Global News Podcast - Trump says US will 'pass' on Ukraine peace talks if no progress soon

Episode Date: April 19, 2025

US President Donald Trump has warned that unless Russia and Ukraine agree quickly to end their conflict, the United States will abandon its peace efforts. Also: project shares the sounds of Unesco World Heritage sites.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Jackie Leonard and in the early hours of Saturday the 19th of April these are our main stories. President Trump has confirmed he will abandon efforts to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine unless there's progress within days. A US senator has been speaking about his meeting with Kilmar Abdurgo Garcia, an immigrant who was wrongly deported last month to a jail in El Salvador. And nearly 200 people have gone on trial in Istanbul over their role in huge protests against the Turkish government. Also in this podcast on World Heritage Day, celebrating sonic heritage.

The US President Donald Trump once famously promised to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office. But now, almost three months in, it's proving harder than he expected and frustration and tough talk are coming from Washington. On Friday, President Trump said he believed that Ukraine and Russia were what he described as enthusiastic about peace, but he had this warning. If for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we're just going to say you're foolish, you're fools, you're horrible people, and we're going to just take a pass, but hopefully we won't have to do that.

President Trump's comments echoed remarks earlier in the day by the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who warned that Washington was prepared to walk away from talks aimed at ending the war if a deal can't be reached soon. That outcome could potentially leave the Ukrainians looking even more exposed as Russia continues to launch strikes on Ukraine. Meanwhile people in Ukraine are preparing for their fourth Easter period while at war with Russia. So how have they been reacting to Marco Rubio's remarks? Inna Sovtsun is a member of parliament. The one bearing the cost, if the ultimatum doesn't work,

that will be us, that will be Ukrainians. And so of course we are not very happy with the current developments. There is growing uncertainty about what is to come, what Ukraine can expect from the Americans in the near weeks. So I would say that there is a very strong pressure on all of us right now. I think that is the main feeling that everybody is having.

Meanwhile, officials said a Russian missile attack, this time on the city of Kharkiv, killed one and injured more than 100 others. In comments on X, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky wrote, this is how Russia began this good Friday with ballistic missiles. Our Ukraine correspondent James Waterhouse reports on Friday's developments. After finally agreeing an investment framework with Washington and taking part in a first round of peace talks between American, European and Ukrainian officials in Paris yesterday, Ukraine started today with the diplomatic wind in its sails for once. That wasn't until this intervention from the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio as he left France. We're not going to continue with this endeavor for weeks and months on end.

So we need to determine very quickly now and I'm talking about a matter of days whether or not this is doable in the in the in over the next you know few weeks. If it is we're in. If it's not then we'll have to, we have other priorities to focus on as well. The threat or even prospect of America turning its back on these peace endeavors will only favor Moscow and leave Kiev even more vulnerable. US military aid for Ukraine is set to run out.

This is a White House that hasn't signed off any more American packages yet and looks unlikely to do so. As Russia continues to seize and occupy Ukrainian territory, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed Moscow was open to talks and was striving for peace. The contacts are fairly complex, complicated, because naturally the topic is not simple, the topic of Ukrainian settlement. Russia is striving towards resolving this conflict, securing its own interests and is open to dialogue. We are continuing to do this. The US Vice President JD Vance has since said he's optimistic the war can be ended but the

faint Ukrainian hope was that America would slap Russia with further sanctions for dragging its feet on a ceasefire. Instead, Washington has gone from saying, we'll end this war in a day, to we've got more important things to do elsewhere. James Waterhouse in Odessa. So why has diplomacy been proving so difficult? Kurt Volker is a former US Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations in the first Trump administration and a former US Permanent Representative to NATO. Julian Marshall asked him if the Trump administration was overoptimistic to begin with in brokering a peace deal.

I think that they may have believed that Putin actually did want to have a ceasefire. They probably saw some of the economic data and the military data and thought Putin would agree to that. And so they focused on enticements for Putin, offering carrots, if you will, if they indeed ended the war. But no real pressure. And Putin read that exactly the opposite way that the Trump administration intended.

