Global News Podcast - Putin visits Kursk after Russian advances - Kremlin

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

Kremlin says President Putin has visited a command post in the Kursk region, where Russia has been retaking territory seized by Ukraine last year. Also: Pakistan train hijack over, and 100 days with a titanium heart.

You're listening to the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway and this edition is published in the early hours of Thursday the 13th of March. President Trump says a US team is on its way to Russia to outline his Ukraine ceasefire plan, even as President Putin is reported to have gone to the front line. Will American tariffs stop the fentanyl coming in from Mexico? Our correspondent has been to meet one of the drug smugglers there. And the Pakistani army says it's rescued hundreds of hostages from a hijacked train, but more

than 20 passengers and 30 militants are dead. Also in the podcast? This new technology, I think this is a very, very well designed heart. It's got this maglev technology, so the disc is rotating, sort of freely floating and rotating by this magnetic levitation. A patient survives for 100 days with a heart made of titanium. The Russian president tends to steer well clear of the fighting even as he throws hundreds of thousands of his troops into the so-called meat grinder in Ukraine. But in the past few hours footage has been released of Vladimir Putin apparently visiting

a command post in Kursk, the Russian region partly captured by Ukrainian forces last year. I very much expect that all combat tasks will be fulfilled and that the territory of the Kursk will soon be completely liberated from the enemy, said Mr Putin. He was dressed in camouflage gear. The Russian Chief of Staff, General Valeriy Gerasimov, told him Russian forces had now recaptured 86% of the occupied land. Ukraine has acknowledged some setbacks there but said fighting was continuing. Russia's gains come as the US waits for the Kremlin's response to the American ceasefire proposal agreed by Ukraine. So what is the likely thinking in Moscow? I asked Lisa Fox from the BBC Russian service. Previously, Vladimir Putin had said on many occasions that Russia is just not interested in a simple ceasefire and would like to hear more concrete and soulless proposals for a peace settlement. Of course, that would meet

most Russia's terms. But right now, Russia is in a more difficult position that I think it was before this US-Ukraine talks in Eryad because for weeks now we've seen America making demands of Ukraine and of Vladimir Zelensky. And now US is actually asking something from Vladimir Putin, from Russia for the first time in weeks. And it's going to be interesting to see how Russia is going to respond to that. Because it comes at a time when Russia appears to be making advances on the battlefield.

So I guess they may not want to pause. Yes, of course. And most importantly, they've just advanced their position in Kursk region. Now they're slowly gaining ground, losing a lot of soldiers in the process. But I think this is the price that Russia is ready to pay, as Vladimir Putin has indicated over those months and years of fighting. But indeed for Russia right now, just stopping where they are, potentially meaning getting no ground in Ukraine, which was one of the main objectives.

Russia indicated many times that it wants Ukraine to make many more concessions. It wants other countries to recognize Russian sovereignty over the lands that it captured in Ukraine. It wants Ukraine to give up any hope of joining NATO. It wants to see sanctions relief. And I think for Russia, it's just not clear at the moment whether the ceasefire is just going to be connected to this discussion about bigger goals that Russia wants to achieve in Ukraine. Now you said that Russia is in a more difficult position than it's faced for some time. I mean, in terms of what's happened with Donald Trump now apparently moving towards the Ukrainians? What's been the reaction to that in Russia?

I think generally any reaction just just the assessment of this new track in the relationship with Washington DC has been somewhat restrained and Putin himself has been very very cautious He praised Trump for taking this new line in his relationship with Moscow. Vladimir Putin said that it gives hope, but always very cautious in any assessment of whether this new relationship, this dialogue can actually lead to peace. Because I think at the end of the day, even though this relationship is obviously very different from what it was a year ago, I think Russia still sees US as its main rival and the only matching power at the same time.

