Global News Podcast - Russia and Ukraine hold brief talks despite heavy drone attacks

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

Russia and Ukraine wrap up a brief round of peace talks - after Ukraine launched an attack on Russian airbases. Also: why Britain is moving to war readiness, and the world's largest digital camera capturing the cosmos.

You're listening to the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 13 Hours GMT on Monday the 2nd of June. Russia and Ukraine hold direct talks in Istanbul, a day after an audacious Ukrainian attack on Russian air bases. More money for nuclear weapons and submarines, why Britain is moving to war readiness and how exercise can boost survival rates for people with colon cancer. Also in the podcast... She had also left hospital despite concerns from medical staff about remaining in hospital

because of the four guests at her lunch who had fallen ill very quickly because of what we now know are toxic mushrooms. The defendant in the mushroom murder trial takes the stand. Officials from Russia and Ukraine have held talks in the Turkish city of Istanbul, their second set of direct negotiations in a matter of weeks. The meeting went ahead despite Russia's biggest drone attack of the war two nights ago and Ukraine's audacious strike on Russian air bases on Sunday. Ukraine says Operation Spider's Web took more than a year and a half to plan. Hundreds of drones were smuggled into Russia and launched remotely from inside the roofs of wooden sheds carried by lorries.

They targeted air bases across Russia, some as much as 4,000 kilometres from the border. Ukraine says it hit 41 planes, but it's not known how many were destroyed. Ukrainian government adviser Yuri Sak said it was a show of strength for the world. We're hearing even sometimes from our partners their doubts, you know, they say we don't have any cards, so we have just shown that we do have cards and we've always knew that, you know, this is a battle of David against Goliath, this war, right, Ukraine is much smaller, we have fewer resources, we have fewer manpower, but at the same time we always think about this war in terms of this having to be a smart

war. So we're showing how our ingenuity can result in balancing out this disproportion that we have in terms of our size and resources. But can the talks in Turkey make any progress? I asked our diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams in Kyiv. I don't think expectations are terribly high. Listeners may recall that the two sides met in Istanbul fairly recently and all they were able to agree was a very substantial prisoner exchange and an agreement to hold further talks. The Ukrainians have been waiting rather impatiently for the Russians to submit a memorandum outlining their conditions for these talks.

That has not appeared, certainly not in public anyway. And so it's not quite clear what exactly the Russians are coming to Istanbul to discuss. As far as we can make out, Russia's terms for a deal with Ukraine remain what, as they have always been a kind of effective capitulation on the part of the government here. So expectations are low, but of course the atmosphere is rather different in the wake not so much of Russian

attacks which have continued pretty much as they have been for months now, albeit at a heightened level recently. But the Ukrainian attack deep inside Russia has definitely altered the mood. Essentially, what Ukraine has done is to say not just to the Russians, but also, perhaps crucially, to Donald Trump, that if you think Ukraine is somehow losing the war, then here is evidence that Ukraine is still able to deliver astonishingly ambitious military operations deep inside Russia. Yeah, I mean it appears to have been very successful for the Ukrainians, but at the same time Russia continues to advance little bit by bit in the north-east and

the east of Ukraine. It does, though you know if you look at the pace of Russian advances, it is in one sense inexorable, but in another sense it is glacial. At this rate it would take Russia a very long time, many, many, many years to conquer Ukraine or even, frankly, to exert Russian control over the four areas of Ukraine that it has already claimed to have annexed. So it has been a very much a kind of one-way process of gradual Russian advances. But it is so slow that I think Ukraine still feels that it can absorb this while concentrating on these very high profile, extremely damaging attacks.

Paul Adams in Kiev. Well in the past few minutes the Interfax news agency has reported that the talks have finished and lasted about an hour. A statement from Ukrainian officials said they had put forward three points. One, a full and comprehensive ceasefire lasting 30 days or more. Two, humanitarian issues, the return of prisoners of war and deported children. And three, a meeting between the two leaders. Well regardless of the outcome of that meeting in Istanbul, the threat of Russia cannot be ignored, so says the British Prime Minister Kirstama. The UK government is today announcing plans to spend billions on nuclear weapons and up to 12 new submarines.

