Global News Podcast - Putin says attack on Ukraine power grid 'response to US-made missiles'

Episode Date: November 28, 2024

Putin says Russia's attack on Ukraine's power grid was in response to the use of US-made missiles. Also: Syrian rebels launch a major offensive in Aleppo province, and Greenland opens a new international airport.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. You are actually radioactive and everything alive is unexpected elements from the BBC World Service. Search for unexpected elements wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nikki Cardwell and in the early hours of Friday, the 29th of November, these are our main stories. President Putin says Russia's attack on Ukraine's power grid is in response to the use of US-made

missiles inside Russia. Islamist fighters launch a surprise offensive in northern Syria. A British soldier who escaped from prison under a food truck is convicted of spying for Iran. Also in this podcast, the Australian Senate approves a social media ban for under-16s and... These copulites very often contain undigested food remains. If we scan a lot of them, we can maybe reconstruct the food web. So who was eating who basically in these ecosystems of the past. What scientists are learning from dinosaur droppings.

It seems Russia is turning up the pressure on Ukraine by executing a second massive strike in a month targeting the country's energy infrastructure. More than a million Ukrainians were left without electricity on Wednesday night. On Thursday, Vladimir Putin, speaking in Kazakhstan, said the latest bombardment was a response to Ukraine's ongoing use of advanced US-supplied weapons. These strikes, on our part, took place in response to the ongoing strikes on Russian territory by American Atacom's missiles. As I've said many times, there will always be a response from our side. President Putin also threatened to attack what he called decision-making centres in

Kiev with Russia's new hypersonic missile. That's prompted an angry reaction from his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who said any blackmail by Russia must be met with a firm response. Today in Kazakhstan Putin once again promoted his missiles, his readiness to kill and destroy. To the thousands of missiles that have already hit Ukraine, Putin apparently wants to add thousands more. He does not need this war to end.

President Biden has described the aerial attack against Ukraine as outrageous. The fresh strikes came as Ukrainians braced themselves for a tough winter, with much of its energy infrastructure already damaged by almost three years of war. Alexei Honcharenko is an MP for Odessa in the southwest of the country. Unfortunately, Odessa is often hit by Russian missiles and drones, and this time again Odessa was under attack. Mostly the attack energy infrastructure. For example, last Monday, it was just 11 people killed.

It was in the middle of Monday, just in the residential area, the missile fault. This time, part of the city is without electricity after attack. It's not so bad like it was 10 days ago because 10 days ago it was a complete blackout, no electricity in the city, no water supply, no public transport working, bad connection, bad internet, bad mobile network. But this is a Russian campaign of terror against civilians. And so what's out at the moment? Have you got power? Have you got heat? Have you got water?

Me personally, now in my apartment there is power, but in some other parts of the city there is no. The supply of water is not seriously damaged this time and heating is also okay. Because when it was completely blackout, just imagine you live, I don't know, on the 15th floor, you don't have an elevator, you have an electric oven, it doesn't work, you have no electricity, you have no water, you have no heating. It's just unbearable. This time it's not so bad, but unfortunately we understand that Russians will continue to attack energy infrastructure. President Putin has already said that the attack last night was in response to the use

of missiles from the United States and United Kingdom. It's ridiculous. And what was on February 24 of 2022, what was the response from what? So it's blah, blah, blah. They're attacking us all the time. The only way to stop them is to destroy their military capacities to do this. And that's what we can do, having a long range possibilities from United States, United Kingdom. Our problem is not that we have these possibilities, our problem is that we have very small number of these missiles. We need much, much more.

Right, and you wouldn't be concerned that President Putin would see that as an escalation and he would escalate what he does? He is doing maximum he can against Ukraine. Only thing he's not doing is nukes, but because he knows that it will be his physical end. That's why he's not doing this. Everything else, everything possible he's doing. So we're not afraid of all his threats and we know where we are. And we know that Putin and Russia understands only the language of force. Well, except we have an incoming new US president and he has said who he's chosen has his envoy to Russia and Ukraine to try to negotiate some sort of settlement. It's a man called Keith Kellogg. Are you accepting that there will have to be some deal and soon where the lines are drawn?

Well, presumably pretty much as they are. that there will have to be some deal and soon where the lines are drawn, well presumably pretty much as they are. I really welcome this choice of President-elect Trump. He's tough on Russia. So I'm quite optimistic about this decision of President-elect. I hope he will succeed. Who wants more peace in the world than not Ukrainians? We want it as much as it possibly could be. The question is that we want real peace, not a ceasefire. And he has also said that the US should stop the flow of aid if Ukraine doesn't end into talks.

