Global News Podcast - Trump-Putin summit on Ukraine: A Global News Podcast special

Episode Date: August 16, 2025

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have finished their meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, held to discuss a potential end to the war in Ukraine. It lasted less than three hours. And while the leaders said it was productive, they failed to reach a deal. In this special edition of the Global News Podcast, we bring you reaction and analysis from Anchorage and gauge the feeling in Ukraine and Russia. We also look at the true cost of the war in lives and money, and find out what's next for Washington, Moscow and Kyiv on the road to peace. The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight.Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment.Get in touch: [e-mail]

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This is a special edition of the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service with me, Ankara Dissai. Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have just held their face-to-face meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, to discuss a potential end to the war in Ukraine. The meeting lasted less than three hours, and while the leaders said it was productive, they failed to reach a deal. In this podcast, we'll bring you reaction and analysis from Anchorage and gauge the feeling in Ukraine and Russia. We'll also look at the true cost of the war in lives. and money, and we'll find out what's next for Washington, Moscow, and most important of all, Kiev, on the road to peace. The day began with warm welcomes and a friendly handshake between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

US officials had literally rolled out a red carpet for the Russian leader as he landed on the tarmac in Anchorage, Alaska. The stage was set then for a potentially monumental summit. Face-to-face talks behind closed doors aimed at bringing. and ending an end to the war in Ukraine. And then less than three hours later, Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin emerged, having failed to reach a deal. And yet, in a joint press statement after the meeting, President Putin struck a very positive collegial tone. Our negotiations were held in a constructive and mutually respectful atmosphere.

The talks were very thorough and useful. I would like to thank my American colleague once again for the offer to come to Alaska. It's quite logical to meet here. After all, our countries, although separated by oceans, are in fact close neighbors. And when we met, I got off the plane and said, good afternoon, dear neighbor. I am very glad to see you alive and in good health. A short time later, Mr. Trump gave an exclusive interview to Fox News's Sean Hannity. The U.S. President rated the meeting at 10 on a scale from 1 to 10. We agreed on a lot of points. I mean, a lot of points we're agreeing on. There's not that much as, you know, one or two pretty significant items, but I think they can be reached. Now it's really up to President Zelensky to get it done. Most people, as they analyze this from the outside, there's going to be some land swaps. There will be more Russian territory than there had been.

And what Ukraine wants and needs desperately is our security measures that won't be NATO-related. If you had to look into your crystal ball, is that how it ends? Well, I think those are points that we negotiated, and those are points that we largely have agreed on, actually. We're pretty close to it yet. Now, look, Ukraine has to agree to it. Maybe they'll say no. When you talk to Vladimir Solensky, what's your advice to make a deal?

Look, Russia's a very big power, and they're not. They're great soldiers, and they have great, but, you know, they also had the best equipment. you know, they had our equipment. You know, they're fighting a big war machine. The next step, you had said that you wanted a meeting as quickly as possible, maybe with you, President Zelensky and President Putin. Yeah.

Did that come up? Yeah, it did. I mean, they both want me there, and I'll be there. You've got to see it out. Are you confident it can happen in a shorter time period? Fairly short, yeah. In spite of those glowing reviews of the summit, Mr. Trump had said before the meeting

that he would be unhappy if it ended without a ceasefire agreement. Well, he didn't get that. So what exactly did the two men talk about? That's a question I asked. Gary O'Donohue, who's in Anchorage. Well, plenty of kind of warm words on both sides. Well, I say plenty of warm words, plenty of warm words from Vladimir Putin. Actually, an uncharacteristically short statement from Donald Trump.

I mean, normally he has plenty more to say from that. And taking no questions whatsoever. So that is a very unusual thing for the president, and particularly in these big set-piece occasions where he feels he's got a good story to tell. I mean, you heard him say there's no deal until there's a deal, but you also heard him say some progress had been made in this talk about a second meeting. So whilst this thing could have ended in one of them or other than walking out, that didn't happen and that's got to be a positive thing.

