an immediate and full ceasefire in Ukraine, agreeing only to halt attacks on energy infrastructure. Also: Nasa astronauts return to Earth after nine months in space.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Hello, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox. And we would like to tell you about the new series of The Infinite Monkey Cage. We're going to have a planet off. Jupiter versus Saturn. It's very well done that because in the script it does say wrestling voice. After all of that, it's going to kind of chill out a bit and talk

about ice. And also in this series, we're discussing history of music recording with Brian Eno and looking at nature's shapes. So listen wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Johnannette Jalil and in the early hours of Wednesday the 19th of March these are our main stories. In a much anticipated phone call with Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin has rejected an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine but agreed to halt Russian attacks on energy infrastructure.

Amid international outrage over Israeli strikes on Gaza that have reportedly killed more than 400 people, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says this is just the beginning. Two NASA astronauts who've been stranded in space for nine months have landed safely back on Earth. Also in this podcast, an Italian newspaper says it's become the first in the world to offer a daily edition produced by artificial intelligence. Tuesday's inaugural edition provides a scaling look at President Trump and a selection of AI-generated letters from supposed readers.

It was a highly anticipated phone call. We begin today at the White House where a high stakes phone call between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, a White House advisor said. We are following some breaking news in Washington. In a statement out moments ago, the White House says, quote, the movement to peace will begin with an energy and infrastructure ceasefire. This morning's hour and a half. In the course of a lengthy conversation between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the Russian

president agreed to halt strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure for 30 days, but stopped short of agreeing to the unconditional 30-day ceasefire that the US had been calling for. Ukraine's leader, Vladimir Zelensky, said his country had always supported a truce on attacking energy infrastructure, but that Russia wasn't ready to end the war. Ukraine's leader, Vladimir Zelensky, said his country had always supported a truce on attacking energy infrastructure, but that Russia wasn't ready to end the war. We will support any proposals that lead to a sustainable, just peace. But for this, we have to understand what's at stake, what are the details and I hope to God that we know all these details so that the partners talk to us because there are two sides

in this war Russia and Ukraine. Trying to negotiate without Ukraine in my view will not be productive. I asked our State Department correspondent Tom Bateman for his assessment of the call. Well the first thing to say is this was a very long call possibly up to two and a half hours between presidents Trump and Putin. The sort of tangible outcome is that Mr. Putin has agreed as you say to what appears to be an immediate cessation of what is basically a long-range missile fire on the power grid in Ukraine. Now that is not inconsequential. That has been a significant part of his attacks on Ukraine since the full-scale invasion. However, what seems to have happened here is that President Trump has got agreement from now the Ukrainians and the Russians on two completely different ceasefires.

So what he had agreed with the Ukrainians last week was an immediate full 30-day ceasefire. They said, quote, you know, the ball is now in Russia's court. He's had this call with Vladimir Putin and seems to have significantly retreated on that position. So the language from the White House in the statement they put out after the call makes no mention at all of a full 30-day ceasefire. And instead, you know, we have the clarification from Mr. Putin on their statement on the call that there is this agreement or that Mr. Putin says he will stop missile strikes on energy

infrastructure, although we don't yet know if the Ukrainians will also agree to that far far lesser form of truth than they said they were ready for with the Americans. And this was a moment when many people thought that it was an opportunity for Donald Trump to prove that he can deliver on his claim that he can end the war in Ukraine soon. But it seems that Russia is stalling rather than making the concessions that are needed for an agreement. Well, there certainly aren't any of the kind of concessions that you might have expected from Russia if there was to be a full 30-day ceasefire and if that was to start immediately.