He viewed that as a green light to continue fighting the war and to continue emphasizing his maximalist demands. And it does appear that flattery of Mr. Putin was a part of the Trump administration strategy? Yeah, I think so. I think this was a flattery or an effort to reach out, to engage, to promise that we'd have a better bilateral relationship. There would be summit meetings. There would be economic benefits for both sides. That was all part of the enticements for Putin to engage in negotiations and aim at ending the conflict, at least having a ceasefire. But as I said, Putin is not interested in that.

Putin wants to continue the war and that kind of approach leaves him thinking that he can continue to do so. President Zelensky didn't get a lot of carrots though, did he? No, he didn't. He got a lot of pressure. President Trump wanted to make sure that the US and Ukraine are in alignment. He wants to be able to tell the American people that Ukraine is paying its way, that we're not spending hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money on Ukraine.

That's what this minerals deal is all about. And Ukraine, of course, agreed with the Trump administration to an immediate ceasefire if Russia also does so. That was something that was very difficult for Ukraine to swallow because it means Russia will occupy a lot of Ukrainian territory. But it is at least moving in the direction of a ceasefire from Ukraine's side and exposes the fact that Russia does not want to do that. Kurt Volker, a former US Special Representative for Ukraine. The case of Kilmar Abrigo Garcia has become symbolic of the Trump administration's immigration

policy. He was one of a group of alleged gang members deported to a high-security prison in El Salvador, despite an immigration judge saying that he had the right to remain in the US. He has never been charged or tried and US courts have since ordered his return. The White House has accused Mr. Abrigo Garcia of being a member of the criminal gang MS-13 and insists he will never live in the US again. The Democrats say the case shows a lack of due process. On Thursday, US Democrat Senator Chris Van Hollen

managed to meet Mr. Abrego Garcia during a visit to El Salvador. Now back in Washington, the senator has given a news conference. As the federal courts have said, we need to bring Mr. Abrego Garcia home to protect his constitutional rights to due process. And it's also important that people understand this case is not just about one man.

It's about protecting the constitutional rights of everybody who resides in the United States of America. If you deny the constitutional rights of one man, you threaten the constitutional rights and due process for everyone else in America. Our correspondent in Washington, Jake Kwan, told us more about what Senator Van Hollen had to say. The senator after his meeting with Kilmar Brega Garcia was saying that he initially tried to meet him in this maximum security prison, CICOT, and he was denied. And Mr. Brega Garcia was brought by the South Salvadorian authority to the hotel he was staying. And there they had a meeting at a restaurant where he was telling them that people outside were fighting for him for his return, that the

judges in the U.S. have ordered the government to facilitate his return. So all these things seem to be a surprise for Mr. Abrago Garcia. He had been kept in the dark. He was kept in a cell with 25 other inmates who were taunting him, even though Mr. Abrago Garcia said that he was not scared of these other inmates. but the condition is of course not ideal. This is considered a notorious prison. And after these kind of mounting pressure to release Mr. Abigail Garcia, about a week ago he was moved to a different prison, a different detention center, he said, with somewhat lighter security parameters. So he has also said that he had delivered the message of love from his wife and, you

know, and Mr. Abrago Garcia has also related his concern for his family and his supporters outside in the U.S. President Trump has been very scathing about Senator Van Hollen's visit, hasn't he? Yes. Mr. Trump has tweeted out on Truth Social calling Mr. Van Hollen a fool for visiting Brega Garcia and saying that he is a grandstander, saying that the senator is simply trying to gain attention by doing this, what he considered a stunt. So Mr. Trump's, in his view, the Democrats are defending a man who is a member of a violent criminal gang, who deserves to be in prison

in El Salvador and doesn't seem to be helping out or care for Americans who, in his view, are being threatened by illegal migrants who are going around and committing crimes. Jake Kwan in Washington. The trial has opened in Istanbul of 189 people who were arrested in protests against the Turkish government. The suspects were arrested over demonstrations triggered by the detention last month of the city's mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu. Warren Bull reports. Dozens of students were among the defendants who stood trial at Istanbul's Çarlayan courthouse. They faced charges including involvement in illegal rallies. Eight journalists were also in the dock.

Human Rights Watch says they were simply doing their job of reporting, but Turkish police argue they didn't make clear that they were at the protests for journalistic purposes. The demonstrations were the biggest show of dissent against the Islamist AKP government since the failed coup of 2016. They were sparked by the arrest of the mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, considered the biggest political rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Warren Bull. Thousands of people have gathered in the Yemeni capital, Sana'a,

to protest about a deadly US strike that's reported to have killed at least 80 people. In retaliation for the attack on the Red Sea port of Rassissa, the Houthis said they had fired missiles at two U.S. aircraft carriers and an Israeli military site. Israel says it intercepted a missile fired from Yemen. Protests were also held in several other Yemeni cities, aimed at showing solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. Iona Craig is a

journalist specializing in Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula. Tim Franks asked her for more on the US strike. Well, certainly from the footage that's come out from Rassissa, there was obviously a major fire and explosion because they targeted the fuel port, but also some very graphic images of people having been burnt and burnt bodies lying on the ground, people receiving medical care who were severely burnt as well. The Houthis claimed that this was a double tap strike, i.e. there was initial bombing which was then followed up once the first responders had got there and the civil defense who got there to try and rescue people that there was another attack on them. And therefore they were the

members of civil defense and rescue teams that were also killed and injured in the second strike. And it is an oil facility, which presumably, I mean, is important to the Houthis. Yeah, well, Rassica, it's actually the kind of it's refined fuel as opposed to oil, really. It's not the first time it's been hit. Israel did target it in strikes against the Houthis earlier this year and at the end of last year. But it is an important storage facility for the fuel supplies in Houthi control territory.

More recently, there had been incidents of vessels still coming in, particularly Russian and Iranian vessels coming in, particularly Russian and Iranian vessels coming in with fuel for the Houthis. It is a revenue stream for them, but it's also important for the civilian population, of course. That's also a troubling factor. I mean, I've spent quite a bit of time in Hadada and it is one of the hottest places on the planet. You need that fuel to run generators for electricity. And without electricity, you can imagine in that kind of heat, it unbearable pretty quickly and anybody with sort of underlying health conditions in that kind of heat when it doesn't drop much below 40 even at night

it becomes a real struggle and a threat to life quite quickly when there's limited access to fuel. And in terms of the hoofies themselves, how far are they still causing disruption in the Red Sea? How far are they still able to fire missiles at Israel? Well already in response to this strike, they have fired missiles at Israel. They would have been ballistic missiles. They've also attempted to attack. They've been doing on a regular basis now the USS Harry S. Truman and its strike carrier group that are stationed in the Northern Red Sea and where most of, if not all of these

airstrikes that have been going on since the 15th of March now have been launched from. So there've been strikes on a daily basis by the US since the 15th of March. And this is a change because we saw obviously an escalation since Trump relaunched this American bombing campaign in the targeting of the Houthi leadership, which hadn't happened before. This is the first time really that there have been strikes in an attempt to target them economically. So something that is essential to the war economy like fuel and really try and cut off their revenue streams which hadn't been attempted before.

How do you think this fits into the talks that are going on between the US and Iran over Iran's nuclear programme? Certainly Iran has already condemned this strike and called it a war crime. But I think that's probably as much as they will do. I don't think there's likely to be any response directly from Iran on this whilst these talks are going on. Iona Craig. Hospitals in Gaza say at least 23 people were killed on Thursday night and dozens more were injured in Israeli strikes across the territory. Israel says it's continued to hit targets as it dismantles what it calls Hamas' terrorist infrastructure above and below ground.

Gaza's Hamas-run civil defence agency said at least 40 people were killed. Most were said to be living in camps for displaced Palestinians. On Friday our correspondent Gary O'Donoghue in Jerusalem sent this report. It's a month to the day since Israel resumed airstrikes on Gaza, bringing the fragile ceasefire to an end. Each day local health and civil defence officials from Hamas say dozens are being killed, with the United Nations saying that the number of children killed in recent days should shock everyone to the core.

Israel says it is targeting what it calls terrorists, claiming it killed the man responsible for smuggling arms for Hamas earlier in the week. It insists it takes every precaution to avoid civilian casualties. Negotiations to resume aid flows into the Strip and to end the war are at a standstill, with Hamas formally rejecting an Israeli offer of a 45-day ceasefire in return for the release of 10 of the remaining hostages and saying it is no longer interested in interim deals. Israel is also continuing near-daily airstrikes in Lebanon, with the killing of what it termed a Hezbollah communications

expert near the southern city of Sidon. Dario Donoghue in Jerusalem Friday was World Heritage Day, celebrating some of the sites around the world deemed by the UN to be of huge cultural importance. And to coincide with the day, a website was launched called Sonic Heritage, which aims to deepen our appreciation of those places and pieces of cultural heritage. Stuart Foulkes is the founder of the site. We've collected together from contributors around the world 270 of these World Heritage

Sounds from 68 countries and it's just a huge variety of everything from the iconic monuments that you might think of like Machu Picchu or the Eiffel Tower or the Great Wall of China through to natural soundscapes and then maybe some less expected sounds like the sounds of transportation or work or some of the cultural heritage sounds are really interesting, you know, things like textile weaving or agave cutting or dance, those sorts of things. When you must, then, You'll be sorry. I recorded that one myself, so the sounds are a combination of being a crowd source from anyone that could send, anyone that had those sounds could send them in, and I also did a few recording trips myself to places like Italian or Budapest or all around London, and in this case in Quimbra in Portugal,

to record the sounds of Fado. So Fado is an urban, popular song of Portugal. There are various variants of it, so the Lisbon version is different from the Quimbra in Portugal to recall the sounds of Fado. So Fado is an urban popular song of Portugal. There are various variants of it. So the Lisbon version is different from the Quimbra version. And what I've found interesting about the Quimbra version is a lot of the songs are related to love and loss and longing. But in Quimbra, they're often about love and attachment to the city itself. So it's really interesting to hear this musical practice,

which is really about how this is contributing to a sense of identity and a sense of connection to the city itself. Obviously, we all know what the Sistine Chapel looks like. It can all conjure up this postcard-like image of usually the ceiling and you would imagine it to be a place of extremely quiet reverence as we all kind of gaze up at Michelangelo's works in collective wonder, which obviously is, but at the same time you have attendants there whose job it is to shout silencio, silence in various languages, everyone will drop into into silence and then what will happen is one person will start whispering, two or three people will start whispering, the whispers

will turn into mutters and before you know it you've got this cacophony of just general talking noise that fills the entire space and then the attendant shouts silencio again. So what happens is this sonic pattern that repeats through the day of peaks and troughs and dips and fallings of noise. So I found it to be a really interesting sonic experience. It's an example of where the recording really helps you to feel like what it is like to be in the space as opposed to the image that you're more familiar with. as opposed to the image that you're more familiar with. This was recorded by an artist called Janina Castro from New Zealand. That is from Ocarito. It is a dawn chorus after two days of hard rain

and it's in the Te Wahi Poonamu region. That's a sacred place to the Maori people. There's all kinds of world-building legends about how that part of the world came into being in the first place. And I think that's another kind of aim of the project, just to help people think about what the same space might mean to different groups of people. Stuart Foulkes, the founder of the Sonic Heritage website. Still to come... I was dreaming about Star Wars before I ever saw it.

I think it framed my idea of what a movie even was. The actor Ryan Gosling on playing the lead in a brand new Star Wars film. Unless you've been hiding under a very large pixelated rock, you've probably heard of Minecraft. It's the best-selling video game of all time, and the franchise's first feature film is in cinemas now. But how much do you know about the game's creator,

software developer Marcus Person? Find out about the man behind Minecraft on Good Bad Billionaire, the podcast exploring the minds, motives, and money of some of the world's richest individuals. Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Pakistan is currently engaged in an effort to deport Afghan migrants en masse. More than two million are expected to be deported to Afghanistan in the coming weeks. Yama Bariz of the BBC Afghan Service has been given rare

access to those at the border and sent this report. Sadness is written on every face. Men, women and children are crossing back into Afghanistan after spending years even decades in Pakistan. Their lives are uprooted overnight. Some carry little more than a bag or two. The people here are some of the first to be deported. Sahih is one of them.

He sits in an empty tent, his eyes filled with tears. Our children have never seen Afghanistan. He holds his children close to his chest. And even I don't know what it looks like anymore. We feel helpless." Pakistan has intensified efforts to expel undocumented Afghan refugees, claiming that the country cannot cope with the sheer numbers and that some of the Afghan refugees present a security threat. With up to two million Afghans expected to be expelled in the coming days and weeks, there is a concern that the already struggling country will be overwhelmed.

I just saw a call probably from the Taliban. They were announcing on a loudspeaker that two children are missing. Atmosphere here is tense. Nearly everyone here carries a story of pain and separation. One elderly woman told us she was separated from her three sons. Every day I come back here to look for my sons. As we talk, Amena's eyes search the crowd. She looks tense. She tells me, We spent 40 years in Pakistan.

This is the first time we have come back to Afghanistan. I won't continue my journey until I find them. No one here knows what lies ahead. And there is unease about the safety and rights of those forcibly returned. Saleh, who has three daughters, is worried about their future. I want my children to study so their previous school years are not wasted. In Afghanistan, girls over the age of 12 are banned by the Taliban government from receiving an education.

They should allow both girls and boys to get an education. They should open schools for the newly returned Afghans and the people who were here before. They have the right to education. Yet amid the despair of displacement, one rare moment of relief. Three days after we met, Amena was reunited with her sons. Her son describes that moment. Our children spotted us and we rushed towards each other. The moment I saw my kids was the happiest of my life. My mother was so relieved. It was a beautiful moment. Now we are all living together happily.

As this family delves deeper into Afghanistan, they, like thousands of others, must learn to once again call this land home. That report by Yamabaris. Pakistan's Interior Minister Talal Chowdhury has condemned a series of violent protests against the fast food chain KFC in cities across the country. Activists opposed to the war in Gaza have been urging a boycott of the chain, calling it a symbol of the United States and Israel. Azadeh Mashiri reports from Islamabad. Talal Chaudhry told the BBC most of the vendors involved are Pakistani and the profits go

to Pakistanis. Police say they cannot connect all these incidents to anti-Israel sentiment, but they do sense a pattern to the violence. An angry crowd entered a KFC store in Islamabad armed with iron rods, threatening to burn it down before police arrived and arrested several protesters. In Karachi, groups carried out their threats and set two KFC stores on fire. These attacks are happening as influential figures in Pakistan continue to condemn the war in Gaza. Azadeh Mashiri. Now has China just made a bit of a breakthrough on a new

form of clean energy? News reports inside China say that scientists have successfully refueled a thorium reactor. So what exactly is thorium? Tim Franks heard more from Simon Middleborough, Professor of Nuclear Materials at Bangor University in Wales. Thorium is an element on the periodic table, just like uranium, just like hydrogen and everything else. It sits at the bottom of the periodic table next to uranium and that line that often gets missed off the actinides. It's a couple of protons lighter than uranium, it's a bit lighter, and it can be used within a nuclear reactor just like uranium does. Now instead of going into a nuclear reactor and create energy straight away, what thorium does is you need to sort of pre-treat it,

you need to cook it first to turn it into uranium and that's what thorium is really good at. And then it turns into uranium and then you can make energy out of it. Is it useful also because it's in a sense easier to manage than uranium or has sort of less baleful byproduct? I think there's some easy things about it. There's some things that thorium does better and there's some things that thorium we need to just work on a little bit with thorium. For example, just mining it, so digging it out of the ground, given its chemistry on the periodic table, it's just a little bit more difficult to get out the ground than uranium. Uranium is a bit easy to extract, but there's lots

more thorium on the underground. There's lots more thorium in the crust, so it's easy to find, which is why people like China and India are really excited about using it inside nuclear reactors and other places around the world. There are pros and cons to it all, as always, and I'm going to give you a straight answer because that's my role as a scientist I suppose sometimes. No indeed. But am I right in also saying that it does produce less radioactive waste? It can produce less radioactive waste. Just looking at what happens when you split thorium into the radioactivity is slightly less. It's not massive amounts less, but it's still going

to be producing nuclear waste. And it all depends on how you package the thorium up. So if your thorium is packaged up in solid pellets that can be kept away from things and not irradiating other things and turning them radioactive, the volume of waste goes down there. And sometimes with thorium, you package it in specific ways. That means that there is a lot more nuclear waste, not necessarily high level, very high level nuclear waste, but there's a bit more nuclear waste in terms of volumes to deal with. Again, it's a balance of technologies and ultimately it will come down to what is safest and what makes economic sense. Simon Middleborough from Bangor University in Wales.

A trial of a daily weight loss pill has found that it helped people to lose weight and reduce their blood sugar levels, making it a contender to join the new wave of medications that combat obesity and diabetes. Orfoglipron is made by Eli Lilly and has been through a clinical trial of people with obesity and type 2 diabetes. Laura Heisler, who is a professor at the Rowlett Institute at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland and an expert in nutrition, explained more about the medication and how it works. Obesity has been historically, as we all know, pretty difficult to treat and that's not

only a problem on a personal level but also on a national scale because obesity predisposes to a wide range of medical illnesses. There's a new class of drugs that mimic hormone that's made in the gut called GLP-1, and that's revolutionizing obesity treatment. But the drugs can still be better, and that's what this new drug called Orphoglipuron aims to do. And it is an oral medication instead of the injectable, but it's the same idea as Wigobi.

The reason why the original drugs weren't pills is because they are poorly absorbed and broken down too quickly in the digestive system, and that has reduced their effectiveness. And so that's why they were developed as injectable. So there's been really rapid advances in the formulation of these different GLP-1 drugs. The first drugs were administered twice a day and then once daily, now once a week. And so the next steps are to get an oral formulation, which is what this drug does.

The problem with the injectables is that they're single use, they're made of plastic, which creates a lot of waste. They have to be refrigerated, which takes up quite a lot of space in pharmacies. It makes them more difficult to transport, more difficult to distribute to those in need. So all this increases costs. And the injectable drugs are also more costly to make. So having the drug in a tablet form makes it easier to produce, so actually it can be much more widely disseminated, easier to store, and also it's expected that these

drugs will then be cheaper. This is not the only company producing or trying to produce an oral formulation. There are people working on this all around the world. There's a lot on the horizon, not just this one medicine. We're really only at the beginning. Professor Laura Heisler. The actor Ryan Gosling has confirmed he's to play the lead in a brand new Star Wars film. Due for release in May 2027, 50 years after the first one, Star Wars Starfighter will be a standalone film, meaning it won't be following the storylines of the main protagonist so far. But as Ed Brown reports,

it's almost certain to be set, like the other films, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. like the other films, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Since the franchise was acquired by Disney in 2012, the list of Star Wars spin-off titles has been ever-growing. Films and TV series set in the Star Wars universe have explored new themes and characters with varying approaches in tone and maturity. The cast of this upcoming title will include the Oscar nominated actor Ryan Gosling, who's perhaps best known for his critically acclaimed roles in Barbie and the musical La La Land. But he's also no stranger to blockbuster sci-fi movies, having taken the leading role in the 2017 sequel to Blade Runner. He said Star

Wars had always had a special place in his heart. I was dreaming about Star Wars before I ever saw it. It's always been there. It's sort of in the DNA of the culture, myself. I think it framed my idea of what a movie even was. As a standalone title, Star Wars Starfighter won't follow the well-established Skywalker family who were the central focus of George Lucas' original films, but little else is known about it. Its director, Sean Levy, who's known for comedies and action films including Deadpool and Wolverine, has said Starfighter

will be set in a period of time that we haven't seen explored yet. Ed Brown reporting. find us on X at BBC World Service, just use the hashtag globalnewspot. This edition was mixed by Pat Sissons, the producer was Liam McSherry, our editor is Karen Martin, I'm Jackie Leonard and until next time, goodbye. I'm Krassi Twigg from the Global Jigsaw Podcast on the BBC World Service, where we are asking what does the future hold for the Kurds? In February, Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed leader of the biggest Kurdish militant group, the PKK, called for the group to lay down arms and disband.

The announcement could change the geopolitical map of the Middle East. The Global Jigsaw looks at the world through the lens of its media. Find us wherever you get your BBC podcasts.