But what the takeaway is at the moment, almost impossible to say in concrete terms, if you're living in one of those cities in Ukraine that's getting bombed every night. Donald Trump has always made a very big deal about Vladimir Putin saying lots of stuff to him on the phone and then hurling a lot of cruise missiles and drones at Ukrainian cities the next evening. If that continues, then it's difficult to know where this process would go after that. It's from the Ukraine perspective, no agreement, no ceasefire. So I guess no good news for Vladimir Zelenskyy? No. And I mean, in some ways, one of the fears of the Ukrainian leadership was that Donald Trump would start to, you know, give away the shop or try to give away the shop on their behalf. And that may not be happening or not seem to be happening. And Donald Trump has made some reassuring comments on that about the people who negotiate any sort of territorial swaps, having suggested he might be involved in that earlier in the week. But no certainty for Ukrainians about what happens.

next. I mean, the word ceasefire, the word peace agreement, despite the banner which says pursuing peace, those two words, peace, ceasefire, not a mention in this press conference. President Putin, President Trump have already left Anchorage. So I guess, Gary, where do we go from here? Well, I think over the next few days, or certainly over the next few hours, President Trump has said he will speak to some of his NATO allies, expected he'll speak to President Zelensi as well. I'm sure those people will want to elicit some detail about what the substantive discussions were. President Putin was very critical about Europe and European leaders in his remarks. And that is going to be a difficult thing because Donald Trump wants Europe to

take more responsibility for the Ukrainian war. So we'll start to hopefully see what kind of framework they might be working towards if a second meeting is on the car. But as things stand, the question will be, well, look, if you haven't achieved anything concrete and there's nothing concrete on the horizon, are you prepared to put more pressure on Russia, which the President has said he would do? And another deadline asked for secondary sanctions, et cetera, and that question will persist if there isn't any concrete substantive movement on the Russian side. So this could all, you know, end up in some ways not taking us on beyond where we were other than the fact that Vladimir Putin has succeeded in getting a meeting on American soil with an American president, the handshakes, the red carpet, all that treatment for a man who has been for the last three years an international pariah.

Gary O'Donohue speaking to me earlier. So how was the summit viewed by Ukrainians and Russians? Well, I spoke to Lisa Falkt from the BBC's Russian service and Miroslava Petsa from the BBC's Ukrainian service. They both watched the press statement after the much-hyped meeting in Anchorage. And I began by asking Miroslava for her initial reaction. It was really, really weird to watch this briefing because it's not anything close to the thing that we would anticipate it. We came all the way down here to. see a potential ceasefire. At least this is what President Trump stated he would like to

achieve. But we saw nothing. We saw no ceasefire. We didn't hear President Trump imposing new sanctions on Russia. So it remains a question, what exactly happened during the talks? Was there any fruitful discussion at all about Ukraine? From my perspective, Lisa, I guess Russian diplomats and President Putin himself, they spoke positively about the meeting. But the reaction from Russia, have you been able to gauge what's been coming out of Moscow in particular? I think it's clear that Russian media and Russian officials, they believe that it was a triumph. It's hard to say it was anything other than a triumph for Vladimir Putin, because Trump literally rolled out the red carpet for him when he erupted at this military base in Alaska.

And I think before the meeting, when we were talking about this, everyone would agree that conversation, a summit with President Trump on American soil, without any concrete results, with Putin, who's not promising anything, not conceding anything, is a triumph for Moscow. And it looks that Vladimir Putin can live in Alaska and fly back home in a very, very good mood. Miroslav, will there be relief in Ukraine that there was no, I guess, firm announcement? I know these talks happened without President Zelensky being present, but is no news good news maybe? Yeah, I could say that, that no news is good news for Ukrainians, because some in Ukraine anticipated that this summit could result in New Munich, 1938, when Nazi Germany was given basically Sederland annexed after that agreement in Munich. It didn't happen, and it couldn't have happened, because Ukraine can't just see its territory. without first asking its population and Donald Trump understood that

and he actually acknowledged that territorial discussions may happen but there will be no results without President Zelensky at the table but I could only see the first reactions from people who are watching closely these talks and this is a mix of talking fun at President Trump and kind of sharing frustration because some would say that it looks really, really sad that the most powerful man in the world

welcomed President Putin just for nothing. And someone was saying that it's just very difficult to see any kind of result from this meeting. And that's exactly what happened. Okay, and Lisa, just very briefly finally. A possible follow-up in Moscow with Trump is what President Putin mooted, I guess in terms of optics. It's all gone swimmingly, then. It is very hard to argue with that. and I think we'll spend days and weeks trying to analyze what the whole thing was about.