And so I think, you know, the Ukrainians will very much see this as Vladimir Putin playing for time while at the same time adding a string of conditions and trying to get Mr. Trump to bend to that position. Now, what we have seen in the statement from the Kremlin is that the Russian leader is saying that there is a key condition to continue negotiations or to pick up further negotiations over ending the war, and that is that there must be an end to all Western military and intelligence support for Ukraine. Now that, of course, is an absolutely existential issue for the Ukrainians. I think what's happened there is President Putin has sort of got a taste for Mr. Trump's readiness to potentially do that, to cut off

ammunition and arm supplies to the Ukrainians because he did that a couple of weeks ago to leverage the Ukrainians and so he's now making that a key condition of ending the war. In effect, to go forward with the negotiations he said that he says that America has to stop arming Ukraine. Tom Bateman. Well, as the Russian threat looms over Europe, German lawmakers...

...abgegebenes Stimmkarten 720, mit Ja haben gestimmt 513... ...have in a historic vote approved a massive increase in defence spending, financed by the borrowing of hundreds of billions of dollars, a seismic shift for a debt-shy country still scarred by the horrors of its Nazi past. And it's a shift that could reshape not just Germany's but Europe's defence. At a time when Donald Trump has made it clear that for the first time since the Second World

War, other Western nations can no longer rely on the US defence shield. The vote was called by Germany's Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Metz. For at least a decade, possibly much longer, our society had a false sense of security. We now need to rebuild our defence capability from scratch, with automated systems, with independent European satellite surveillance, with armed drones and with many modern defense systems and most importantly with reliable and predictable orders that should go to European manufacturers where possible. Our security correspondent Frank Gardner watched the

vote in the Bundestag in Berlin. This vote was being called absolutely crucial, a day of destiny, a historic opportunity by various people, politicians, journalists, others. It needed to pass by two thirds, and it did. It's passed by 71 percent. This is the lower house. So the parliament, the Bundestag, it's still got to get through the upper house, the Bundesrat on Friday, but that's thought to be now something of a formality.

But it has been a race against time because this is the outgoing German parliament. The new one that sits, that's for the first time on the 25th of March in a week's time, has got a stronger representation from the IFD, the Alternative for Deutschland, that's the far right party, and Linke, the far left party, both of whom strongly oppose these measures. This is a really radical departure for Germany to spend so much on its military. It's a move that could revive Europe's largest economy but some say it's also a move fraught with risks given Germany's Nazi past. Well yes yes, I mean, there are two reasons why Germany has been averse to do this in the past. One is, as you rightly say, the historic reasons going back to 1945. And there is a

strong neo-Nazi movement in this country. There is that risk politically, but also economically. Germany has been incredibly conservative for over a decade and I think there is a growing acceptance amongst many people, certainly in the leading main parties, that this has possibly held back the German economy and they are hoping that this huge uptick in borrowing, although fiscally risky, is going to stimulate the German economy. The other part of this and what was approved today is taking off the debt breaks on how much money Germany can borrow, can go into the market to borrow for defense. And there's no limit to that. It could be hundreds of billions.

And this is crucial because the rest of NATO and the EU were all looking very closely at what happened today. If this had stumbled at the first hurdle, this proposal, then it would have dealt a pretty serious knock to Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission's plans for a project called Rearm Europe. And that's for an 800 billion euro fund. So Frank, what does this mean for Ukraine? Well it's good news for Ukraine this because obviously Europe and Ukraine are extremely worried that the US support for Ukraine is shaky at best and Europe has been scratching its head as to how they can try and fill that gap. Now, there are things that are going to be very hard to replace, like patriot missile batteries and long-range artillery.

But there's a lot of other stuff like artillery shells and drones that Europe can gear up its industry to doing. So this vote today, this will certainly help Europe sustain its assistance to Ukraine. Frank Gardner in Germany. There has been international outrage at Israel's decision to renew its extensive strikes on Gaza, breaking the fragile ceasefire with Hamas that had been in place since January. More than 400 people were killed, many of them women and children, in the early hours of Tuesday morning, according to Gaza's health ministry, making it one of the deadliest days in the

war. This comes as ceasefire talks had stalled and as Israel has been blocking aid from entering the Strip for the past two weeks. Egypt accused Israel of deliberately making Gaza uninhabitable to force out Palestinians. A UN humanitarian official said once again the people of Gaza were living in abject fear. 17-year-old Zanabel described the scene in Gaza City. Last night was too terrifying and suddenly wake up and the heavy explosions and everywhere near my home. I lived near to the Tabirin school. The school were targeted a lot of times. So the Israeli army also targeted in the night. About 30 people died. There are no safe place here in Gaza Strip.

