Global News Podcast - Russia says Ukraine has launched long-range American missiles into its territory

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

Russia says Ukraine attacked Bryansk region with US missiles, after restrictions on them were lifted. Also, long jail terms for pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, and 40 years of searching for extraterrestrial life.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Watch other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad free. Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Andrew Peach and at 14 Hours GMT on Tuesday 19th November these are our main stories. Moscow says Ukraine has launched long-range American missiles into Russian territory. Lengthy jail terms are handed down by a court in Hong Kong to 45 pro-democracy activists. And more clashes in Georgia between the police and opposition protesters who believe last month's elections were stolen. Also in this podcast...

We are thinking about life in the universe as if aliens were thinking like us, building the same things as we are. What have we learned after decades of searching for extraterrestrial life? after decades of searching for extraterrestrial life. First to Russia, where the government in Moscow says a Ukrainian attack on the region of Bryansk was carried out with long-range American missiles. The first time Ukraine has fired these long-range weapons across the border since President Biden reversed his ban on doing so. Our Europe regional editor, Danny Aberhard, told me more. Well, the Russian Ministry of Defence says that six American-made Atacom's missiles were fired

and five of those, it said, were shot down and fragments of a sixth fell on a military facility causing a fire which, it said, was quickly put out. They reacted with amazing speed. Usually these incidents, the Russian Ministry of Defence does not really comment at all or if it does it comes much later. It's intriguing and what's happened on the Ukrainian side, the Ukrainian side officially has not attributed it to a use of attack missiles. The Ukrainian general staff said that a ammunition warehouse in Bryansk near a town called Karachev was hit but it

didn't say what weapons it used but Ukrainian media say speaking to military sources in Kiev have said that attackers missiles were indeed used so everything is pointing that direction at the moment. Ukraine's wanted to be able to do this for two years and the Biden administration changed its mind about it in the last few days. Will we be sensible to expect more attacks of this sort, that being the case? Well, we certainly would if it is indeed confirmed between now and the time that President Trump is inaugurated on the 20th of January. But it's a highly contentious area. Russia has

warned against this. It's promised a tangible response where such attacks to be carried out. And today, President Putin of Russia has signed a pre-agreed change in Russia's nuclear doctrine, which would mean that a non-nuclear state being assisted by a nuclear state in an attack on Russia, that would be considered a joint attack. Our Europe regional editor Danny Eberhardt.

The missile attack comes as Ukraine marks a thousand days since Russia started its full-scale invasion. President Zelensky praised the resilience of his people and said they'd never submit to Russian aggression. On Tuesday he addressed the European Parliament via video link from Kyiv. Together, Ukraine, all of Europe and our partners in America and around the world, we have succeeded not only in preventing Putin from taking Ukraine but also in defending the freedom of all European nations. Even with North Korea's Kim Jong-un, but by his side Putin remains smaller than the United States of Europe. Among the worst affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine are children of school age experiencing displacement and disrupted education. Millions of Ukrainians fled the country with around a million ending up in neighbouring Poland.

In the early days of the invasion, a school was set up in Warsaw to help Ukrainian children adjust to life in a new country. And two and a half years on, it's still going. My colleague Anastasia Gibronova of BBC Ukraine has been talking to children, parents and teachers there. Ukraine has been talking to children, parents and teachers there. It's early morning and 16-year-old Victoria is getting ready for school here in Warsaw. Two and a half years ago, Victoria fled the war in Ukraine with her mother, sister and pets. For Victoria's mother Alina, daily pominings of their home city of Kharkiv had become too

much. She made the decision to take her family to Poland, a country which gave refuge to a huge number of Ukrainians. We thought we'd return to our home city Kharkiv in three days. Then we realized things were going from bad to worse there. One major task for Alina was finding the right school for Victoria. Three weeks later we discovered that a Ukrainian school was opening in Warsaw. At first, the kids were in tears.