Why did all these journalists, all these reporters have to come half across the world to see Vladimir Putin's just exchanging pleasantries with Donald Trump? But I think the main goal for Putin was just to sit with President Trump, to make him listen to him, and this goal was definitely achieved here in Alaska today. Well, despite the diplomatic differences in opinion on what peace really looks like, the rising number of casualties on the front line in Ukraine has created a sense of urgency to reach a ceasefire. The now three-and-a-half-year war between Russia and Ukraine has cost hundreds of billions of dollars,

claiming the lives of a significant number of civilians caught up in the fighting. As our correspondent, Rich Preston, reports. Neither Russia nor Ukraine give any sort of official figure, but one estimate from the British Ministry of Defence says more than one million Russian troops have been killed or injured since the full-scale invasion began back in February 2022. That would mean Russia's losses in Ukraine. exceed all other post-World War II Soviet and Russian wars combined. On the Ukrainian side, an estimate from the think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies

that's the number of casualties at over 400,000. So Russian military casualties more than double Ukrainian losses. When it comes to civilians, the United Nations has documented the deaths of at least 13,883 Ukrainian civilians, and that number includes 726 children. The UN says more than 35,500 have been injured, including more than 2,200 children. Russia's full-scale invasion also resulted in one of the biggest mass displacements since the Second World War. There are 3.7 million internally displaced people in Ukraine. And 6.9 million have left the country altogether, according to the UN Refugee Agency. Now finally, let's look at how this war has been funded. The United States is the top supporter of aid to Ukraine at $128 billion. Just over half of that, 55% goes towards weapons, equipment,

and other military support. Forty-two percent is direct financial support to, keep Ukraine functioning and just under 3% is humanitarian aid. But after that famous flare-up between President Trump and Zelensky in the Oval Office, there remains concerned that US support for Ukraine isn't guaranteed. Well, as we've said, the Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky wasn't invited to that summit in Anchorage, but the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Vadim Prashtiko, who's in Alaska, says Russia will use the warmth between President Trump and President Putin to its advantage. When two leaders are staying so little, it means only one thing.

The delegations are still far from reaching a real deal. But they said the sin of friendship, almost, I don't know, love, won't be a happy taking in Ukraine, that's for sure. I believe what President Zelensky had to take from this conversation, that pure flattery, which was offered by Putin, is actually paving the way to create this bond, which will be later on used, exercised by the Russians. Well, to bring this special podcast to a close,

let's hear a bit more about how these talks will be seen in Ukraine with BBC monitoring's Vitali Shevchenko. Expectations were low in Ukraine, and despite all the flattery that we've heard from a lot of people, including Vladimir Zelensky, I think there will be a size of relief in Kiev. The worst case scenario in which Donald Trump would have offered Ukrainian land to Russia in exchange for promises of a deal or a ceasefire, that scenario has been avoided. So that's a good thing.

The bad thing for those who want to see this war end is that Vladimir Putin is still talking about what he calls the root causes of this conflict. i.e. the reasons why he started this war, which were to crush Ukraine as an independent state. So that is menacing to Ukraine. At the end of the day, after talks in Anchorage, nothing's changed. As Mr. Prostika just said, the fact that they did not announce any deals or agreements means that they've got none, at least nothing to be proud of or nothing to announce. So despite all the promises and threats and deadlines, more than six months after Donald Trump rolled back into the White House, very little change.

This Alaska Summit is just the latest, I guess, in the long line of Western diplomatic efforts to end this war. Are people believing that diplomacy will still work? Because I saw polls consistently show that about 95% of the population in Ukraine continues to distrust President Putin. Do you think that there will be a seat at the table next time round for, Vladimir Zelensky? I doubt it, frankly. Vladimir Putin doesn't really see Vladimir Zelensky as an equal or even a legitimate president of Ukraine. He despises him. So that's why he is

keen to meet with Donald Trump, the president of America, but the president of Ukraine, not so much. So if we were to take a step back and have a look at where we are right now, we're roughly in the same positions. This is disappointing for Donald Trump, who is frankly looking weak after these talks with Vladimir Putin and this particular meeting in Alaska, despite all the pronouncements of progress made and good communications with Vladimir Putin. He has very little to show for it. So this is why a lot of people in Ukraine and in the West as well are thinking that diplomatic means have been exhausted. That's a quote from the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. So here we are. How will people in Ukraine be feeling after these talks? Not surprised at

all, relieved that their land has not been given out to Russia, but fearful that Russia will continue attacking their country. And that's all for this special edition of the Global News podcast, but there will be a new edition later on if you want to comment on this episode or the topic's covered in it. You can also send us an email. The address is global podcast at BBC.com. And you can also find us on X at BBC World Service and you can use the hashtag Global NewsPod. The edition was mixed by Chris Murphy. It was produced by Peter Goffin and the editor is Karen Martin. I'm Ankara to sign. Until next time, goodbye. Thank you.