So this dynamic is obviously very important and it felt for weeks that the situation was playing into Vladimir Putin's hands because all this rhetoric about how Zelensky is a dictator and Ukraine should hold presidential elections and Ukrainians are the one who didn't want peace. We all heard that from President Trump. That was music to Vladimir Putin's ears. But right now the conversation is different. Right now Americans actually praising Ukrainians for their readiness for peace. They announced that they're going to restore this military aid and intelligence cooperation. So now the situation is different again. And I think Russia just doesn't want to make nor Ukrainians nor Americans any wiser about their intentions. So we're definitely

going to see how this situation is going to develop. Lisa Fox from the BBC Russian service. The tensions between the US and its long-time trading partners look set to intensify after President Trump said he would, of course, respond to the tariffs announced by Canada and the EU on Wednesday. They came in retaliation for the new American taxes on all steel and aluminium imports. One of the President's main justifications for tariffs is to tackle the US opioid crisis. Fentanyl has killed a record number of Americans and almost

all of it is smuggled across the border from Mexico. The Mexican authorities have arrested hundreds of cartel members and handed some over to the US but despite the increased pressure on them the gangs say it is business as usual, as Quentin Somerville reports from the Mexican side of the border. So it's just after six at night here in Tijuana. I'm at the headquarters of the state police. The agents are getting ready to go out on patrol. They've got a fleet of pickup trucks and they're all heavily armed. They're wearing body armour and they're all putting balaclavas on at the moment and that's to protect their identity because being a cop in this town is extremely dangerous.

Ready for the action. That's a report that's just come in of gunfire over the police radio. It's a Saturday night here so they're expecting a lot of drunkenness, a lot of drugs. By far the biggest, a lot of drunkenness, a lot of drugs. By far the biggest, most dangerous drug here is fentanyl. So they're looking for anyone who's dealing. So it's another drug stop and the police have, I got the man against the vehicle, he's emptied his pockets. Fentanyl use is a growing problem here in Mexico.

Still, most of it goes across the border to the United States. But the ground is shifting along the border. Mexico has deployed 10,000 troops. Some 29 cartel leaders held by Mexico have been handed over to American law enforcement. And for the first time, a number of cartels have been designated terrorist organizations by the US.

What we're trying to find out is just how so much of this drug is still making it into America. And up here, you might find some answers. We're just approaching a safe house. Inside is one of the foot soldiers of the cartels and a drugs mule. And they're making the final preparations for a fentanyl shipment to the United States tonight. I watch as they place tightly wrapped packets of pills of synthetic opioid, 5,000 in total, inside the fuel tank of the car. It will be driven across a legal border crossing, right under the noses of US Customs. The drugs gang asked us to alter their voices.

Do you ever feel guilty about all the people that it's killing? Yeah, but if I don't do it, anybody's going to do it. I don't feel guilty for all the people, you know. I feel guilty because we have family too, but if I stop, it's going to continue. The cartels know that American traffickers are less likely to be stopped, so they use US citizens mostly to make the drive across the border. Watching the proceedings to one side a dealer from LA. Again, we have changed his voice. How many pills do you shift a week in LA?

I try to get 100,000 pills a week. Every week I try to spread it in different cars. That way I minimize my risk of losing all my pills. I never expected something so deadly to hit the market. People know it's deadly and they're still willing to use that product. Mr. Trump, he's determined to stop the drugs trade. Last time he was in office he tried to do the same thing and never happened. There's always going to be a demand. Where's the biggest demand? The United States. The cartels claim to be unfazed by the latest US threat to destroy them but the Trump

administration says this time is different. But the cartels didn't create America's opioid crisis, one that's been killing as many as a hundred thousand people a year. Those numbers are now falling, but this crisis started with doctors and American pharmaceutical companies overprescribing painkillers. Neighborhoods like Philadelphia's Kensington have been left ravaged. Hey, Mom, you got to pull your pants up. Here, Rosalind Pichardo of Operation Savor City

starts her day by checking on the locals. Oh, she was laid out. It's a drug. Once you take it you're going to fall out wherever. Many here are in wheelchairs and are in the grip of addiction. They have good drugs here and it's cheap so people from all over the country come to get this stuff but they don't know that if you're new and you're trying out this stuff for the first time, it might be the last time. She prepares a pot of soup and shares it with 56-year-old John. He was revived from a near fatal fentanyl overdose by an ambulance crew. It'll take more than just targeting the cartels

to solve America's opioid crisis, he says. Trump is a businessman. Drugs is like prostitution, the oldest profession in the world. You can't stop it there. It's too far. That report from the US and Mexico by Quentin Somerville. The brutal hijacking of a train by separatist fighters in Pakistan, which began on Tuesday,

is now over, according to the military. The army said 33 militants were killed and the remaining hostages freed. The train, carrying 440 passengers, was halted by an explosion on the approach to a tunnel in a remote area of Balochistan province. The army said 21 civilians and four soldiers were killed by the Baloch Liberation Army. Many people are still waiting for news of their loved ones as freed passengers arrive at different railway stations along the train's route. Survivors shared harrowing accounts of the attack. The whole train was filled with smoke.