They wanted to go back home to their friends. They didn't want to go to school here. But now, Victoria enjoys her new school. We study in two educational systems with Polish and Ukrainian programs. We have classes in two languages in almost all subjects, and when we graduate we will get both Polish and Ukrainian certificates. The school was set up by Polish NGOs to help Ukrainian refugees. There are 300 students here now and around 30 teachers. Many pupils are living with trauma, says the school's

psychologist Natalia Karapata. Our children used to react to sudden sounds. There is a tram line nearby and they would duck under their desks. Or they would wear their gloves and hats and during break would keep their rucksacks on their backs, worrying they would need to run and take cover. A survey by an international NGO Save the Children found that nine out of ten Ukrainian children suffer from psychological and emotional stress. Over 70 percent feel unsafe or fearful. Save the Children is one of the agencies supporting the Ukrainian school in Warsaw.

Bujar Hoxha is response director for Save the Children in Poland. The highest influx of refugees since World War II ended. The needs are massive. Ukraine, unfortunately, despite the war, despite the victims, despite the families that are fleeing every day at the border,'s becoming one of those forgotten crises. The school's future is far from certain. Principal Oksana Kolesnik says it costs close to two million dollars a year to run. If there is no money, it will be a very painful blow to our community, because without financial

support the school cannot survive. According to the UN, 10 million people have left Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion, many of them women and children. For now, there is no end in sight for this war, but some of these children dream of going back home one day. I really love life in Europe, but I don't feel home. I can feel home now in Ukraine too because I live a lot of time in Poland. I'm divided between countries.

But I want to go back, I want to rebuild Ukraine, I want to help my country. That report was from Anastasia Gibradova. While the world is watching Russia's war against Ukraine and especially the missile and drone attacks on civilian infrastructure which have left people without power or clean water, the BBC has discovered similar attacks being carried out by Turkey in its conflict with the Kurds, specifically in the Kurdish-controlled regions

of Syria. Repeated airstrikes that have cut off access to water and electricity for more than a million people, creating a humanitarian crisis and possibly violating international law. Namak Koshnal reports. With large blue barrels in their hands, a group of women crowd around the water tanker. It's the first delivery of water to their neighborhood for days, and it's their only source of water. Fatima Zamin is the council worker who organized today's delivery. We delivered one tanker here and we gave them water. The children, the women, they're very happy. But this area is just a drop in an ocean of misery.

That's because the whole of this city, Hasaka, has no running water. Its one million residents rely on a fleet of tankers to bring water to them from nearby wells. Ahmed Alhamad is one of the tanker drivers. I can't cope with the demand, but I'm trying to help people. People need more water because the weather is very hot, but they can't get enough water. Here, water is more precious than gold.

The water crisis here has two main drivers. First, climate change has caused years of drought, but then conflict made things worse. In recent years, Turkey has been bombing this part of Syria. They accused a Kurdish militant group called the PKK of operating out of the region, fighting against the Turkish government. In October 2023 and January 2024, Turkey bombed the main power station providing electricity to the region. This impacted the water plant supply in Hasaka, and the city's water has been completely cut

off since. Here is council worker Fatima Zamin again. When the Turkish government attacked our electricity facilities, it dealt a fatal blow to us. Electricity plays a big role in the extraction of water. This attack is an assault on the civilian population. BBCI analyzed data relating to 100 attacks between 2019 and 2024. We have verified that multiple Turkish attacks damaged oil fields, gas facilities and power stations in Northeast Syria. We showed our

findings to legal experts. Here's Christopher Giles from our investigations team. We took this to two international human rights lawyers and they reviewed this evidence and they told us that the Turkish actions in northeast Syria may constitute a violation of international law. One of our lawyers said that the indications that international law may have been violated is so strong that they should be investigated by a court. We put our findings to the Turkish government. They told us that they have a right of self-defence against the PKK, that they observe international humanitarian law and that civilian safety

is their main priority. For now, the civilians of Hasaka continue their daily struggle to get the water they need to survive. That was Namaq Koshnoor of the BBCI investigations team. Next to Hong Kong were a court of sentence 45 pro-democracy activists to prison terms of up to 10 years. Their trial marks the largest use of the harsh national security law which China imposed on Hong Kong shortly after pro-democracy protests in 2019. In response, a spokesperson for the