We are ready to have talks. We are ready to have negotiations about the end of the war, restoration of international order. There is no problem with us. And does that mean you're happy to start ceding land to Russia? No, it doesn't mean this. Because what does it mean, ceding the land? No Kellogg, no Trump, nobody in the world can push us to this. The other question is that can we reclaim this territory without US military support? And it looks like the answer is no. So the question is that we will never accept this territory as a Russian, but when we will restore our control over them, we don't know.

Alexei Honcharenko speaking to the BBC's Sarah Montagu. For a long time, Syria was seen as the epicentre of conflict in the Middle East. Anti-government protests in 2011 spiralled into a long and bloody civil war, with Russia and Iran wading in to back the Syrian government forces led by President Assad. Fighting has calmed down in Syria in recent years, but this week rebels launched a surprise offensive near the Turkish border. I have been displaced for five years, but thank God I am now fighting to reclaim our land from the grip of the criminal regime. We will persevere on this path and call upon the youth at home to join us in the struggle to take back our country."

In response, Russian and Syrian planes have bombed rebel positions in northwest Syria. Syed Shehata from BBC Arabic told me what's happening. Syed Shehata, BBC Arabic Rebel groups in northwest of Syria, mainly led by Haith Tahrir al-Sham, which was before Al-Nusra Front, which is Al-Qaeda affiliated group. They launched an attack with other groups on different areas close to Aleppo, and they controlled about 100 square kilometers, many villages, as they are very close to Aleppo. This is the reason the M5, which is a highway between Aleppo and Damascus,

was closed temporarily in order not to allow the rebels groups to go there, because it's very strategic highway for Syria and the Syrian troops. The Syrian army, according to the Syrian news agency, said it fought back and it killed some people. More than 200 people are dead, mainly from the rebel groups. So it's escalating. It's the first time to happen since 2020 when the agreement between Russia and Turkey went to a ceasefire deal for the northwest of Aleppo where this opposition or rebels groups reside there in this area after years of fighting in there. As you say, there's been relatively little trouble for such a long time. Why is this emerging now?

Syria now is under constant attacks and strikes since October last year from Israeli strikes, which target Iranian militant advisors. In this incident, what happened yesterday is one of the Iranian senior commanders was killed in this fighting. So this kind of attacks and the strikes from Israeli air force, which Israeli didn't admit it, but the Syrian news agencies and Syrian army saying Israeli strikes focus on different places in Syria. The strike comes two days ago and other places.

So it's a golden opportunity for the rebel groups to benefit from the attack on the main ally for the Syrian army, which is the Iranian militant inside there and the Hezbollah fighters in Syria. So the attack of them will weaken the regime so in this case it's a good opportunity for the rebel groups to gain more land the benefit from the Israeli strikes against targets against you know the supporters and the troops supporting Bashar al-Assad so this is the reason this coming up now after four years. Do you think this is the beginning of a more wider offensive?

Unfortunately, it will be escalating in the next few days because Turkey is waiting now, because Turkey is supporting these rebel groups. Russia is supporting Syria, the supporter of Syria, especially the Iranian senior commanders and the Hezbollah fighters who fight beside the Syrian army. So unfortunately with the Israelis now ceasefire in Lebanon, I think the focus now in Syria, the focus now is to eliminate the presence of the Iranian and Hezbollah in Syria. Said Shehata. In the UK, a former soldier who briefly escaped prison last year by clinging to the bottom of a food delivery lorry has been found guilty of spying for Iran. A court heard that 23-year-old Daniel Khalif was a serving soldier when he was paid by

Iranian agents for information about other troops, including members of the special forces. A UK correspondent, Daniel Sun Sunford was in court. The jury found Daniel Khalif guilty of offences under the Official Secrets Act and the Terrorism Act. He joined the army at 16 but by the age of 17 was in touch with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps offering to send them classified information. At least twice he received dead drops of cash in a North London park and a West London cemetery. In one phone call he even offered to go for training in Iran itself.