It looked like the doomsday. We found out that the train was stopped and firing followed after that. And then everyone just ducked to avoid the bullets. There was a sudden blast followed by firing that injured a lot of people. Then slowly the armed militants asked the passengers to get off from the train, otherwise you would get killed. Then they separated the women and the elderly. Then we walked for around three, three and a half hours. We reached the nearest train station with great difficulty." Survivors from that train attack. There have been some questions about the account from

the authorities, as I heard from our South Asia regional editor Anbarisan Etirajan. If you look at the figures given by the Pakistani military the numbers do not add up. You know we're talking about 440 passengers. The suspicion is that many of the militants could have escaped taking some hostages with them and that's why the military spokesperson was saying they're also doing another operation or searching for any of the militants or people who had just simply jumped out of the train and escaped from the militants hiding in the mountains without knowing what to do. So there is some confusion about the numbers.

But it has come as a big relief for the Pakistani military as well as for the government because it was a very embarrassing situation for the military despite having one of the largest military force. Now a group of militants had managed to hijack an entire train. This was an unprecedented move by the Baloch rebels taking hundreds of people hostages. So there will be questions asked how this was allowed to happen but this also shows how the Baloch rebels are increasingly targeting in a higher value targets in the past few months. Now I read that this location was 14 kilometers from the nearest road, lots of mountains around there. What's happened to all the survivors? How have they been able to be taken to safety? This

strategic location itself is a big advantage for the rebels because they knew this was a mountainous area and there were lots of tunnels. Even to send reinforcements would have taken a long time for the military. It would have taken hours. If the nearest road is 14 kilometers, either they should have walked or they should have been air dropped. That's why they used special forces and helicopters and drones targeting these militants. Now what this means for the Pakistani military is it's just already facing another insurgency in the northwest of the country bordering Afghanistan. Now this attack will give more publicity for the rebels. If the military goes against the rebels, if they launch any

strong high-ended military operation that could further alienate the Baloch community in the province and that is the danger. Anbarasan Eti Rajan. It's been called a medical milestone. A man in Australia has lived for 100 days with an artificial titanium heart while awaiting a transplant, the longest ever. Sian Harding is a professor of cardiac pharmacology at Imperial College. This new technology, I think this is a very, very well designed heart. It's got this maglev technology so the disc is rotating, sort of freely floating and rotating by this magnetic

levitation like you'd use for those, the trains, you know, the floating trains in Japan. It doesn't have valves. It's got really clever systems because your heart has to pump through your body. It has a very strong left ventricle to do that and a lighter ventricle to go through your lungs. And that has to happen together with every beat and they've managed to do it. Our Asia Pacific regional editor Celia Hatton spoke about it to Andrew Peach. It's been described as a complete game changer. It's the holy grail of modern medicine, really, a long term artificial replacement

for a failing human heart. Now, the heart itself, this titanium heart, it looks like a shiny silver pump. You can hold it in your hand. It's about twice as heavy as a human heart. But patients who've received them say that they can't feel them once they're in. The heart has to be charged by wires protruding from the chest. It has to be charged every four hours. But its developer says eventually that can be wireless. And it works by whooshing blood around the body into the lungs.

And it's remarkable because it is just a single moving, it has one single moving part, a levitated rotor that floats in place by magnets. So it doesn't have any parts that can kind of rub against each other and cause wear and tear and that's why doctors are so excited about it. That's the key here isn't it because although this sort of idea has been around for decades the technology wears out over time and often that causes real problems for the patient's health later in life. In this specific case we're talking about someone who's lived for a very long time now with one of these things. Yeah, this is a man who had severe heart failure and was waiting a heart transplant that just wasn't coming. And he couldn't even stand or walk by the time that he opted to get this

titanium heart. He existed in hospital for a few months with it and that he was discharged from hospital. And that's crucial. He's the first patient to ever exist outside of hospital without this heart. He lived for a month outside of hospital until a human heart transplant became available. He's now successfully had a human heart transplant. Five others in the United States have also existed with this titanium heart but they had to live in hospital until they then too went on to have human heart transplants. But doctors say this titanium heart is working so well that it might one day replace the need for human heart transplants and that could change lives for thousands of people. Because waiting for a human transplant is often, you know, months or years may never happen.