We need to prepare. We've seen what's happened in Ukraine, something I think all of us thought we wouldn't really see in our lifetimes, the invasion of a European country. Russia has shown in recent weeks that it's not serious about peace and we have to be ready. Well I asked our political correspondent Rob Watson exactly how Britain planned to be ready. So in the short term what it's doing is to try and increase pay and conditions for those serving in the British Armed Forces because they're at a historic low. It's something like 70,000, 72,000 people, never been that low and more people are leaving the army than joining. So that's the short term. In the longer term, it's things like building munitions, factories, researching and developing Britain's domestic

nuclear deterrent, having more submarines, having more frigates, but all of that, of course, in the medium to longer term. Yeah, I'm not sure Vladimir Putin will be quaking in his boots at the thoughts that British soldiers could get better pay and conditions. Will they send a message to Moscow as the UK government has said? It's a very good question. I mean, I suppose yes in the sense that what this defence review does is quite clearly

identify Russia as the predominant concern of Britain and along with that, of course, other European countries. So to that extent, they're sending out a clear message. I mean, of course, what the Russians would say is, look, you've treated us as an enemy these last 10, 20, 30 years anyway, and may sort of shrug in that sense. As to what Britain's partners will think, well, of course, the United States would want the UK to spend more, it's not committing to spending the three and a half percent that NATO is aiming for and the US would want and similarly NATO allies will think, yeah Britain could be spending more, although they themselves have these constraints so they will be

understanding and no doubt diplomatic in what they say Oliver. Yeah let's look at those constraints. Can the UK afford this and do voters want money spent on defence? It's a cracking question. I mean of course that the voters, the polling suggests Oliver that they want everything right? That's what the voters are like. They would love more to be spent on defence but they would also love more to be spent on schools, on education, on welfare for the elderly and the sick. And in many ways, what's happened today with this rather modest increase in defence spending and a sort of evolution rather than a revolution in Britain's defence posture, it really tells you something about the constraints

that having a stagnant, stagnating economy which Britain has had really since 2008 put on both your ability as a country to make foreign and defense policy but also your ability to make domestic policy and that of course is one of the reasons why this government is unpopular just like the one before it was unpopular and the one before that Oliver. Rob Watson. In Russia speaking out against the war in Ukraine can have serious consequences. People who are reported to the authorities face being sacked, fined or even jailed. A mysterious informer known as Anna Korobkova gained notoriety for denouncing hundreds of people.

But then one of her victims began an investigation to expose her real identity. Albina Kovaleva from BBC Eye Investigations has the details. In the autumn of 2022, Alexander Archipova discovered that somebody had written to her university in Moscow to demand she be fired. It was a letter addressed to the rector of where I worked. The letter was very long. This is to inform you of an immoral act by your employee Alexander Archipova. Your employee broke the law by discrediting the Russian army. The accusations stemmed from an appearance the social anthropologist had made on TV Reign, an independent Russian channel which broadcasts from the Netherlands and which is regarded as a foreign agent by the Kremlin.

The letter came from a serial informer called Anna Korobkova. Nobody had met Korobkova or knew what she looked like. But in emails to the BBC, Korobkova claimed to have reported hundreds of her fellow Russians. I keep a list of the results of my denunciations. How many people are fired and how many are fined. I do not feel any pangs of conscience because a person is fired, fined or otherwise punished. On the contrary, I feel joy.

Arhipova had gone into exile in France. From there she set about trying to discover her accuser's real identity. Over two years she collected 74 denouncements and threats written by Koropkova. And with the help of a linguistic expert she identified patterns in the wordings. Koropkova's Wikipedia page also provided vital clues. It contained photographs of replies the security services had sent to her denunciations. Metadata attached to the pictures showed they were taken with a rare model of Panasonic camera. Further analysis revealed only one person in Russia had uploaded pictures taken with this model of camera to Wikipedia. A history graduate called