Chinese Foreign Ministry said no one should be allowed to use democracy as a pretext to escape the law. Nathan Law is one of the leading pro-democracy figures who now lives abroad. This really shows how severe the political crackdowns and political suppression is in Hong Kong and Hong Kong has become a strange place for many people. It's barely recognisable with that news. We marched down to the street, we helped protest together. Joshua Wong, one of the most iconic young activists in Hong Kong. We worked together for many many years. We were both student leaders in the umbrella movement in 2014. He helped me get elected in 2016 and then we went to jail together in 2017. So we've been through a lot.

I asked our Asia Pacific editor Celia Hatton what the 45 activists had actually done. You have to go back to July 2020, so about a year after we saw those huge street protests that you referred to before. And that's when the pro-democracy camp decided to really start to get organised. And they organised unofficial primary elections. They wanted to join forces and choose the best pro-democracy candidates to run in legislative elections that were scheduled for later that year. Now, they were warned by the authorities that a law that had been put in place just two weeks before these unofficial primaries

meant that these unofficial elections would be illegal. But they went ahead with them anyway, reasoning that actually under Hong Kong's basic law, its own little mini constitution, these elections were actually completely legal. Now what the pro-democracy camp wanted to do was to do so well in the legislative elections that they would have more than half the seats, that would allow them control of the budget, and they thought that would allow them to force the Beijing-backed chief executive of Hong Kong to resign. Now instead, many of those people were arrested. We've now seen them be found guilty and sentenced. And the court said that actually those

informal elections were part of a plan to achieve political change that would have undermined the government's authority. And that's really what's key here. Who is really in charge in Hong Kong? And we've now seen Beijing really put its stamp on Hong Kong and really assert its power over the pro-democracy movement. Hong Kongers are being urged to raise questions about the case, which seems ironic on a day when it seems clear that doing so could land you in jail. That's right. So two of the people acquitted in the trial, there were originally 47 arrested. The two who were acquitted have urged people in Hong Kong to keep fighting the good fight basically. And you're right, it is very difficult in Hong Kong right now. That national security law that I referred to has basically shut down many forms of political

opposition within Hong Kong. But I will say that the Hong Kong people, all those people who participated in those street protests just a few years ago, many of them are still living in Hong Kong. It's a very creative, very well-educated territory. And so there's still a lot of people questioning Beijing's authority. Some of the court statements that we saw among those 45 people who've been sentenced today are also very telling. So for example, one man named Long Hair, he's a long time activist inside Hong Kong. He was one of those sentenced today to six years and nine months. His court statement, he referred to the fact that he is an older man now, he's 67, and he says, I have never given up

for nearly 50 years, my black hair has turned white, my long hair has turned short, a free man has been unjustly detained, but I still act with this faith to fight for democracy and social justice. So yes, it's much more difficult now, Andrew, but I think that the pro-democracy movement is still there in a latent way. Ah, Asia-Pacific regional editor Celia Hatton. After record growth of corals was recorded at the Great Barrier Reef off Australia two years ago, the latest surveys suggest the northern parts of the world's largest coral reef system have suffered a significant decline. Researchers say much of the damage was caused by heat stress as well as two cyclones. The research leader of the Australian Institute of Marine

Science is Dr Mike Emsley who's been talking to Tim Franks. We've just started our 40th year of doing surveys and the first trip was around Lizard Island and a bit north of Cairns as well. And around Lizard Island sector-wide we've seen a decline of 38% of coral cover that was there prior to the bleaching event. And similarly in the Cairns area, we're talking about a loss of about a third of the coral cover that was there prior to the summer's bleaching event. So fairly substantial losses, very serious losses, and really highlighting you know, the serious nature of the effects of climate change on coral reefs.