That's right. I mean, just in the United States alone, there's more than 4,000 people on the heart transplant donor list, and some people will never be able to get that heart donation. And so the idea of being able to get this titanium heart that could go in your body and you could have it for the rest of your life, it would never have to be replaced, that really is a medical first. and that's why doctors are saying this could be a total game changer. Celia Hatton And still to come on the Global News Podcast.

If a city can see that they're in a climate change pattern that produces these whiplash effects, then it provides enough insight and information to try and begin to adapt to these things. How a climate research project could help cities prepare for extreme temperature swings. The former president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, is in the custody of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He was detained on an ICC arrest warrant in connection with his war on drugs and flown from Manila to the Netherlands. More than 6,000 drug dealers and others were killed during Mr Duterte's tenure between

2016 and 2022. Anna Hologun spoke to us from the detention facility. So he's being checked into to the detention facilities here in The Hague. I'm standing outside now. He will spend his nights in a private cell. During the day he'll have access to a common room, a library, leisure facilities and of course lawyers and doctors. So we expect to see Rodrigo Duterte in public again in court for an initial appearance. That could happen within a matter of days.

I've been covering these courts for more than a decade now. And, you know, international justice moves notoriously slowly. I have never seen it move this fast. An arrest warrant from the ICC has been executed, the suspect extradited, all within a matter of days but things will start to slow down now. So the prosecution put together a portfolio of evidence that was enough to convince the judges at the ICC that there were reasonable grounds to believe that the former Philippines president had committed crimes,

including murder, as part of the war on drugs. But that evidentiary bar is lower than that required to secure a conviction. So now the prosecution will be continuing to gather evidence from witnesses and various other sources in order to put together what they hope will be a comprehensive body of evidence to convince the judges that he is indeed guilty as charged. But that will take some time and bearing in mind a lot of this will have to be translated. So an initial appearance probably within days but then it could be months or even a year before any trial actually gets underway.

And a Hologram in the Hague. It's seen as a major setback for Europe's push for green energy and electric vehicles. The Swedish battery pioneer Northvolt has filed for bankruptcy after being plagued by financial problems. Stephanie Zachrisson has this report. Here's what we offer. The opportunity to grow as a person. Taking pride in making the world's greenest batteries. It began with a vision to develop sustainable Europe-based battery production

and help cut the continent's dependence on oil and reliance on imported batteries. That big dream and promises to revolutionise the automotive and energy industries inspired investors to line up, offering billions of dollars to get the project off the ground. The construction of a large-scale factory began in northern Sweden's Köläftor, where the rivers flowing to the Baltic Sea provided an abundance of hydropower electricity to run the plants. The flagship production site opened its doors in 2022. At the same time the company was already scaling up, fast. It began planning and construction of more mega factories in Sweden, Germany and Canada. But it wasn't keeping up with demand, struggling

to produce the vast amounts of battery cells it had promised its customers and investors. And while China, the market leader in electric batteries, was able to undercut Northworld's prices, the company kept racking up debt. After starting a restructuring process in the US last year and laying off staff in Sweden, Northvolt's interim chairman Tom Johnstone today announced it had filed for bankruptcy. Clearly this is not an outcome we had hoped for. It's one which turns counter to prevailing industrial sentiments in Europe, sentiments which have been with Northvolt since it was founded. These sentiments include the drive for European battery sovereignty and aspirations to deliver sustainable solutions to support the energy transition. Just 3% of global battery cell production currently takes place in Europe,

according to the consultancy firm McKinsey, with Asian firms leading the market. So what does North-Moritz Downfall mean for those dreams of homegrown and sustainable alternatives? Here's Sweden's Prime Minister Ulf Kristarsson. The green transition will continue. I'm absolutely convinced of that. It would of course be great to have battery production capacity in Europe as well, not to be completely dependent, especially on Chinese production. But it also has to be viable and it has to be profitable. I think there are good opportunities, but it is hard. And that report by Stephanie Zachrisson. New research has found that the world's 100 most populated cities are becoming increasingly exposed to extreme weather swings, with disasters