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the renewed airstrikes on Gaza were just the beginning. In a televised address, he said Israel had resumed combat with full force, accusing Hamas of rejecting the proposals Israel had brought to ceasefire talks. His words are spoken by an interpreter. From this point on, Israel will act against Hamas with growing intensity. From this point on, the negotiations will only be done under fire. Hamas in the past day has felt the force of our weapons in the past day, and I want to tell you that this is just the beginning. We will continue to fight in order to achieve all of the war goals, to release all of the hostages, to get rid of Hamas and to ensure that Hamas will no longer constitute a threat to Israel. Israel's large-scale assaults on Gaza come amid mounting domestic

pressure on Mr Netanyahu as he tries to fire the head of the Shembet internal security service, with mass protests planned over his governance. These Israelis at a protest camp in Tel Aviv demanding the return of the hostages expressed their fears. I think it's disastrous because we have our kidnapped people sitting there and either they will be hurt directly or by the Hamamas. It will not bring anything good. I have no idea what is going to happen to the remaining hostages if the fighting keeps on going. It's an absolute disaster.

This is no longer a war that is about something that is important. It's all about the survival of this government, the survivor of Benjamin Netanyahu. I asked our correspondent in Jerusalem, Eme Nader, what the latest was on the casualties caused by the Israeli airstrikes. The number announced by the health authorities in Gaza has been rising throughout the day. Now over 400 dead is the latest figure we've had announced from those bodies counted when they've arrived at hospitals. They've said amongst those figures, over 260 women and children, the hospitals have been overrun with queues of people trying to get surgery after being injured in the airstrikes.

And we've heard reports throughout the day of entire families being killed in that very heavy series of bombings that mostly took place through the night and continued into the day. Hamas has also acknowledged that a number of its senior leadership have been killed in the air strikes around four or five, including the head of the government in Gaza, the kind of administrative government there. So it has been acknowledged that amongst the very heavy civilian casualties, Hamas has suffered some direct losses to its organisation. And why has Israel decided to carry out such large-scale strikes now when there are still hostages being held in Gaza? Well, that's a big point of contention.

The Israeli government is saying that it's doing so in order to release the hostages. Now in the clips we've just heard from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he said from now on negotiations will only happen under fire. And he's struck a very belligerent tone. He says that military pressure is a necessary condition of releasing hostages. This comes after, obviously, just over two weeks of Israel preventing aid getting into Gaza. And there are critics, including the Hamas side, that say this is because Israel has tried to renegotiate the terms of the ceasefire that was agreed in January. The phase, the second phase of the ceasefire that was supposed to commence

had on the table that the Israeli troops would begin to withdraw from Gaza and it would lead to a permanent cessation of hostilities. Hamas has said it still would like to pursue that form of deal that would lead to a permanent cessation of hostilities. Israel seems to be now opting for a different kind of ceasefire that would release more hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners being released but would delay the negotiation of a permanent end to the war. And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is making those statements despite the condemnation that we're hearing from Arab governments and indeed some European governments this afternoon. Ameen.

Nader. Astronauts Sunny Williams and Butch Wilmore left Earth last June for what was supposed to be an eight-day mission to test Boeing's Starliner's capsule. But their spacecraft suffered a technical fault once it had docked with the International Space Station and they ended up staying nine months. Now though they're back having splashdown off the coast of Florida in an apparently smooth and spectacular landing. Our science editor Rebecca Morell has this report. And splashdown. Crew 9 back on Earth.

The moment NASA's Butch Wilmore and Sunny Williams epic mission came to an end. After making a fast and fiery reentry through the Earth's atmosphere, their SpaceX capsule opened its parachutes to take it gently down into the ocean. Butch and Sunny arrived on the International Space Station last June and were only supposed to stay for just over a week. But after the Boeing spacecraft they travelled on suffered technical problems, their mission was dramatically extended. Butch and Sunny embraced their time on the orbiting lab, carrying out an array of experiments and conducting spacewalks. But space takes a toll on the body, as Helen Sharman, Britain's first astronaut, explains. They will feel, first of all, fantastic to be back on Earth. So the fresh air is the

first thing that gets you really. But then of course their bodies will have suffered in space, so particularly bone loss, muscle loss as well, their hormones balance will be all changed, microbiome will be changed, so all of that will have to, let's say, get back to normal. After emerging from the capsule with waves, big smiles and a thumbs up, Butch and Sunny will now be flown to the Johnson Space Centre in Houston for medical checks, before at long last being reunited with their friends and family. Rebecca Morell.

Still to come... There's been a long-standing debate in whether or not humans on the Sapiens, which we know appeared in Africa about 200, 300,000 years ago, whether or not that happened all in just in one population somewhere in Africa. Now new evidence suggests that the genetic origins of modern humans are far more complex than previously thought. Hello, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox and we would like to tell you about the new series of the Infinite Monkey Cage. We're going to have a planet on

Jupiter versus Saturn! It was very well done that because in the script it does say wrestling voice. After all of that it's going to kind of chill out a bit and talk about ice. And also in this series we're discussing history of music recording with Brian Eno and looking at nature's shapes. So listen wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to the Global News Podcast. Since returning to the White House, Donald Trump has frequently lashed out at judges

who are trying to constrain his sweeping claims of presidential authority. Now, in a rare public rebuke, the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, John Roberts, has issued a statement in response to Mr Trump's call for the impeachment of a federal judge who tried to stop deportation flights. Mr Roberts said that impeachment wasn't an appropriate response to disagreements concerning a judicial decision. Our North America correspondent, Gary O'Donoghue reports from Washington. In a social media post, Donald Trump called Judge Boasberg a radical left lunatic, a troublemaker and an agitator, adding that he should be impeached, in other words removed from office.

While not addressing the President directly, the statement from the Chief Justice John Roberts represents an unequivocal admonishment of the President's words and a significant intervention in what is shaping up to be a potential constitutional crisis. America's political system is based on three branches of government, the executive, congress and the judiciary, and this separation of powers is designed to create a system of checks and balances so that no one branch can dominate the others. But in recent days a number of senior administration officials have suggested the White House could simply ignore judicial decisions it doesn't like, with the border czar Tom Homan saying

we're not stopping, I don't care what the judges think. What concerns many is that it's far from clear what could prevent the White House from ignoring the courts if it chose to do so. After all, judges have no means of enforcing their decisions, no army at their beck and call. Congress could impeach a president who took such a course, but the bar for doing so is high and Mr Trump has already survived two such attempts before. Catherine McAllister Gary O'Donoghue. In an earlier podcast we told you that a team

of scientists trapped in a remote Antarctic research station had appealed for help after a colleague assaulted one of them and made death threats. Now the South African government has launched an investigation into events at the South African run station. The accused man is said to be cooperative and to have apologised to his alleged victim. Mayeni Jones reports from Johannesburg. According to the South African authorities, all those working on the research base went through checks and assessments before being deployed at the start of February. But they have admitted it isn't uncommon for individuals to have an initial adjustment period after

arriving at the remote base. The authorities say they learned that four weeks into the mission, one man physically assaulted a colleague. They're also investigating allegations of sexual harassment. Officials say they're in touch with the team daily, that a mediation process is ongoing. The man involved has written a letter of apology to the victim and is also willing to apologise to the rest of the team. Dr Dion George is the Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment. The situation at the base is calm and all is under control. I will be keeping close contact with the base to ensure that it remains that way.