Ivan Abaturov. Korobkova was actually a man. After Archipova exposed his identity online, Abaturov posted a denial on social media. I didn't write these reports. Artificial intelligence can easily imitate anyone. That anthropologist is using this story about me to secure funding. But Arhipova says his denial only added to the weight of evidence against him. It is all written in the same formulas over the same linguistic mistakes. The more Abaturov wrote, the more like Karapkova he became. While Arhipova is certain she's unmasked her accuser, she believes it's not safe for

her and others like her to return to Russia. Albina Kovalyova of BBC i Investigations After initially trailing in the exit poll, nationalist historian Karol Nowrotsky has won the presidential election in Poland. When the official results came in, the amateur boxer had beaten the pro-EU candidate by a margin of more than one and a half percent. It is a major setback for the Polish government's pro-EU agenda. Mr. Nawrodzki was supported by Poland's right-wing law and

justice party as well as Donald Trump. Krzysztof Izdebski is from the Polish pro-democracy group The Battery Foundation. Definitely Trump will have more to say in the Polish politics. The law and justice, the political camp of Karol Noworowski will be also cooperating much more with Trump saying that in two years they will take over the power. So I think it's a good empowering of the whole MAGA project in the Central and Eastern Europe as well. Mr. Nowrowski is still expected to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia but he's previously said that benefits for Ukrainian refugees in Poland should be cut. Our Warsaw correspondent Adam Easton told me more about reaction in Poland.

Mr. Nawrocki's supporters of the Conservative opposition law and justice party are gloating, especially because Mr. Czaskowski, Warsaw's Liberal Mayor, claimed victory when that first exit poll was published immediately upon the end of voting on Sunday evening. So he's got egg on his face and they are rubbing his nose to mix my metaphors in the dirt with that victory exclamation. So there is bewilderment, surprise and unease on the side of the coalition government, which is led by the former head of the European Council, Donald Tusk.

They thought that their man, a deputy leader of their party, the mayor, was going to win and cement Poland's place in the European mainstream, specifically strong relations with Germany and France, but now we've got continued conflict Between the government and the president because mr. Navrotsky is a nationalist conservative He's probably more nationalist than the incumbent conservative and Jay Duda and he will Undoubtedly use the important power that he has because it's a largely ceremonial role the presidency in Poland but he has an important power to veto a planned legislation bills put forward by the government and during the last 18 months

Donald Tusk's popularity has faded somewhat because he's had a president who's blocked his agenda and he's not been able to actually introduce or deliver on any many of his key campaign promises from 18 months ago and that will continue polls have decided they want to check on Donald Tusk's government and they've elected Carol Navarrochki who is as I say will be a more of a tough opponent probably than even Mr. Duda was to Donald Tusk and that will certainly impact his chances when parliamentary elections are due in two years but they may even come sooner if Mr. Tusk decides that he cannot govern effectively

with a president who would potentially block all of his initiatives. Mr. Naroczki does support helping, but not necessarily Ukrainians in Poland. Well, yeah, there's a couple of nuances here. He is more skeptical about Ukraine's place in NATO and EU. He said he doesn't support it, unlike Mr Tusk, because with the ongoing war in aggression, Russian aggression in Ukraine is too dangerous for Poland, he believes, and as you mentioned, he's against extending any sort of social welfare benefits and generous support for the million Ukrainian refugees and another additional million Ukrainians who live in Poland now.

Adam Easton in Warsaw. A new trial has found that exercise can boost the survival rates of people with colon cancer by more than a third and cut the chances of it coming back. The research, led by teams in Northern Ireland and Canada, involved almost 900 people from six countries. All the colon cancer patients had had surgery and chemotherapy and were deemed well enough to exercise but were not doing the recommended amount of physical activity. Professor Vicky Cole from Queen's University Belfast was the UK lead researcher.

The good news is it's not a large amount of exercise. We were aiming to get patients who hadn't necessarily exercised before to at least twice the Department of Health recommendations for all of us, so for general health recommendations. And that works out at around 45 to 60 minutes of brisk walking, three or four times a week, so, or 25 to 30 minutes of jogging. So that's the kind of exercise levels that would get you there. But any exercise content, so any purposeful exercise done in bites of at least 10 minutes at a stretch counted.