up by 400% over the past half century. Commissioned by the charity Water Aid, the study indicates that southern Asian cities are shifting towards a more extreme wet climate, while European and Middle Eastern cities are more prone to droughts. It said cities across Africa and Asia emerged as the most at risk. Katarina Michaelides, Professor of Dryland Hydrology at the University of Bristol co-authored the report and spoke to Tim Franks about its findings. Basically our research shows how climate has been changing over the last four decades in

the hundred most populated cities in the world. That amounts to just under 20% of the global population and it considers the implications for water security. We analyzed this through a monthly index of wetting and drying and from that we derived specific metrics that tell us important information about how climate hazards such as flooding and drought are changing over time. And when we look at that over these 100 cities, we find that climate is changing dramatically around the world, but in different ways. So some of the ways are this whiplash effect, which is basically an intensification

of both extreme dry and extreme wet periods. Around 15% of our cities are in this pattern of climate whiplash. So places like East Africa, Southern United States, China, Australia, Middle East. And this is quite an important phenomenon because, in a sense, the way that people are battered between two extremes, you either have too much water or not enough water. And that whiplash between these two extremes presents huge challenges for people, for cities. And the context of the city here is particularly

important because these urban centres are constrained by their existing infrastructure. How far is this phenomenon being fuelled by the very fact that you're seeing greater heat and then greater amounts of wet? So global atmospheric warming is definitely a key factor in this. As global temperatures are rising, the atmosphere can hold more moisture in it. So on the one hand, what that means is it has capacity to remove more moisture from the surface of the earth. So in cases where that's happening a lot, that's causing extreme drying. That moisture then in the atmosphere is being moved around the world through global patterns

of winds and the place which receives all that moisture is then experiencing that intense wetting. Is it also the case that the poorer the city, the more exposed it is? Because it's just less likely to have the infrastructure that can cope. Absolutely. So there's two factors underlying the ability of a city

to be resilient to these extreme climatic episodes. One is the underlying socioeconomic status and the infrastructure capability. So when we combine these extreme climatic changes with the underlying infrastructure and social vulnerability, we see some hotspots emerging around the world. And these are cities in South and Southeast Asia, specifically Pakistan and India, as well as countries in East Africa and the Middle East. Katarina Michaelidis of the University of Bristol. Spotify has revealed it broke a record last year for the highest annual payout to the music industry. According to a new report, the streaming platform paid $10 billion in royalties in 2024. That's 10 times greater than a decade before. Our media and arts correspondent David Silito has the details.

This is David O, born in America, raised in Nigeria. An Afrobeat artist with nearly 8 million monthly listeners on Spotify. The streamer's latest report suggests he will be one of more than 1500 artists performing in 17 languages whose music made more than a million dollars last year on the platform. Streaming it says is making success in the music industry open to a much wider and more global array of stars. And that $10 billion of revenue for the global music industry is hugely important, up around

a billion on the previous year, as the service continues to grow. Spotify says it's now about a quarter of global income for recorded music. But there are many buts. A recent report into streaming concluded only around 16% of that money actually made it to the artists, the rest going to labels, distributors and other intermediaries. But Spotify says it pays rights holders and they can't control how much money those rights holders then give to the artists they represent. And while Spotify boasts that 100,000 artists made more than $6,000 last year, it's worth remembering there are 12 million artists on Spotify, so that's less than 1% of the total. David Silito.

Now, apologies if you've heard this already, but a reminder that we're hoping to record a Q&A podcast about space weather. But to do so, we need your questions. And in case you're wondering exactly what space weather is, here's a reminder from our weather presenter, Simon King. In its very simple definition, it refers to the changing environmental conditions on Earth created by solar activity. Now the beautiful side of space weather is one that we'll all be familiar with and that's

the Northern Lights or the Aurora Borealis. But space weather is actually also really important for security because we can get these geomagnetic storms that can impact spacecraft, it can interrupt with our satellites and how much do we rely on now on our smartphones and a big geomagnetic storm can actually wipe all that out. So if there's anything you'd like to know about space weather please email globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk or find us on x at bbc world service using the hashtag global news pod and it will be great if you could record your question as a voice note thanks and that is all from us for now but there'll be a new

edition of the global news podcast very soon. This one was mixed by Pat Sissons and produced by Stephanie Tillotson, our editors Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye.