Global News Podcast - Trump says he expects to meet Putin in Saudi Arabia

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

US President Donald Trump says he will likely meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Saudi Arabia in the near future for negotiations on Ukraine. Also: London's first Roman basilica found under office basement.

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This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles and in the early hours of Thursday the 13th of February these are our main stories. There's been a flurry of initiatives from the United States on the war in Ukraine with Donald Trump holding separate phone calls with Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Zelensky. The new US defence secretary has ruled out Ukrainian membership of NATO. Egypt and Qatar say they're stepping up diplomatic efforts to save the ceasefire deal in Gaza. Hundreds of people who'd been working in scam centers in Myanmar have crossed

into Thailand after attempt to shut down the operations. Also in this podcast. It all started on Russia's largest island, a 1000km strip of land called Sakhalin in the far east of Russia, just north of the Japanese island of Hokkaido. So why did a group of Russians floating on a shrinking block of ice not want to be rescued? Find out later. Before returning to the White House, Donald Trump promised to end the war in Ukraine in just one day. Now there seems to be the first concrete action towards achieving that, albeit belated, goal.

He's spoken to the Russian President Vladimir Putin and a short time later to his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky. In his nightly address, President Zelensky said the talks had been positive. I am grateful to the president for his sincere interest in our shared potential and how we can work together to achieve real peace. It was a lengthy discussion covering many diplomatic, military and economic nuances. President Trump also informed me what Putin told him. We trust that America's strength, together with our efforts and those of all

our partners, will be enough to pressure Russia and Putin into peace. President Trump said he'd had a lengthy and highly productive phone call with the Russian president during which they'd agreed to work closely to end the conflict. He said both of them believed strongly that the killing must stop. A short time later in the Oval Office of the White House, President Trump had this to say. I'll be dealing with President Putin largely on the phone and we ultimately expect to meet.

In fact, we expect that he'll come here and I'll go there and we're going to meet also probably in Saudi Arabia the first time we'll meet in Saudi Arabia see if we get something done but we want to end that war. That war is a disaster. It's a really bloody horrible war. Our North America editor Sarah Smith has this assessment of President Trump's telephone conversation with President Putin. Instead of getting the usual rather dry readout that we get from the White House after these calls conversation with President Putin. closest allies. I actually met Vladimir Putin and then an American who'd been being held prisoner in Russia was released and Donald Trump was delighted about that. Both Russia and America are going to have teams start negotiating immediately about the situation in Ukraine and he's named a very high level team including the Secretary of State Marco

Rubio and the Director of the CIA. So what's been the reaction in Moscow? Steve Rosenberg is the BBC's Russia editor. This is exactly what Vladimir Putin wanted. He said before he wants to deal directly with America as far as the war in Ukraine goes. Not with Europe, not even with Ukraine, but with America. And when you think nearly three years ago when Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine he became an international pariah. We saw those thousands of sanctions, international sanctions imposed on Russia. He was a pariah. Now he's back on the international stage. And I think the Russians will view this telephone call alone as a diplomatic victory.

Steve Rosenberg in Moscow. The news of Donald Trump's conversation with Vladimir Putin came after the US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spoke in Brussels to a group of more than 50 nations who've been supporting Ukraine during the conflict. He said that there would be no return to Ukraine's original 2014 borders. In other words,iv should forget about reasserting its control over Crimea and other areas occupied by Russia or Russian-backed forces. We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine. But we must start by recognising that returning to Ukraine's pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective. Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering. A durable peace for Ukraine must include

robust security guarantees to ensure that the war will not begin again. That said, the United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement. Instead, any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops. Our correspondent in Kyiv is James Waterhouse. He gave his reaction to the developments regarding Ukraine. Rest assured, today has been a political body blow for Ukraine. I think it has long been known that the Trump administration would have a different approach

to its predecessors. It would perhaps be seen here as a less sympathetic approach. We've certainly seen a more transactional attitude when it's come to American support for Ukraine. I think President Zelensky has been very much in pitching and negotiating mode but still to hear Pete Hegseth there give this speech in Brussels where he talked about NATO membership for Ukraine being off the table, where he talked about any foreign intervention troop wise after a ceasefire not involving American troops.