The Sane Fourth Research Base usually house houses staff for 13 months during the Antarctic winter. It's located more than 2,500 miles from mainland South Africa and harsh weather conditions mean scientists can be cut off from the rest of the world for much of the year. Myani Jones, scientists here in the UK say they found evidence that the genetic origins of modern humans are far more complex than previously thought. Researchers at the University of Cambridge say we're descended from at least two ancient populations that became separated one and a half million years ago. They developed separately then eventually reconnected several millennia later. Previously it was thought that we originated from one genetic lineage.

Rebecca Gaspi spoke to the co-author of the research, Dr. Elwin Scali, fellow at Darwin College Cambridge. So does this research change our ideas about evolution? Well, there's been a longstanding debate in human evolution about whether or not, about how humans evolved in Africa. And a lot of this was previously based on fossil evidence, whether or not humans, homo sapiens, which we know appeared in Africa about 200,000 or 300,000 years ago, whether or not that happened

all in just in one population somewhere in Africa, or whether or not there were lots of populations all over Africa, perhaps maybe even some outside all interacting in some way which collectively represent human ancestors at that time. So this study set out to address that using genetic evidence which is another way of looking at human evolution complementary to fossils. And what did you find? Well we found that actually the evidence suggests that back then human ancestors did indeed live in multiple populations. So just like today humans live all over the world in lots of different populations, not completely separate of course but nevertheless distinct in many ways and it seems that that was also the case back then. So whether or not these were

all across Africa, whether or not some of them were outside, that's less clear but the evidence from the genetic data is pretty clear that it was that rather than a single population somewhere in East Africa or wherever. And what was the technique that you used to make these discoveries? Well it's really looking at the genetic ancestry that's actually found in every single person's genome all over the world. So you can do this just looking at one individual genome which is really quite remarkable, it's kind of astonishing in many ways. And that's because there are ancestry differences between the chromosomes, the two copies of the chromosomes that you have, that everybody inherits from their mother and father and some of those ancestry differences go back to relatively recent ancestors, just a few

generations back but some of it also it goes back a lot further and some even back to this time in Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago. Fascinating, so you've done this through living humans not fossils and digging up bones and that sort of thing. Yes exactly that. That's right. Just from modern day individuals living today, just looking at each person's genome. You've done this research using living people. Geographically, did you work out whether people are still living in the same sort of areas or whether there's been migrational moves or that sort of thing?

Oh, there's been a lot of migration and movement of humans all around the world since that time. I mean not least the fact that although all our ancestors, the answers of everybody alive today was back in Africa at that time. Well since then our ancestors left Africa and have spread all around the world and so you find us on every continent in every place now. So there are people everywhere now. Whether or not the ancestry of people today in these places reflects some of that movement, that's the kind of question that we would like to look at a bit further as well. Dr Alwin Scali, an Italian newspaper says it's become the first in the world to offer a daily edition produced by artificial intelligence.

Four pages of entirely AI generated content are included in Ilfolio's latest broadsheet and on its website Jacob Evans has more details. As artificial intelligence becomes more advanced, Ilfolio wants to showcase the impact it's having on our daily lives. Every day for the next month it will release an AI generated supplement which you can pick up or read online. Tuesday's inaugural edition provides a scathing look at President Trump and what it calls 10 betrayals by Vladimir Putin. There's also stories on how young Europeans are ditching stable relationships and a selection of AI generated letters from supposed readers. One asks whether the technology will render humans useless in the future. The AI editor's response? Not yet.

And that was the very real Jacob Evans. And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll. The producer was Liam McSherry. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Janette Jaleel. Until next time, goodbye. Hello, I'm Robin Ince.

And I'm Brian Cox. And we would like to tell you about the new series of The Infinite Monkey Cage. We're going to have a planet on... Jupiter vs. Saturn! Well, it's very well done that because in the script it does say, wrestling voice. After all of that, it's going to kind of chill out a bit and talk about ice. And also in this series we're discussing history of music, Brian Eno and looking at nature shapes so listen wherever you get your podcasts