Global News Podcast - Trump says Zelensky will visit Washington on Friday

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

President Zelensky wants safeguards before a ceasefire. Also: Israel frees Palestinian prisoners in return for the bodies of hostages and if Afghan men play international cricket why can't women?

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Hello, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox. And we would like to tell you about the new series of The Infinite Monkey Cage. We're going to have a planet off. Jupiter versus Saturn. It's very well done that because in the script it does say wrestling voice. After all of that, it's going to kind of chill out a bit and talk

about ice. And also in this series, we're discussing history of music, recording with Brian Eno and looking at nature's shapes. So listen wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Chris Burrow and in the early hours of Thursday 27th February these are our main stories. President Trump says Volodymyr Zelensky will visit Washington on Friday to sign an agreement on sharing Ukraine's mineral resources. Mr Zelensky says he's still looking for American security guarantees.

Elon Musk has told Mr Trump's cabinet that America could go bankrupt if he failed in his role at the Department of Government Efficiency. Hamas is handing over the bodies of four Israeli hostages in Gaza in exchange for the stalled release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Also in this podcast Afghan players, they are giving so much happiness right now to everyone in the country. They love to see Afghan men playing cricket." Afghan men can play international cricket, but women can't. A former captain tells us

why. President Trump has confirmed that Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky will visit Washington on Friday to sign an agreement on sharing the country's mineral resources. But Mr Zelensky has described that deal as preliminary and wants further security guarantees in the event of a possible ceasefire with Russia. Speaking in Kiev, he said that he hoped the negotiations would pave the way for NATO membership or equivalent security provisions. We are ready, you know, to be flexible. In this deal, there are only, you know, basic things about that. Yes, security

guarantees and et cetera. Next steps have to be about it. Without future security guarantees, we will not have really just peace and we will not have really ceasefire, what Trump spoken about. And if we don't have it, nothing will work. So we will have nothing. Nothing will work. Mr. Trump indicated that he wasn't going to grant any extensive security guarantees. He said that European countries should do that and he remained confident that he could secure a deal to end the fighting. Our Europe regional editor Danny Eberhard has more on the Ukrainian minerals deal. Reuters has seen a draft. I mean, this is all supposed to be a framework agreement,

according to the Ukrainians, on establishing what's known as a reconstruction investment fund. What does that mean? We're not precisely sure at this stage. And further negotiations will have to take place on a more detailed binding agreement. But according to Reuters, the fund will be jointly managed by the US and Ukraine. Ukraine will pay in about half of its revenues from new state-owned extractions, basically, not current ones, so not ones it's already actually pulling out of the earth. And that these contributions were meant to be apparently reinvested in Ukraine for its security and prosperity. It hasn't defined what sort of minerals are being taken out, but it involves things like

titanium, graphite, lithium, rare earths that Donald Trump is often going on about, but also oil, natural gas, and it's linked into port infrastructure and other critical infrastructure. And it makes no mention of the fact that Ukraine owes the US any particular debt that was taught from Donald Trump about $500 billion earlier. That has disappeared. But it also offers no firm security guarantees to Ukraine, and that's a really critical thing. The only thing it mentions, according to Reuters, is this phrase, the government of the United States of America supports Ukraine's efforts to obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting peace.

It doesn't say who would give those security guarantees. So in terms of concrete things, it means precisely nothing at all. And it does talk about the US providing a long-term financial commitment. But what's not clear, and this is really important at this stage, is how would the US extract money from the fund or would it take resources? All those details are not really clear at this stage and given the fact that Donald Trump has been pushing so hard for this agreement, obviously that is a very important part of it. The Ukraine government is reviewing the deal to give permission

basically for it to be signed and then if it does get signed there'll be further negotiations. Yeah there's still a lot more to come clearly and just talk us through Europe's position on this potential deal because there have been discussions between Zelensky and Europe with security guarantees potentially there as well. Yeah so the whole issue of security guarantees, Donald Trump he was asked about this and he said he wasn't going to give very much in the way of security guarantees and that that is basically Europe's responsibility because it's their neighbourhood. Several European powers have indicated a willingness to potentially deploy troops at some point in Ukraine, but that's a very thorny issue where they would be deployed. They've said not on the front line, what they're called, whether they're called peacekeepers or reassurance forces, and there is so many questions still to be asked about that,

even including whether Russia actually will accept the deployment of NATO member countries forces in Ukraine. Danny Aberhard, the billionaire Elon Musk has been speaking about his efforts to make the US federal government more efficient. He was attending President Trump's first cabinet meeting since he returned to the White House last month. Mr. Musk, who isn't in the cabinet but wields significant power, has described his work as providing tech support to the federal government. He and his team at DOGE, the Department for Government Efficiency, have already made extensive cuts. Mr. Musk said that he wanted to keep on all employees who were doing essential jobs and doing them well.

He was adamant though that money had to be saved. We simply cannot sustain as a country a $2 trillion deficit. Just the interest on the national debt now exceeds the Defence Department's spending. We spent a lot on the Defence Department but we're spending like over a trillion dollars on interest. If this continues, the country will go become de facto bankrupt. It's not an optional thing, it is an essential thing. Tensions have emerged between Elon Musk and several cabinet members, especially since he issued his demand that all government employees summarise a list of what they accomplished at work last week or be fired. Our Washington correspondent Nomiya Iqbal watched the televised cabinet meeting.

Quite remarkable but also underlines just how close him and President Trump are. Elon Musk is unelected, he wasn't confirmed by the Senate, but he does have this outsize influence with the administration and there's a lot of controversy over what he is doing exactly. He was tasked to try and reduce the federal workforce to make government more efficient. But in terms of how he is doing it, it has made some people uneasy. There are reports that some of the Cabinet members in that room are uneasy about his influence. But if they were, they didn't say it. They certainly didn't show it on their faces. Even when Mr Trump asked them if

anyone was uncomfortable, they didn't say anything. And then he said, well, if you are, we'll throw you out and sort of made a joke about it, which was probably a bit of a half joke. But I think there's also concern about, you know, is Elon Musk taking advantage of his position? He has a lot of government contracts. He's the owner of X, formerly Twitter, Tesla, SpaceX. Is he somehow benefiting financially? Those are questions that Mr Trump has been asked, as has his press secretary, and they've always said that if there's any conflict of interest, if there's anything not right, they will deal with that. They're making sure that there's no conflict of interest, but also there is concern there's

not a huge amount of transparency when it comes to Elon Musk. But he did stand there and he did take questions from reporters and defended his work. Nomiya Iqbal. As we record this podcast, Israel is due to receive the bodies of four hostages from Hamas. Once it's confirmed, Israel has said it will release more than 600 Palestinian prisoners after refusing to free them last Saturday, claiming that Hamas had violated part of the agreement. The hostage-prisoner exchange would mark the final part of the first phase of the ceasefire deal. Sebastian Asha is in Jerusalem.

Essentially, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel would not countenance any more of what he called degrading and humiliating exhibitions. The mediators seem to have worked overtime, as they have over the past few weeks, in Cairo, to get Hamas to agree to do this in private and that is what is happening now. The four bodies will be handed over to the Red Cross. There won't be any public staging of the event and that then should lead to the release of all those more than 600 Palestinian prisoners. I think Hamas was relatively easy perhaps to persuade because they want the ceasefire to

continue. I think perhaps more so than the Israeli Prime Minister does at the moment. What do we know about the Palestinian prisoners? We know there's just over 600 of them but do we know any further details? We know that more than 400 of them were arrested and detained. I mean, some of them again held without charge. After October 7, 2023, when Israel arrested thousands of Palestinians in these exchanges, there will be some Palestinian prisoners who are serving life sentences and some who are serving long sentences, more than 100 of them. And some of those who are seen by Israel as too much of a security risk will not be allowed to stay either in Gaza

or in the occupied West Bank. They'll be expelled and will go into exile. I mean, one has to remember that whatever offences they've been sentenced for, and as I say, quite a large number, won't actually have been charged. For Palestinians, I mean, this really goes to the heart of how they feel about the whole situation. There isn't a Palestinian family that hasn't had someone arrested at some point.

So the kind of feelings that they have, they may not match quite the intense grief and sorrow that Israel will feel when four dead bodies are returned, but there will be again feeling of joy, a feeling of relief. And this is in theory the final part of stage one of the ceasefire deal. There's presumably more negotiations that need to happen before the further stages. What's next in terms of paving the way for that? What has to happen next? That is a question that we really don't have an answer to at the moment. I mean, phase

one, this would be the end of it in terms of the exchanges. That's due to run out on Saturday. In the original deal, ceasefire deal, there were three phases. So the next one would be the one in which all the remaining Israeli hostages alive or dead would be released and there would be a full troop pullout by Israel and hopefully as far as most people in the region I think are concerned there will be an end to the current round of hostilities. Those are big questions essentially, especially the role of Hamas I think is key. What we've seen in these stage hostage handovers is that Hamas wants to present itself still very much as a force that needs to be reckoned with in Gaza's future. What Israel wants is a total disarmament of Hamas and for it to have no place in the governance of Gaza.

I don't think that that gap between the two sides has come anywhere close to being bridged. I mean at the moment these things are very vague and a lot of people here in Israel and in Gaza are not very hopeful about where this is going to end up. Sebastian Usher. Away from Gaza, the deepening conflict in the occupied West Bank has been causing major concern. The head of the United Nations Aid Agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said that it was becoming a battlefield. Paul Adams sent us this report on Israel's recent security operations in the West Bank. I'm looking down the hill here to the eastern edge of Tulkarim refugee camp. It's a densely packed area of houses built right next to each other. But in the middle of it, there's

what looks like a street. But it's not a street because there were houses there a week ago. The people in those houses were given two hours to come and collect their belongings before the entire area was demolished. When Israel's military operation in Tulkarim began a month ago, camp residents were given

very little time to leave. In the offices of the local Palestinian Authority, we found displaced people with a host of problems. Ala Ofi's wife is about to give birth. He needs paperwork but hasn't been allowed home to get it. The army forced us out. Me, my family, my wife, we took nothing with us on the way out. We left our documents behind, our clothes and everything we had at home. Israel says the army had no choice but to enter the camps. It's here, the government

says, where acts of violence are planned against soldiers and civilians alike. But Tulkaram's governor, Dr. Abdallah Kmeil, sees it differently. ABDALHELM KMEIL, Governor of Tulkaram, Syria It is a declaration of war and a declaration that oversteps all agreements between the Israelis and the Palestinians. You are talking about an operation of destruction, the financial and mental destruction of the West Bank. At the weekend, Israel ordered tanks into Jenin, clearing the camps it said could go

on for a year. It's already the biggest operation of its kind in the West Bank for more than half a century. The Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu donned a flak jacket and went to the West Bank himself to drive home the message. We're entering terrorist strongholds, flattening entire streets that terrorists use and their homes. We are eliminating terrorists, commanders, we're doing very very important work

against Hamas and other terrorist organizations desire to harm us. The main road into the camp here in Jenin is a desolate scene. Earth bulldozed to the sides of the roads, shop fronts damaged and huge puddles of water in the middle of the road. These camps have been around for 75 years. They've never been evacuated like this before. Israel says everything it's doing here is about security but this place is home to more than 20,000 people and they're being told they may not be able to go home for a year. Around 40,000 people have been displaced. Some families have moved into public

buildings, others are staying with relatives or in rented houses. For the children playing here in the grounds of a charity for the blind, education has stopped. Majida Zuada is here with her children and grandchildren. They told us to leave and that they would later tell us when to come back. Up until now it's not clear when we will be able to return to the camp. We wake up every morning and they hope we go back. However, there's still little hope. With the war in Lebanon over and the war in Gaza on hold, Israel is focusing its attention on the West Bank.

The government says the threat posed by armed groups in the camps is real, but in dealing with it, Israel is doing a great deal of damage. This isn't Gaza, but lives and homes are being destroyed with no immediate end in sight. Paul Adams. Next, cricket. On Wednesday, England played Afghanistan in a one-day match. The men's team, of course, as the Taliban doesn't allow a women's team. Afghanistan beat England by eight runs in the Pakistani city of Lahore. There had been calls to boycott the match because of the Taliban's treatment of women. Afghanistan doesn't meet the requirements

of the International Cricket Council, but the ICC decided that the male cricket players shouldn't be punished for the men-only policy of the government in Afghanistan. My colleague Evan Davis spoke to Raees Ahmadzai who once captained the Afghan team and is now the Under-19s head coach. During the Russia war we left the country and we went to Pakistan. We learned cricket there and we started with very basic kind of facilities. I mean, with no proper bat or with no proper balls. So we learned cricket there in Peshawar in the refugees camps. That's obviously incredible. And then you ended up playing in like one day internationals.

That's quite a big jump. Yeah, if you start from a zero level facilities and then you will be able to play against top nations. If you can see now, we are head to head with England. So that means in a very short time we had a fantastic journey in world cricket. You didn't have proper cricket spikes, did you? You were just playing in training. I played my first ODI in a normal shoes, not with spikes.

How popular is the game for spectators? How many people come and watch it? Is it a popular sport in Afghanistan? Everyone is talking about cricket. You know, like recently, I think the whole country will be sitting in front of television to watch England versus Afghanistan. So it's very, very famous. You will know, of course, Reis, there are calls for the England team not to play Afghanistan,

the men's team not to play Afghanistan, because Afghanistan doesn't have a women's team, which the International Cricket Council say is part of the game and is a requirement. What do you think of that boycott idea, the idea that England should boycott Afghanistan? I must say thanks to the English Cricket board and thanks to all the cricketers. We want that everyone have the rights about education, about the work, and all humans have the rights to do everything that everyone is doing. But sometimes you know something is not in your control. We rise our voice all the time about education, about the work for women.

So that's in our control. We cannot challenge the government. And look, Afghan players, they are giving so much happiness right now to everyone in the country. I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? Because obviously, Western sporting organizations may say we can get Afghanistan to change. If we don't play the men's team, they will change. And that's, you know, that'll be good for the game.

I'm not sure if someone will not want to play with Afghanistan, the things will be changed here. What will be the another problem? There will be more sadness for lots of people, which is they love to see Afghan men's playing cricket. It's worth saying that, I mean, cricket players in Afghanistan are not people all who are coming from very privileged backgrounds. A lot of you I think have come from a refugee background from playing in refugee camps as you had. Yes exactly you know when we start but right now in our national team most of the players they train here in Afghanistan and around thousand and thousand kids playing cricket everywhere in the country.

As Rajis Ahmadzai, well Tonya Antoniaatsi is an MP from Britain's governing Labour Party. She said that she appreciated his ability to overcome poverty, but Afghan women should be given the same chance to play. It's so dystopian, it's absolutely unbelievable and I find it really hard to believe that we just have to sit back and say nothing because what's involved politics, money, men, you know, we've got to stand up and say... I mean he was a displaced refugee obviously, he was outside his country when he learnt to play cricket with a tennis ball on his back.

Yes, and isn't that wonderful, isn't it absolutely a joy to behold that he had those opportunities and those other displaced refugees should have those opportunities as well. And this is where the ICC could be really positive and actually make a contribution that displaced Afghans, refugees can have that joy as well. Tonya Antoniazzi. Still to come. It's a miracle that she's conscious and she's speaking.

She doesn't understand. The nurse came over and said to pay attention because she might faint any moment. The woman on hunger strike trying to free her gelled son. Hello, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox and we would like to tell you about the new series of The Infinite Monkey Cage. We're going to have a planet off. Jupiter versus Saturn!

It's very well done that because in the script it does say wrestling voice. After all of that it's going to kind of chill out a bit and talk about ice. And also in this series we're discussing history of music, recording with Brian Eno and looking at nature's shapes. So listen wherever you get your podcasts. Since the military coup in 2021 and the civil war that followed, 20 million people in Myanmar are in need of humanitarian assistance. Some people are struggling so much with poverty that they're selling their kidneys. Sophie Smith has the story. A few hours drive from Myanmar's largest city, Yangon, lies a small village where thatched

houses lie in dirt roads. In one of these houses lives Zeya, whose name we've changed to protect his identity, a farm worker with a young family. They live in his mother-in-law's house. After four years of civil war, Zeya has struggled to feed his family and to pay off his debts. So desperate, he looked for any means of survival and he saw that other locals were doing something that he'd never dreamt of. They'd been travelling to India and they'd been selling their kidneys.

I just wanted to own a house for my family and I have a child. That's why I decided to sell my kidney. I learnt that a lot of residents around my village made money by selling their kidney and no one died after the operation. I also wanted to pay off my debt so I sold it. Although buying or selling human organs is illegal in both Myanmar and India, Zeya soon managed to find what he calls an organ broker. He says the man found someone needing a kidney, a Burmese woman, matched them up and arranged for them to travel for the surgery. I contacted a broker. I took a

medical checkup to check my blood type. A couple of months later the agent made a passport for me and I flew to India. Laws in India make it difficult to donate to someone who isn't your relative. But Zaya says the broker forged documents putting his name in the recipient's family tree. When they got to India he was questioned by four people but they believed his story. He was put to sleep and operated on in a large hospital where he stayed for a week afterwards, unable to move without pain. Zaya is one of eight people from his small village who have traveled to India to sell their kidneys. Another woman, Ms Tida, said

she wasn't even sure if she was breaking the law. The broker didn't explain properly whether this process was legal or not, but I figured it out. They said they had to forge documents to make a fake connection to the person getting the kidney. Illegal kidney sales driven by poverty have risen in recent years across Asia. Last year, a senior Indian health ministry official told several states to beware of a surge in transplants involving foreigners and he called for better monitoring. Zeya did get his 7.5 million Myanmar chats. These are worth somewhere between $1,700 and $2,700. He's managed to pay off

his debts. But several months after his surgery, Zeya still has not been able to buy the house he wanted for his family. He bought a small plot of land, but he couldn't afford to build a house and he hasn't been able to construct one with the pain of recovery. Sophie Smith. Most homes and businesses in Chile have had their power restored after a huge blackout on Tuesday plunged the country into darkness. A curfew that was imposed over much of the country by the president has been lifted along with a state of emergency. Gabriel Boric said the blackout was outrageous and blamed electricity firms for not doing their job properly. Chile has one of the most reliable power grids in South America. Its last major outage occurred

15 years ago. Luke Jones heard more from our Latin America editor, Vanessa Buschluter. We know what the company behind it has told us, which is that one of the transmission lines failed. It said that there was a safety mechanism that was triggered, unplanned and unscheduled fashion, and then knocked out the electricity for almost the entire country, from cities in the very north to cities in the very south.

And what has the impact been on people? It has had a massive impact on millions of people. Some of the worst affected were the people in the capital, especially those who were on the underground at the time. 2.3 million people used that underground every day and many were on trains when this power cut happened. They had to be evacuated from the stations in the dark. Some described the situation as being like sardines in the dark in those carriages. Others were trapped on escalators or in lifts.

And luckily the hospitals had backup generators so that most people there had no detrimental effect to their care, luckily. Vanessa Buschluter. Here in the United Kingdom, a woman who's been on hunger strike for the past 150 days on behalf of her jailed son has been declared to be at risk of sudden death. Laila Sueif has urged the British government to help secure the release of Alaa Abdel Fattah from a prison in Egypt. He was arrested in Cairo under the charge of spreading false news.

Ella Bicknell reports. Alaa Abdel Fattah rose to prominence as a blogger during the 2011 Arab Spring. In 2019, he was given a five-year sentence over a social media post. His mother has been on hunger strike for 150 days, lobbying the British government to secure his release. After months of only consuming herbal tea, coffee and rehydration salts, the 68-year-old was taken to hospital on Monday, her blood sugar dropping to life-threatening levels. It's a miracle that she's conscious and she's speaking. She doesn't understand. The nurse

came over and said to pay attention because she might faint any moment. Laila Sueif's daughter Sanaa. I'm really frustrated. I feel like the foreign office has wasted so much time. I really am struggling to believe that the British government is unable to get considered access to one of its citizens in an ally country. I don't think they are doing their best. The British government says they are making repeated pleas to the Egyptian authorities. Keir Starmer was pressed on the issue during Prime Minister's questions on Wednesday. I did meet the mother and the family just a few days ago and it is an incredibly difficult situation for them. I will do everything I can to ensure the release in this case and

that includes phone calls as necessary. I've raised it before, I'll raise it again, we raise it and will continue to do so. I gave my word to the family that that's what I do, that I will do and I will. Doctors say Lea Sueyf is at immediate risk of death. She's been put on a saline drip to maintain her sodium levels but has refused glucose treatment in order to continue her hunger strike. Ella Bignall, a cryptocurrency company in Dubai, is looking to recruit online bounty to continue her hunger strike. hunters to go after the thieves suspected to be from North Korea's notorious Lazarus group. I heard more from our cyber correspondent Joe Tidy. Bybit like other crypto exchanges allows you to exchange your different cryptocurrencies

for various things. So for example, I could go to an exchange with dollars and I could buy myself some bitcoins and Ethereum, that kind of thing. And this attack, they would have taken months over this and they got lucky as well because they managed to find some people with really high level access that they managed to trick into downloading the malware. And then the whole thing probably took a few minutes by the time they planned everything, pressed a few buttons, and the money is siphoned to their own wallets. And now this incredible cat and mouse chase around the blockchains around the world. You can see the hackers moving the money and trying to cash it out.

And there are legions of people trying to stop them. And how does it work for the Bouncy Hunters? So they find, let's say, some money in somebody's wallet. What are they supposed to do then? So yes, the amazing thing about cryptocurrencies, and especially when you've got a situation like this, is all the money, you can see everything. It's on the blockchain, this giant database of transactions. So we can see this $1.46 billion worth of crypto going out of the Bybit exchange wallets into the hackers address. And now we know that

the way they work, the North Koreans, they are splitting it into smaller chunks and sending it to various places around the cryptocurrency network to try and obscure the origins and eventually, when they can, cash it out into money they can actually use. We think, and research has been saying this for years now, that that kind of theft is being used to help them develop their nuclear weapons and sort of military apparatus in the country and of course avoid sanctions as well. So right now, what the bounty hunters are doing are watching those transactions take place and whenever the money is hitting an authoritative company, for example an exchange, they're racing each other to message the exchange and say look we think this

money has come from the Bybit hack, freeze it, and if they're successful Bybit is giving 5% to the bounty hunters and 5% to the companies for playing ball. And largely, it's working so far. They've managed to rescue, I think it's about 100 million or something. Sounds like a lot, but when you've got 1.46 billion at stake, it's early days. And there's no sort of central bank or regulator. So this is really the only way of them getting the money back. That's right. Yeah. In the crypto world, you are your own bank, as they say. Unless you

interact with a company that does play ball, there's nothing you can do. You watch your money fly out the door. Can anybody just sign up to be a bounty hunter? I'm presuming you have to have some kind of awareness of crypto and technological kind of skills, but I guess you don't have to have any real qualification. You just kind of have a go. You do, yeah. So all they ask you for is if you have a Bitcoin or a crypto wallet, as soon as you are successful in your bounty, they will deposit the 5%. And I have spoken to someone who has already been given some of that money as well. They've earned about 150 grand so far from their activity. But I will say it's extremely specialised, highly skilled work.

It's way beyond me. Oh, I've got no chance. Thanks to our cyber correspondent, Joe Tidy. And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later on. If you'd like to comment on the podcast or the topics we're covering, do 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 globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Jancis Haycox and the producer was Daniel Mann. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Chris Barrow and until next time, thanks for listening, goodbye. Saturn! It was very well done that because in the script it does say wrestling voice.

After all of that it's going to kind of chill out a bit and talk about ice. And also in this series we're discussing history of music, recording with Brian Eno and looking at nature's shapes. So listen wherever you get your podcasts.