Yeah, you mentioned this mass bleaching event that happened in the last Australian summer. Tell me what in particular do you think has prompted the bleaching and then the die-off? Yeah, so the causes of coral bleaching, it's a stress response of the corals to elevated sea surface temperatures. Basically the cause is that a buildup of heat accumulates over the summer and when you get a long enough period of elevated sea temperatures, it causes the corals to stress and they actually live in close association with an algae inside their tissues. These algaes supply a lot of the energy for the corals, but when the temperatures reach a certain threshold, the relationship actually

turns toxic and the algae start releasing toxins into the corals and the corals response then is to expel the algae. So the corals then only have a fairly limited window of time that they can survive without the symbiotic algae inside them and if temperatures are not reduced in a quick enough amount of time these corals will actually then go on to die and that's exactly what we've seen has been the outcome of the mass coral bleaching event in 2024, the austral summer. And that was Dr Mike Emsley from the Australian Institute of Marine Science. Still to come on this podcast, tens of thousands protest in New Zealand

against a bill that would overhaul the country's founding treaty between Britain and the Maori people. people. and the global story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad free. Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC podcasts. In China in recent months has been a series of mass attacks by individuals with personal grievances against society. In the latest one a vehicle was driven into a crowd of primary school children in Hunan province. More from our China correspondent Laura Bicker. What we know so far from social media and from speaking to some parents who were taking their children to school is that there was incredible panic, that there were several parents and children lying on the road and injured, that the ambulances they told us arrived very fast. But it does seem

that parents and security officials at the school managed to pin down the driver as they awaited police. We are told that that driver is currently in custody but this is the third attack on a crowd in China in one week. On Saturday eight people were killed and 17 others were injured in a life attack at a school in eastern China and that is said to have been a 21 year old who was upset at his exam results and last Monday a driver rammed into crowds outside a sports centre, killing 35 people and injuring more than 40 others.

That was the deadliest attack that they've seen here in China in just about a decade. That driver was apprehended, and it's said that he was upset at his divorce settlement. There have been a spate of incidents right throughout the year, making it one of the highest number of incidents in the last six years of people attacking crowds in China. Police in the Georgian capital Tbilisi have again clashed with protesters who've condemned last month's parliamentary elections as stolen. Opposition supporters say police arrested demonstrators who'd set up a protest camp near the Tbilisi State University. Rehan Demetri reports.

At dawn on Tuesday, security police began aggressively detaining peaceful protesters, dragging them to police vehicles. Large numbers of police approached the area by Debilisi State University to clear it of barriers, vehicles and benches which opposition protesters used to block off the streets. This was the latest in a series of actions organized by the country's opposition against the results of October 26 parliamentary election. Officially the ruling party, Georgian Dream, won the election. But its opponents, including the country's pro-Western president, have accused the government of widespread violations. New Zealand has seen one of its biggest protests in years after at least 40,000 people turned out

for a rally in Wellington over a controversial bill that threatens to overhaul the country's founding document drawn up in 1840 between the Maori people and the British colonisers. The bill has divided a country often seen as a leader for indigenous people's rights, even though it's unlikely to pass. Let's get more from Katie Watson, who's in Wellington. Thousands of people are marching towards Parliament. This is the end of a nine day hikoi or peaceful march which started in the northernmost tip of the North Island of New Zealand and they've been making their way down to the capital. Many people are dressed

in black, white and red, the colours of the Māori community, and they're talking about unity and love and honouring the Māori people here in New Zealand. Arriving at the Beehive, New Zealand's parliament building, the message was loud and clear. Mess with the Treaty of Waitangi and you're messing with the rights of the Māori people, say the demonstrators, the first inhabitants of this land they call Aotearoa. The crowds kept coming. Throughout the day, spontaneous huckers broke out.

Māori war cries rallying supporters to do battle with a government they say is undermining them. We're safer together, really. That's what gives Parliament its right to operate. When the scales sort of get tipped out, everybody's in danger, not just Māori. Let's not forget about all the people who aren't making a noise, who aren't trying to undermine Parliament.