There's ambiguity on that. He's putting the onus on Europe, which thus far has struggled to fill any gap left by America. President Zelensky said any security guarantees without America don't amount to much. The view that Ukraine can't repel Russia to its original borders, I think there are battlefield realities Ukraine is having to accept, but nevertheless for the country's biggest ally to be saying things like that, you can only imagine that Moscow will be happier with what has been going on. And then you have this phone call, this phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, a seemingly warm exchange if you look at Donald Trump's post where many topics were discussed.

It comes back to this, this Ukrainian fear that there would be talks about Ukraine's future, this country's future without Ukraine being at the table. And we are seeing that play out now. Now there is a long way to go in terms of what will be agreed, what compromises will be made and how Ukraine can exist and live with Russian forces on its soil. But for now that road is looking incredibly uncertain. It's looking complicated and far from smooth.

And I think we've seen America really lay out its position as it looks to engage Russia more than Ukraine. James Waterhouse in Ukraine. For more on the comments by President Trump and his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, I spoke to our defence correspondent Jonathan Beale, who was at the meeting in Brussels, where Mr Hegseth made the address. The direction of travel was known as far as the new Trump administration on Ukraine, that he said he wanted to end the war, that he wanted a negotiated settlement with Russia, he wanted the killing to be

stopped. I think everybody knew also that even the last Biden administration was not enthusiastic about NATO membership, but I think it's all together, it's the most explicit statement by the US defence secretary, Pete Hegsus, on US policy towards Ukraine under this new administration. And that is not just explicitly stating no NATO membership, but also that Ukraine will not regain all the territory it has lost to Russia, and also saying that America is a limit to how much America is prepared to do as far as not just military support but security guarantees if there is some kind of negotiated settlement,

some kind of ceasefire, making clear that there would be no US boots on the ground. And if you look at all this in totality, it flies in the face of what NATO has said before, not least because here we have President Trump talking directly to President Putin without Ukraine involved. The mantra here has been no decisions about Ukraine's future without Ukraine. Well, that appears to at the moment not be the case. And also it is not what they have been saying publicly here, even if there's scepticism about Ukraine joining NATO. The message was that Ukraine was on a path to NATO membership.

So I think all in all, you look at this, not completely unexpected, but clearly disappointing to most of the officials here. And Jonathan, there was a clear indication that European nations will be expected to police any ceasefire deal in Ukraine if and when it comes and provide much of the aid. Is there the ability and the will amongst European leaders to do that? The UK defence secretary who chaired the Ukraine contact group and said that Europe is stepping up, Europe needs to step up.

That last year, for example, Europe provided 50%, more than 50% 58% of the military aid to Ukraine. That said, Europe cannot fill the void left by America in terms of military support for Ukraine. It does need to increase its defense spending and then discussions about that at the moment. And the fact is that European armies have been reduced greatly because of the peace dividend at the end of the Cold War. Numbers are down. And to get that figure of what people are talking about, you need on the ground a number of troops from other countries, 100,000, to make sure that that was some kind of meaningful peacekeeping force. Europe would struggle to do that on its own.

And that is why President Zelensky has been clear that it needs America. But today he's got a clear message from the US that they are not going to put their own boots in the ground. Jonathan Beale. Now to other news. Egypt and Qatar are said to be intensifying mediation efforts to try to save the troubled Gaza ceasefire agreement. President Trump has warned that unless all the remaining hostages held by

Hamas are released on Saturday, the war will resume. The position of Israel's prime minister on the issue isn't as clear as our correspondent in Jerusalem, Weirah Davis, explains. A senior Egyptian source told the BBC that Egypt and Qatar, who helped broker the current ceasefire deal, are trying to prevent its collapse after recriminations between Hamas and Israel over the planned release of more hostages on Saturday. Failure, said the source, would lead to a new wave of violence with serious regional repercussions. Donald Trump and the Israeli Prime Minister have both said that if

hostages aren't handed over, as agreed under stage one of the ceasefire, the deal would be off and the war in Gaza would resume. But while Mr Trump says that all hostages should be freed and there are 76 still in captivity, Benjamin Netanyahu has been less clear, perhaps intentionally so, not saying if he agrees with Mr Trump or if he is demanding three more hostages to be freed on Saturday as outlined under the deal. Either way, the uncertainty and Donald Trump's regular interventions have complicated the already fragile ceasefire.