I wanted to have some training from you guys and I think the best training for me is inside of Iran. I'm one of the most intelligent people. I won an award. I am better than everybody here. I am more intelligent than everybody here." Some of what he sent to Iran was fake documents he made up on his home computer, but some of it was real, including classified military strategy documents about surveillance and drones. He was only caught because he phoned the British security service MI5 offering to be a double

agent. During the trial, Khalif's lawyers argued that he was more scooby-doo than 007, but the jury found him guilty of sending information to Iran and compiling a list of soldiers serving in special forces units such as the SAS. Commander Dominic Murphy from Counterterrorism Command said that although Khalif was something of a fantasist, the risk he posed was real. Iran is one of a number of countries that present a real and present risk to our national security so Daniel Khalif providing information to them absolutely compromises our national

security, particularly as he was a surgeon soldier that had access to sensitive material. Khalif will be sentenced early in the new year and today Mrs Justice Chima Grubb warned that he was facing a long custodial sentence. Daniel Sandford, could the way to a healthier heart be to keep a regular bedtime? Research from the UK based biobank shows irregular sleepers are 26% more likely to suffer heart problems or a stroke. The results suggest when you go to sleep may be more relevant than how long you sleep for. Gordon Smart spoke to the independent sleep expert Dr. Neil Stanley. It's about consistency and this is something that's been

evolving over the last year or so and this study is looking at heart problems, stroke as you say, heart attacks but there was an earlier study looking at heart problems, stroke, as you say, heart attacks, but there was an earlier study looking at overall mortality, again showing the regularity. So the sleep field, I've been in it for 42 years, the sleep field has been banging on about the importance of getting enough sleep, but this work is perhaps showing that it's the regularity of sleep, that we should have a fixed wake up time and to a degree a fixed bedtime is as important for overall health and that should sort of now be sort of the message that we are putting across to people. You know I get really worried having this conversation with you, particularly when I

think about the circadian rhythm and all that, so how much should we be aiming for, for those listening tonight on the back shift? Well, sleep is very individual. Sleep need is like height or shoe size. We're all individual and it's genetically determined. So some people can absolutely thrive on just four hours sleep. Other people need 11 hours sleep to thrive. I personally know that I need nine and a half hours sleep to feel at my best. And if I were to only get eight hours, this mythical eight hours, I'd actually not feel very good at all. So eight hours is merely an average.

It's not an ideal. It's about getting the right amount of sleep for you. And very simply, that's the amount of sleep that allows you to feel awake, alert and focused during the day. What happens to the body when we don't respect our need for that sleep pattern? Well sleep is about what we call homeostasis, which is just a very fancy word for balance. It just keeps the body in balance. So if you have one bad night's sleep, the next day you're four times more likely to catch the common cold because we optim optimize our immune system

we optimize our endocrine system. Sleep is the foundation of good physical mental and emotional health it helps us deal with our emotions it's about memory learning and growth so sleep is absolutely key to good physical mental and emotional health and we damage it at our peril but one of the biggest causes of poor sleep is worrying about getting a good night's sleep. It's about looking at you know how you feel. If you feel good, awake alert during the day, healthy, you've had enough sleep. If you don't feel those things then you probably haven't had a good enough sleep and you should look at what may be causing that.

Dr Neil Stanley then you probably haven't had a good enough sleep and you should look at what may be causing that. Dr Neil Stanley. Still to come... We have been shut from the whole world and now we can open for the world. The Arctic territory of Greenland is opening a brand new international airport. report. What are people around the world doing to help tackle the climate emergency? Climate shocks that we are experiencing. Trouts, floods, decimated agriculture and so on.

The climate question from the BBC World Service looks for answers to those challenges posed by climate change. How can we solve this? It's all being discussed. We only hear the bad stuff in the news, don't we? And there's loads of quiet progress. Reasons to be hopeful. Solutions exist.

We just need to be able to implement them at scale. The climate question. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. As we record this podcast, thousands of pro-Western Georgians are protesting against the government's decision to delay European Union accession until 2028. The country's Prime Minister, Iraqliy Kobukidze, announced the decision amid a post-election crisis that saw the country's president challenge the legitimacy of the newly elected parliament and government. The Georgian government has accused the EU of blackmail.

But Georgia's pro-EU President Salome Zora Bishvili said Georgian Dream's decision was part of a wider plan to move Georgia closer to Russia rather than Europe. Today, this non-existent and illegitimate government declared not peace but war on its own people, its own past and its own future. This war is on our future, the future of our society and the future of our country, because on this path there is no Georgian statehood, no independence and no future except in Russia. Our correspondent in Tbilisi, Rehan Demetri, spoke to my colleague Oliver Conway.

It's nearly 2am in the morning and the protests are still ongoing. There are now confrontations and clashes with the police. And the police repeatedly used what appears to be a pepper spray against the protesters. A large number of riot police are mobilized close to the parliament area in the nearby square called the Freedom Square. And the confrontation between the police and protesters is happening on two side streets to the right and the left of the Parliament. So this large protest they broke out not only in the capital Tbilisi but also in other major

cities across Georgia, Batumi, Kutaisi, Tel Aviv and other cities. And the reason for this quite angry protests now in Georgia is the statement that was made early on Thursday by the country's prime minister, Irakli Kobahidze. He made quite a long statement talking about Georgia's relations with the EU and saying that Georgia is still committed relations with the EU and saying that the Georgia is still committed to join the EU. However, he said the governing party, Georgian Dream, made a decision to put the EU accession process on hold for four years.

So it will not be on the agenda, according to the Prime Minister, until 2028. He also said that Georgia would refuse any budgetary aid from the European Union. But could this rally threaten Georgian dreams hold on power? After all, opinion polls show that most people in Georgia support EU membership. Well at the moment, the situation quite unpredictable. The Georgian Dream Party, which has been in power for the past 12 years, they have consolidated their influence in pretty much all of the government institutions

here in Georgia. And the last remaining independent institution is the president's office. And that's what Salome Zorabishvili has been saying. She has turned up in the protest rally on Thursday night. She confronted some of the riot police and saying, look, whose oath are you like? Why, why are you here? Are you defending Georgia or are you here defending Russia?

She said earlier today that with this announcement from the Prime Minister that the Georgian dream she said has finalised the constitutional coup in Georgia and she called on the European Union to help this country to hold new elections. Rayhan Demetri, now to a world first. The Australian government has banned under-16s from social media. The law will put the responsibility for policing the age of the platform's users onto the tech giants running them with threats of hefty fines if they don't. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said social media platforms had a social responsibility to ensure the safety of children. Our reporter

Stephanie Prentiss told me more. So this is, in short, it's a big deal. No other government we've seen has gone this far when it comes to stopping children using social media. And this ban for the under-16s, it's really divided Australia. Those that are for it, they've applauded the protection aspects for mental health, for stopping online abuse, even for preventing data collection from young people. But those against it say it's stripping people of their autonomy, it could leave young people isolated if they can't form those communities online. And also we know when France did bring

in protection rules for under-13s, experts said it could be driving young people to those less regulated spaces like the dark web. Now one Australian social media influencer, Innie Lam, said her peers are pushing back against the idea. The social media ban generally sees a lot of young people who are strongly against it. I believe that in order to achieve these effects, we should take it upon ourselves to regulate our own personal social media usage rather than being forced off of it.

And she went on to say it could force people to create fake accounts or even fake IDs. Now seriously, I have a 15 year old. I can imagine her reaction if I try to stop her or ban her from social media. How on earth are they going to enforce this? Well, exactly. The major question from parents has been about their culpability, whether they will get in trouble or their children will if they don't comply. It is something that was addressed by Jenny McAllister. She's the Australian Labor Party Senator.

There aren't any penalties for Australians who gain access to an age-restricted social platform and there aren't any penalties for parents or educators who provide that access. What this does do is pass the buck back to the social media platforms just to work out how to police people's ages and do that robustly. Some of them we've already heard pushing back Elon Musk said this could hurt children's human rights but as far as Australia's Senate is concerned, those platforms have 12 months to take what they call reasonable measures to keep those platforms for adults only, or they face fines of more than $30 million. And of course, the

big question is whether we'll see other countries join in on these sorts of crackdowns. Stephanie Prentice, scientists believe they found a way to explain how dinosaurs came to rule the planet millions of years ago and it seems a plant-based diet could have been the key factor. But how did they find this out? Well, they took a long hard look at the animal's droppings, as Stephanie Zakrassen explains. Researchers take on a lot of different things in the name of science but when Matink Vonstrom, a paleontologist at Sweden's Uppsala University, started looking into the evolution of dinosaurs he did not expect he'd end up studying fossilised poo and vomit for the next 10 years. We found that these

copulites very often contains food remains inside, so undigested food remains. And we realised that if we scan a lot of them, we can maybe reconstruct the food webs of ecosystems of the past. And we started tracing these arrows in the food webs, so who was eating who basically in these ecosystems. The researchers studied more than 500 fossils taken from what is now Poland, but millions of years ago was the northern region of the supercontinent Pangea. The team used new technology to build a 3D image of the well-preserved samples, which revealed that the excrement contained the remains of insects, plants, fish and other animals.

Dinosaurs first appeared on Earth at least 230 million years ago, but they would not become the world's dominant animal until the start of the Jurassic period, some 30 million years later. What caused their rise to prominence and why it took so long have long been the subject of fevered debate between scientists. Mutting Farnstrom believes the findings from this study, published in the journal Nature, give some answers. Some of the most interesting aspects of the work

is that the first dinosaurs in the area, they were opportunistic. They were eating insects, fish, plants, all sorts of things. And this is the same with the first herbivorous dinosaurs that came along several million years later. So many of these dinosaurs were really quick to adapt to changing conditions and we have a lot of climate change going on in this time. So I think that dinosaurs were really well adapted to change their diet and feeding adaptations.