So we have patients doing things like walking, cycling, swimming, salsa classes. So it was really what suited the patient, what worked for them and what ensured they hit their exercise goals for each phase of the program. And I suppose a bit of a mind shift, isn't it? It's about thinking as treatment as something you can do, not just something you take. So there are plausible biological reasons why exercise might have a beneficial effect, effects on inflammation, on the immune system, on hormones and chemicals that are released by the gut. We are going to investigate that further within this research.

So the serial blood samples have been taken by patients who took part in the trial and we will analyse those to try and understand better the reason why we saw this effect. Professor Vicky Cole. And still to come on the Global News Podcast. So Rubin is going to discover millions of asteroids and comets, so four times more than what we know that has been discovered by previous telescopes at Tunal. How the largest digital camera ever built will help scientists map the cosmos. Police in the US state of Colorado are questioning a man after members of a Jewish group were attacked with homemade incendiary devices in the city of Boulder. The campaigners had

been on their weekly rally for Israeli hostages in Gaza. Eight people were injured, at least one critically. Alex Asante saw what happened. It was very strange to just hear a crash on the ground of a bottle breaking and then sounded like a boom. And then people started yelling and screaming. But I saw fire. I saw people falling and screaming and crying and tripping.

And I saw the attacker. He had three Molokov cocktails, one of them he threw inside of a group at the group and one lady lit on fire from head to toe. Mark Michelek from the FBI said the authorities were in no doubt about the nature of the attack. This attack happened at a regularly scheduled weekly peaceful event. Witnesses are reporting that the subject used a makeshift flamethrower and threw an incendiary device into the crowd. The suspect was heard to yell, free Palestine, during the attack. As a result of these preliminary facts, it is clear that this is a targeted act of violence and the FBI

is investigating this as an act of terrorism. Olivia Prensil, a reporter of the Colorado Sun, has been following the story. We know that several members of a group gathering to raise awareness about people taken hostage during the Hamas. During Hamas' 2023 attack on Israel, they were set on fire after a man used a makeshift flamethrower to hurl incendiary device at demonstrators. Police did arrest the man. His name is Mohamed Solomon, age 45. He bought the scene. What they saw was this man who was standing at the courthouse as these demonstrators had, as they arrived, and he was holding these bottles that were filled with clear liquid. The FBI and the police who have been giving us updates

about the situation, they haven't identified exactly what that was. And I know that they are investigating and we'll see if more information is released. But from videos posted on social media, it looked like these spray bottles with just some liquid inside. And is it the assumption of the authorities that the individuals who were attacked were specifically targeted? The governor of Colorado, Jared Polis, is calling this an act of terror. The Anti-Defamation League has called this a targeted attack as well. This was a group of people with a group called Run for Their Lives. They have been walking every Sunday since the fall of 2023.

They call it a peaceful walk and they are raising awareness about Israelis taking into hostage and I believe that is why they are calling this a targeted attack. And what do we know of the suspect then of Mohammed Sabri Solomon, this 45 year old who's been arrested? There's very little information that we know at this moment about this man. He was in these videos he was seen pacing back and forth behind many injured people in front of the courthouse. He was not wearing a shirt and he was yelling. I expect authorities to release more information in the coming days but right now it's very limited.

Olivier Prensel talking to Rob Young. Mpox is a deadly viral disease related to smallpox and it appears in the form of fever and lesions on the skin. Sierra Leone has called for international help to curb its spread as cases there continue to rise. A week ago just over 3,000 incidents of Mpox had been recorded but at the weekend more than 300 new cases were announced. Other African countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo, have also seen outbreaks.

Victoria Owen-Kunder spoke to the head of the Africa Centre for Disease Control Prevention, Dr Jean Kassea. Today, Sierra Leone. We see in Sierra Leone this huge increase that is also affecting other countries like Togo and Ghana. So what's behind this increase, this rise in the numbers of cases? First, we need to talk about the weakness of the health system. It means the surveillance system is not what we would expect to see in Africa today. Second, we need to talk about lack of commodities, vaccines, medicines and diagnostics, because we were unable to contain this outbreak in Sierra Leone due to lack of vaccines. And we need also to talk about health facilities

that are overwhelmed today because the bed occupancy is more than 200%. All of these factors are explaining why we have this huge outbreak in Sierra Leone. You talk of a weakness in health systems, you talk about lack of vaccines, so what kind of support is the CDC offering to these countries? We are glad to say that we have dialogue with the high-level political authorities in Sierra Leone and Africa CDC already deployed a number of epidemiologists and people with some other skills like laboratory and to support the community health program. We are also provide appropriate support for vaccines.