If Hamas, as before, does publish a list on Friday of which three hostages it intends to release, Mr Netanyahu may find it difficult to cancel the deal. Israel's defence minister, Israel Katz, today kept up the pressure on Hamas, saying that if it does not release the hostages on Saturday, the gates of hell will open on them, just as the US president promised. We're a Davis in Jerusalem. Now catching fish in your spare time with a rod and line is normally done from the safety of a riverbank or beach.

That's not how they do it in the freezing Russian winters though. They venture out onto the ice and that can cause real problems. The emergency services in Russia have just had to rescue more than a hundred fishermen stranded on a slab of ice drifting in the North Pacific. Rachel Wright has more details. It all started on Russia's largest island, a 1,000 kilometer strip of land called Succulin in the far east of Russia just north of the Japanese island of Hokkaido. The Succulin winter fishing season begins in early February, with a period where the

fish are actively biting until April. A large group of men had gathered in a small area to go fishing, but then disaster struck as the slab of ice they were on split off from the island and floated off into the sea of Okhotsk. Russian emergency services sent a helicopter which landed on the slab of ice, posting videos of what they thought would be their heroic rescue on social media. Some of the men refused to get on the helicopter and walked away towards their catches of fish and, more importantly, their equipment, including snowmobiles and fishing rods.

Apparently they wanted to wait for a hovercraft to arrive so that they could take their stuff with them. Millions of Russian men, and even, it's said, a few women, take to the ice every year across the country. The figure has been put as high as 30 million, about one fifth of the population. It's been a popular pastime for centuries. It was first practiced by Stone Age tribes using poles and nets.

Rachel Wright. Still to come in an office block in London. We've opened up a test pit in the basement of this room. Yes, there's a filing cabinet right next to us. But you can see a huge chunk of Roman masonry. It's absolutely fantastic. We look at the wonders below the ground. What does it take to go racing in the fastest cars in the world? Oscar Piastri. Your head's trying to get rid of one way, your body's trying to go another.

Lance Stroll. It's very extreme in the sense of how close you're racing wheel to wheel. We've been given unprecedented access to two of the most famous names in Formula One, McLaren and Aston Martin. I'm Landon Aris. They build a beautiful bit of machinery that I get to then go and have fun in. They open the doors to their factories as the 2024 season reached its peak. I'm Josh Hartnett. This is F1, back at base. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

The BBC can reveal that the British domestic security service MI5 lied to three courts while defending its handling of a misogynistic neo-Nazi agent who attacked his girlfriend with a machete. The security service told judges it had stuck to its policy of not confirming or denying the informant's identity, when in fact it had disclosed the man's status to the BBC as it tried to stop the corporation investigating him. MI5 has apologised. Daniel de Cimone, who carried out the original investigation, has this report. MI5 first gave false evidence three years ago when the government attempted to block

me and the BBC from reporting on Agent X's wrongdoing and succeeded in banning us from naming the Foreign National, who'd used his role as an MI5 informant to coerce his British girlfriend, known by the alias Beth. The security service then repeated the lie, insisting it had never confirmed X was an agent, to a specialist court where Beth is seeking answers about MI5's handling of its agent. It repeated it again to a judicial review in which Beth was challenging the specialist court's decision

to allow MI5 to refuse to confirm the man's status as an agent. In light of MI5's new admissions, the specialist court considering Beth's claim will consider afresh whether it was right to rule that evidence should be kept from Beth in closed sessions which she would not be able to attend. When I challenged MI5 on its false evidence, it aggressively maintained its position until I produced evidence proving it was untrue, including a recording of a senior MI5 officer who'd called me to say he'd been legally authorised to tell me that X was an agent,

in an effort to stop me reporting on his extremism. Hi, it's Daniel. He's been kind of, you know, de-authorised for a period of time because things have been quiet so when he made that comment he actually wasn't working for us. Well it might well be that other comments you've seen he did do that while he't working for us. It might well be that other comments you've seen he did that while he was working for us. In an unprecedented admission, MI5 has now issued an unreserved apology to the BBC and all three courts, describing what happened as a serious error and saying MI5 takes full responsibility. The corporate MI5 witness who gave false evidence says he thought

he was telling the truth. An internal MI5 disciplinary investigation is underway. There will now be pressure on MI5 Director General Sir Ken McCallum to explain what he knew. We can reveal today that he phoned the BBC's Director General, Tim Davie, to cast doubt on the corporation's original story about Agent X, wrongly calling it inaccurate, a claim that was itself untrue. The former Conservative Attorney General Dominic Grieve said the revelations call into question how much MI5 can be trusted by the courts. MI5 normally have a very clear policy that they will neither confirm nor deny whether somebody is an agent.

And the courts have always respected it because of the need to protect agents. To get it wrong reduces the trust of the judiciary in what is said to them by an intelligence agency. And the need to maintain that complete trust between government and the courts is absolutely essential. The Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has appointed a senior lawyer to investigate how MI5 came to provide false evidence to the courts and recommend any changes needed to

ensure courts are provided with accurate information in future by MI5. The report is due to be given to the High Court in April. Daniel de Cimone reporting. More than 250 people who worked in scam centres in Myanmar have crossed the border into Thailand. They'll be repatriated to their home countries. Our Asia Pacific editor, Mickey Bristo, reports. The group who crossed over into Thailand includes citizens from the Philippines, Kenya and Bangladesh. Many were lured to Myanmar by the promise of high paying jobs and then forced to engage in telephone and online fraud.

Civil unrest in Myanmar that's led to a breakdown in law and order has allowed the scam centres to multiply. But there's been an international effort recently to shut them down. Last week Thailand cut off electricity to five areas in Myanmar to force the centers out of business. Mickey Bristow. Thousands of teachers in Georgia have donated money to a colleague who was fined for taking part in protests. More than 7,000 tutors responded to a social media appeal, as Rehan Demitri in Tbilisi explains. Thousands of teachers across Georgia transferred around 50 cents each to the account of one

of their colleagues, Lado Abkhazava, to help him pay a fine for protesting. On Monday, Mr Abkhazava, along with several activists, including internationally renowned Georgian jazz singer Nino Katamadze, were ordered by a judge to pay the equivalent of 1800 US dollars each for picketing outside the house of an official. Mr Abkhazava told the judge that he was a single parent with four foster children and couldn't afford to pay the fine, which is the equivalent to four-month pay for a teacher. Rayhan Demetri, after eight months stuck at the International Space Station, a return mission has been planned to get two astronauts back down to Earth in mid-March. Mark Lowen spoke to science and space journalist Richard Hollingham, who told us more about these astronauts

stuck in space. You've got Butch Wilmore and Sunny Williams, the first astronauts to fly in the Starliner spacecraft on an eight-day mission. NASA probably made a mistake in trailing this as an eight-day mission because they would have been there for at least eight months by the time they come back to Earth. What happened with Starliner? It launched fine, but as they were approaching the space station there were all sorts of problems with the thrusters and they were able to dock successfully. What NASA feared was that the thruster problem would endanger their lives essentially when they went back to Earth. So these are little rockets on the spacecraft that help it position. If you look

at the International Space Station, it's the size of a football stadium with lots of bits jutting out, lots of other spacecraft docked to it, these enormous solar arrays coming in close, you've got to maneuver really carefully. It's like parking a car but in three dimensions with no gravity. And if your thrusters are failing, there's a real danger that you could slam into the space station and potentially put everyone's life at risk there. So the problems with the thrusters,

they couldn't figure out, and this is exactly what NASA said, they didn't understand the physics of what was going on with the thrusters. So they got the thrusters working again, but they couldn't work out why, which is always a worry in engineering. So they got the thrusters working again, but they couldn't work out why, which is always a worry in engineering.

So they sent the spacecraft back to Earth without the astronauts, leaving the astronauts on the space station. What's it been like for them being stuck up there for months, especially given the fact that they thought they were going for such a few days? I mean, that was, the going for a few days expectation was an issue in

terms of their personal possessions and clothes. You go away for a weekend. Cabin baggage only. Exactly that, exactly that. So literally their suitcases, well not quite suitcases but the equivalent, the space equivalent had to be sent up later on as it became clear they were going to spend longer in space. But I mean they are incredibly experienced astronauts very personal I've actually been at a party with Sonny Williams which is a great name drop hanging out with astronauts. What's he like? Oh lovely absolutely lovely you've got to be I mean that's one of the main criteria for astronauts we get sort of obsessed with

this idea of the right stuff that these are sort of superhuman. And they are. They're better than all of us astronauts. But they're also amazing team players. They get on with people. And you've got to. If you're stuck in this space station with six other people. You've got to be good at small talk. You have got to be good at small talk. Or knowing when to spend time on your own, for example. You know, the space station is big enough. You've got currently seven astronauts on the space station.

There are enough places to just be on your own or just stare out of the window. So what do we know about how they've been dealing with all those months up there? Well I would say their biggest achievement was fixing the urine recycling system on the space station. So water is recycled and that means that astronaut, urine astronaut sweat is turned back into drinking water And there was a problem with that before Sunny Williams particularly is a bit of an expert on space plumbing Before that they were actually having to store urine if you can imagine such a thing, you know can find space So they managed to fix the system. So according to NASA, it's now working at 98% Capacity so today's urine is tomorrow's coffee.

The Science and Space Journalist Richard Hollingham. Archaeologists have discovered parts of London's first Roman basilica buried underneath an office block in the city's centre. The 2000-year-old public building was once the location of major political, economic and administrative decisions. It's been described as one of London's most important pieces of Roman history. Our science editor Rebecca Morell was given exclusive access to the find. Sophie we've just come down to the basement where this amazing discovery has been found. Are you going to take us in to see it? Yes please come down the corridor

follow me. I mean it's funny because we're still very much in the basement of a building there's carpet on the floor there's filing cabinets in here. But then you come into this room and it's quite different. We've opened up a test pit or a test trench in the basement of this room yes there's a filing cabinet right next to us but you can see a huge chunk of Roman masonry it's absolutely fantastic and what we're actually looking at is the South Nave wall of the first Roman Basilica which was the first town hall built in London and it's a hugely significant building. This is a tiny fragment the original building was 40 meters long about 20 meters wide and

probably about 12 meters high so it would have been a really really big imposing building within Roman London. And have you always known that this is here? When you sort of dug the test pit is this what you were sort of hoping to find? We were hoping to find fragments of it. It's been known, more and more information about this building has been gathered over the last 50, 60 years really. It's been pieced together and identified as this first town hall but we didn't know that there'd be this much of it surviving. We thought there'd be a few fragments and we're absolutely amazed and thrilled that there's so much of it here. And in the next room as well

you've got a bit more haven't you? Yeah it carries on so we know it's at least 10 or 15 meters long and then we think it carries on out underneath the walls of the building out into Grace Church Street so a nice chunk of it survives. How significant is this find? I mean what sort of place would this have been? This is so significant. This is the heart of Roman London, it's the heart of commerce. This building, the Basilica, was the administrative centre of London, administrative and political centre really. So it's a bit like in 2,000 years time somebody dug up the House of Commons and found the Speaker's Chair, you know that's what we're looking at.

This site and this building will tell us so much about the origins of London, why London grew, why it was chosen as the provincial capital, all sorts. It's just amazing, amazing. The Basilica and the Forum complex, I mean, what would it have been, sort of, a very busy place? Who would have been here? What would have been going on? Well, the Basilica was the town hall and then in front of it was a big open market square

with ranges of sort of shops and offices around the outside and it's a space where there would have been a market square but also festivals and great speeches would have been given there. It's likely that the Forum Square would have had statues to Roman gods and important emperors and that sort of thing but it's the place you came really to do business and it's the place you came to get your court case sorted out and it's where laws were made and it's where decisions were made about London but also about the rest of the country. I mean some people would be surprised that we're standing in the basement of a building in the central London and here's a bit of Rome.

Yeah it's amazing, this pit actually is just like a window into Roman London and there are so many spaces in London and our other cities where you can lift up the basement floor and find something amazing and it's just such a great connection. It's really fantastic for people to be able to see this because I think archaeology makes history come alive. That report by Rebecca Morell. And that's all from us for now but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us

an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag at globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll. The producer was Liam McSheffrey. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles. And until next time, goodbye.

What does it take to go racing in the fastest cars in the world? Oscar Piaz Street. Your head's trying to get rid of one way, your body's trying to go another. Lance Stroll. It's very extreme in the sense of how close you're racing wheel to wheel. We've been given unprecedented access to two of the most famous names in Formula One, McLaren and Aston Martin. I'm Landon Aris.

They build a beautiful bit of machinery that I get to then go and have fun in. They open the doors to their factories as the 2024 season reached its peak. I'm Josh Hartnett. This is F1, back at base. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. They open the doors to their factories as the 2024 season reached its peak. I'm Josh Hartnett. This is F1 Back at Base. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.