For David Seymour, who's introduced this plan, those protesting don't represent most New Zealanders. He says it's about treating everyone here as equals, rather than giving special treatment to Māori. What my Treaty Principles Bill says is that I, like everybody else, whether their ancestors came here a thousand years ago, like some of mine did, or just got off the plane at Auckland International Airport this morning to begin their journey as New Zealanders,

have the same basic rights and dignity as human beings. Culture, language, all flows out of that foundation of equal rights. It's a view that does have support in wider New Zealand. I don't really know what the Māori are arguing about. I think we're all one person, we're all New Zealanders. They seem to want more and more and more and we just have to all work together. Well I think all New Zealanders should be equal. We've got people from many different countries of the world living in this country and we're pretty good too. It's a pretty

good country to live in. But experts in Māori law dispute this way of thinking. Dr Carlin Jones is from Victoria University in Wellington. The Treaty of Waitangi is an agreement between Māori communities and government, and so it sets up that particular relationship. But it also provides a really useful model for thinking about ways of accommodating difference in diversity, ways of drawing on having different voices involved in decision making. And those are models which aren't just applicable to Māori, but can be expanded to all kinds of other

different communities of interest. And I think if you're unwilling to take that step of engaging with Māori, then I think it's very unlikely that as a government you'd be willing to engage or think about how to accommodate difference in other kinds of circumstances. The strength of emotion was clear last week when this happened. A Māori MP taking a stand in a traditional way that led to the suspension of Parliament and began a broader conversation about minority rights. Katie Watson in New Zealand. Finally, a question you'll have heard many times, is there life beyond our universe? Now I can't pretend we've got the answer, but one organisation at the

forefront of the search is the SETI Institute. That stands for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. On Wednesday it celebrates its 40th anniversary. And to mark that, my colleague Amal Rajan spoke to the French-American astrobiologist, Natalie Cabrol. She says this is a golden age in the search for extraterrestrial life. When you think that maybe 60 years ago, all we knew about space, about galaxies, about planets and stars came from ground-based telescopes.

In a span of a few decades, we've come to know our solar system like our backyard. Only 20 years ago, 15 years ago, we just discovered that our solar system is just one out of many. It's a completely new perspective on our place in the universe and the potential for life out there. But remember, whether it's looking at the origins of life or looking at the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, it's very anthropocentric. So we're thinking about life in the universe as if aliens were thinking like us, building the same things as we are. And if we did find, if we did encounter something that we call life, whatever life may in fact be, where do you think it's most likely, what are the areas that we've discovered through perhaps the James Webb telescope

that would give us an indication of where we ought to be looking? In the solar system, it's not going to be an advanced technological civilization. Beside us we know that if there is life in the solar system it's going to be microbial. Exoplanets are tricky because they are far away. We can access the information only remotely which means by spectroscopy and looking through their atmosphere. A good indication for exoplanets would be if we were going to find a synthetic molecule or something that cannot be only created by the environment only,

basically what we are looking for is pollution. Something that says to us that somewhere, someone is messing with their environment in the same way that we are. And then the technosignature, one could be messages and that's why we're listening. There could be laser light signals as well and there could be also the type of message we have no clue about. Maybe this message is already all around us but we don't have the technology yet.

And in the end what this search does is it helps us understand what it is to be human doesn't it? It makes us realize that you know life and civilization on this blue marble dangling in the infinite blackness is an extraordinarily precious thing. All the questions that we are directed towards the universe or towards the solar system are in fact a reflection of the questions that we have about ourselves. And what we are learning doing this journey is really about what habitability means, what are environmental threshold, what it takes to keep a planet habitable.

Basically, we are learning what it is to be a planetary citizen. And compared to when you started out in this field a few decades ago, are you feeling more optimistic or less optimistic that we will find information that suggests that we are not alone? I liked a few decades ago you. Copernicus told us that we're not the center of the solar system of the universe and Kepler is telling us normally we are not that but we are one out of many many solar systems out there.

Every time you look at the star, there is a planet, at least one orbiting around it. And that changes completely the way we are perceiving ourselves and the way we are perceiving the universe around us. The astrobiologist, Natalie Cabral. And that's all from us for now. There'll be a new edition of Global News to download later. Definitely cabrol. is Karen Martin. I'm Andrew Peach, thankiCast and The Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad free. Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with

a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC podcasts.