For example, a rainy period called the Carnium Pluvial episode caused ferns and other moisture-loving plants to flourish. Some reptiles struggled to eat them, while others thrived on their herbivore diet. As these smaller dinosaurs bulked up on their greens, so did larger carnivores that fed on them. So by the time the Jurassic period rolled around, the landscape was dominated by giant plant-eating dinosaurs and ferocious carnivores. The researchers now hope their approach can be used to study ancient species from other parts of the world and give insight into the long-term effects of climate change and extinction events. Stephanie Sakrason reporting.

A new international airport has opened in the capital of Greenland, Nook. Larger aircraft can now land in this vast and remote Arctic territory for the first time, making it more accessible than ever. Here's the moment the first plane touched down earlier today. That audio was sent to the BBC by Klaus and Anita Iverson, who owned the Hotel Aurora in Nook. Luke Jones spoke to them and first to Massana Eel, the CEO and Editor-in-Chief of the national newspaper Summichia. Actually, it was more emotional than I thought at the beginning because this is a big day for the country. It's a big day for people in Nuuk and the rest of the country also so it was quite emotional.

Anita how about you? Yeah it was amazing. It's gonna really be a turnaround for Nuuk now. It's gonna be amazing I think. We're very lucky. And Klaus just paint us the picture for us because I've seen the video which you sent to us of it and there's quite just a sort of snowy hill and you can see what looks like the city in front of you and lots of people there all wrapped up cheering, standing in what looks like very cold snow. How was it for you? It was fantastic. Actually we all almost missed it because there was, even though it's a very small city, we actually had a

kind of queue getting out there because everybody wanted to see the first big airplane land in Nuuk. We have been seeing the airfield been building through a couple of years now and been planning for five or ten years, so for us it was a really, really big thing. It's the first of three airport projects that officials hope will boost Greenland's economy by helping it to diversify from fishing into tourism, as Adrienne Murray reports. Rock has been blasted and tarmac laid to get this longer runway ready. And the finching touches have been put to a brand new terminal. Until now only small propeller planes could land in the country's biggest city.

Much larger aircraft will be able to arrive here in Nuuk and that will pave the way for new connections to Greenland's capital. Many locals welcome the change. It is not only an airport for me, it is also an airport for a modern Greenland. Lately we have been shut from the whole world and now we can open for the world. Greenland is a vast territory with a population of just 57,000 people, but until now a remote runway built by the Americans during World War II has been the main entry point. Travellers then have to transit to their destination, its all turboprop planes. And that's often been time consuming, young Greenlander Isaac Finn tells me.

First you have to fly over there, then you have to wait, then there's bad weather or not enough planes, and then you get stuck there, it's annoying. Jens Lauritsen is the CEO of Greenland Airports. Jens Lauritsen, CEO, Greenland Airports It will be the key to opening up Greenland to make it easy, accessible from Europe or North America. Once you make a country that has been quite difficult to get to and you create an easy access like this, I'm sure we will see a lot of tourism, we will see a lot of change.

Greenland is already seeing a small tourism boom. However, hotel accommodation is still limited. And this is the first cabin. The owners at Inuk Hostels have recently invested, adding luxury glass igloos. Marin-Louisa Poulsen-Christensen is a co-owner and the manager. We are preparing by making new tours. Many local people got their own boats as well. Of course, we need more accommodation here.

We also need more local guides and local workers. Now though, it's the public sector and fishing that drives Greenland's economy. Inside a waterfront factory owned by Polar Seafoods, a huge catch of prawns is being steamed, shelled, and frozen, ready for export by container ship. The company's chair, Michael Binzer, hopes that shorter, direct flights will open up

new business possibilities. I think the biggest change is going to be looking into more fresh seafood. It will cut down the transportation by maybe a full day, which is a lot. This new infrastructure is meant to be a shot in the arm for Greenland's economy. Its impact could be far reaching. Adrienne Murray reporting from Greenland. far-reaching. You can also find us on X at Global News Pod. This edition was produced by Judy Frankel and mixed by Martin Baker. The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Nikki Cardwell. Until next time, goodbye. Science is done by people who constantly expect the unexpected. That thing that we couldn't figure out, we figured it out. But now you're like, okay, this is like a whole other can of worms. Unexpected elements brings you the most unexpected bits. At the origin of the lightning discharge, we have a temperature which is even higher than the surface of the sun. Unexpected elements from the BBC World Service. It's not Jurassic Park, is it?

It's Cretaceous Park. All of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park came from the Cretaceous period. Search for unexpected elements wherever you get your BBC podcasts.