We already sent some doses of vaccines in Sierra Leone, but it's not enough. We are looking for solutions to aid because we received a request, additional request from the Ministry of Health. We are supporting the surveillance system and we are also supporting the laboratory system. I think we are providing a comprehensive support to stop this out work in Sierra Leone. Dr Jean Kaseya. The alleged mushroom murderer has taken the stand for the first time in her trial in Australia,

a trial that has attracted interest from around the world. Erin Patterson is accused of killing three of her estranged husband's elderly relatives by inviting them for lunch and giving them a beef wellington laced with poisonous death cap mushrooms. She denies the charges. The prosecution rested its case today and Erin Patterson then began giving evidence in her defence, as I heard from our Australia correspondent Katie Watson. She started off detailing her relationship with her estranged husband Simon Patterson and her children. She talked about the fact that in 2023, in the months leading up to the lunch,

there had been increasing distance between her and Don and Gail who were her estranged in-laws. And she got the feeling that Simon Patterson didn't want her to be as involved with his family. And she also talked about the fact that she described herself as a fundamentalist atheist when they met that she had tried to convert him and in the end she turned to religion and that's something that we've seen throughout the trial, the importance of religion in the family's

life. But she spoke for what, less than an hour and she'll be back in on Tuesday. Yeah, very important moment for her in the trial. How did she appear? So she appeared very confident. The only point that she got quite emotional was when she was recounting the birth of her first child and she was talking about the fact that it had been a very traumatic birth and it ended up in a caesarean section. And she also talked about the fact that her son's condition had improved, that she had been told to stay in hospital because they didn't feel that she had healed sufficiently,

but she had spoken to Simon Patterson and been very concerned about being in hospital alone. She wanted to go home. So she did actually leave hospital against medical advice. And this is something that has come up in the trial previously questioning about the fact that she after the fateful lunch back in July 2023 she had had a dislike of hospitals and she had also left hospital despite concerns from medical staff about remaining in hospital of course because of the four guests at her lunch who had fallen ill very quickly because of what we now know as toxic mushrooms. And do we have any idea of what strategy her defence will use? Her defence have said that it was a terrible accident, it was a tragedy. At the beginning and the opening of the trial, the prosecution first set out its case saying that there may not be a motive, that is not necessary to convict anybody of murder. Her defence has said that this was a terrible accident,

this was a tragedy, that she loved her in-laws. They did admit though that she had lied on several occasions to police so that was very much the line that her defence team was going down. Katie Watson in Australia. It is the largest digital camera ever built. Installed at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory high in the mountains in Chile, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, or LSST, camera is expected to transform our view of space. Scientists from around the world hope to use it to map the cosmos.

The BBC's Laura Goodwin went to meet one of those scientists, Dr. Cérelle Opitom from the University of Edinburgh. One of the very peculiarities of rubin is that it's going to come back to the same patch of the sky every few days. And so what we can do is compare images taken that day to one taken a few days before and see if anything changes. And so rubin is going to have unprecedented ability to tell us what goes spank in the night. So what are you most excited about getting from the Rubin Observatory? I'm excited about what it's going to tell us about our own solar system, so a little bit closer to home.

So Rubin is going to discover millions of asteroids and comets, so four times more than what we know that has been discovered by previous telescopes up to now. It's going to be extremely interesting because it's also going to give us some information about their colours or their change over time and so it's going to really help us build our understanding of our solar system. In a way this will be the equivalent of a neighborhood watch but on a gigantic universal scale. The data collected from the Rubin Observatory promises to change how we see the universe and hopes to uncover mysteries surrounding dark matter and dark energy, secrets of our

skies that will be eagerly anticipated back here on Earth. Our report by Laura Goodwin. And that is all from us for now, but the Global News podcast will be back very soon. This edition was mixed by Alana Boles and produced by Richard Hamilton, our editor's Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye.