Global News Podcast - Ukraine accepts 30-day ceasefire

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

Ukraine accepts 30-day ceasefire in war with Russia. After a day of talks in Saudi Arabia, US agrees to resume military aid to Kyiv and intelligence sharing. Secretary of State Rubio says ball is now in Russia's court.

You're listening to the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway, and this edition is published in the early hours of Wednesday, the 12th of March. The US has resumed intelligence sharing and military aid for Ukraine after the Ukrainians agreed to an American proposal for a month long ceasefire. The US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he would present the plan to Russia and that the ball is in their court. Ukraine's President Vladimir Zelensky said it was a positive step. Rubio said he would present the plan to Russia and that the ball is in their court.

Ukraine's President Vladimir Zelensky said it was a positive step. Also in the podcast. People are talking about trying to end the HIV epidemic by 2030 and experts are saying this could be a real game changer. An annual injection designed to guard against HIV has completed an important early safety trial. Ukraine has been under huge pressure to sign up to President Trump's vision of a peace deal with Russia. The Americans even halted intelligence sharing and military aid. But

after talks in Saudi Arabia, the Ukrainians have agreed to a US proposal for an immediate 30-day ceasefire. Here's the American Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Today, we made an offer that the Ukrainians have accepted, which is to enter into a ceasefire and into immediate negotiations to end this conflict in a way that's enduring and sustainable and accounts for their interests, their security, their ability to prosper as a nation. Hopefully we'll take this off for now to the Russians and we hope that they'll say yes, that they'll say yes to peace, the ball's now in their court.

But again, the president's objective here is number one, above everything else, he wants the war to end and I think today Ukraine has taken a concrete step in that regard. We hope the Russians will reciprocate. Tom Bateman was in Jeddah for the talks and gave us his analysis. Well I think there's two very striking points about the joint statement that has been released by the Americans and the Ukrainians. The first is that the US is going to, it says, immediately lift the pause on intelligence sharing and resume its security assistance to Ukraine. And then we have this line about a ceasefire. Now, I need to give

you the context first, because this is why it's so important. What we had been led to expect in the run-up to this was that there would be discussions around a Ukrainian proposal for a partial early ceasefire, which would involve a halt on the firing of long range missiles onto energy and other critical infrastructure and also a ceasefire at sea. But what the statement talks about is something far broader. It talks about basically a complete ceasefire. So it says Ukraine expressed its readiness to accept a US proposal to enact an immediate

interim 30 day ceasefire which can be extended by mutual agreement of the party. Ukraine expressed its readiness to accept a US proposal to enact an immediate interim 30-day ceasefire, which can be extended by mutual agreement of the parties. So what they're talking about here is a complete stop to the war, but of course, you've only got one side here. It would have to be agreed by the Russians. So this leads to the next step, which is, it's reported, Steve Wicoff, Mr. Trump's envoy, is going to travel to Moscow this week. They're going to put all of this to the Russians and see if they can get them on board with this

process. One other important detail in the statement is about Ukrainian gratitude. Remember that key moment in the Oval Office where JD Vance sat across the room from Vladimir Zelensky and said, you haven't said thank you, say thank you. Now, of course, Mr Zelensky has said thank you dozens of times to the Americans and to the American government and the White House over its support and assistance in Ukraine. But that became really a symbol of how this relationship had fundamentally fractured, his dressing down

by the Trump administration, the White House. And now we have a line very clearly stating the Ukrainian delegation reiterated the Ukrainian people's strong gratitude to President Trump, the U.S. Congress and the people of the United States for making possible meaningful progress towards peace. You know, we've been expecting these talks to wrap up much sooner. There were moments where we thought they might finish and we were expecting the statement that they lasted a lot longer. I think given the atmosphere that there has been over the last two weeks, that was seen

as a positive sign and now we do have this very clear joint statement. Tom Bateman in Saudi Arabia. So how is Ukraine reacting to all this? Yuri Sak is an advisor to Ukraine's Ministry of Strategic Industries. Of course we are pleased with the outcome because the pause has ended in terms of providing Ukraine with military support as well as intelligence and this is crucial for our troops, this is crucial for our cities, this is crucial for our capacity to protect ourselves and of course we are quietly optimistic because you know after what happened during the last week and a half, today is really welcome development.

Both sides have worked very hard running up to these negotiations. You know, there's been daily exchanges of views and positions, and now they've finalized all of those in Jeddah, and hopefully this will work out. But of course, we are very, you know, how should I put it? We don't trust Russians because we have a very bad history of dealing with them. You know, for us they still continue to be an aggressor, a country that had committed numerous war crimes. We still view the United States of America as our strategic partner. You know, we will still continue to fight regardless of whether they're with us or not. But without them, it will be much, much more

difficult. Our correspondent in Kiev, James Waterhouse, told us more. Well, President Zelensky has thanked Donald Trump directly in his evening address for enabling these constructive talks. And it seems like Ukraine's leader feels like he has been listened to. He didn't take part in today's discussions, but I think this joint statement after hours of negotiations in Jeddah reflect a restoring of Ukraine and America's relationship. And I think just hearing the words that the ball is now in Russia's court will be music

to Kiev's ears because finally we're seeing an America apply some kind of pressure on Russia and finally it seems to be siding with Ukraine for the first time since Donald Trump took office. But whilst this is a diplomatic breakthrough for Kiev, there is a huge but. It all hinges on how the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, will view this proposal, or as the delegation put it today, whether he will both accept it and immediately implement this proposed month-long ceasefire along the current front lines. And how much of a difference will the resumption of intelligence and aid to Ukraine make on the battlefield? It'll be instantaneous. I mean, the impression we got from officers on the front line, it was that

it was like fighting blind. It is shared intelligence by America primarily that enables Ukraine to trace missiles, detect the build-up of Russian troops, to plan assaults, to get a sense of terrain, to use satellite imagery. That has now been restored and it allows, it sort of creates inertia once more on a creaking front line in some areas. It does not solve Ukraine's problems. You know, the Ukrainian troops are being encircled in some areas of the fighting, but it keeps it in the fight. I think America's withdrawal of support in this way was effectively like fading down Ukraine's life support machine. It's plugged back in, but Ukraine is still very much fighting for its life. James Waterhouse in Kiev.

And in the past few hours, Ukraine has confirmed that US security assistance and intelligence sharing has resumed. In Washington, President Trump said he would now talk to Vladimir Putin, but it takes two to tango. Ukraine, ceasefire, just agreed to a little while ago. That's a total ceasefire. Ukraine has agreed to it and hopefully Russia will agree to it. We're going to meet with them later on today and tomorrow and hopefully we'll be able to

wipe out a deal. But I think the ceasefire is very important. If we can get Russia to do it, that'll be great. If we can't, we just keep going on and people are going to get killed, lots of people. Well, for Reaction from Moscow, I spoke to Vitaly Shevchenko, Russia editor of BBC Monitoring. Well, there are several levels of Russian reaction that we've seen so far. Officially, there's not much. We've only had this statement circulated by Russian official news agencies quoting the

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova who said that Russia does not rule out contacts with US representatives in the next few days, whatever that means. On social media, the more pro-war commentators and war reporters in Russia, they don't really like these moves towards peace. In practical terms, I suppose you can see what's been going on in the skies of Ukraine as Russian reaction. There have been numerous attacks by Russian drones targeting Ukrainian cities in Dnepropetrovsk. More than 20 drones have been attacking various places across the city.

There are reports of attacks in Odessa. And as we speak, there's more than a dozen Russian drones roaming the skies above Ukraine. So that's a reaction of sorts if you like. But after the warming in relations, particularly with President Trump himself, would Russia risk rejecting the US plan? Well there are different scenarios. In a way Russia earlier rejected similar proposals coming from France and Great Britain. Maria Zakharova, the Foreign Minister's spokeswoman, she said that fighting would only resume with renewed force after a ceasefire. Whether it makes a difference that such proposals are now coming from America remains to be

seen. But if we were to have a look at history, over the course of these 11 years of war, numerous attempts have been made to broker a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. They've all failed. Vitaly Shevchenko. And still to come on the Global News Podcast. How Birdsong Changes Between Generations At least three people are reported to have been killed after separatist fighters attacked and seized a train in Balochistan in southwest Pakistan. More than 400 people were reported

to be on board, Many were taken hostage. The Jaffar Express was travelling from the provincial capital Quetta to the northern city of Peshawar. These people were waiting anxiously for news of their loved ones. We are desperately trying to contact our relatives, but there has been no response since we heard the train was hijacked in Bolan and passengers were taken hostage. My cousin, a woman and her small child were on board travelling from Quetta to Multan to pick up a family member. I'm frantic with worry but no one's telling me what's happening or if they're safe.

I got an update from our South Asia regional editor, Anbarasan Etirajan. What happened this afternoon near Quetta was quite extraordinary and unprecedented where a group of rebels stormed a train, a passenger train with 400 people and took control of it and taking many people as hostages. Now since then there have been lots of turns and both sides giving conflicting versions so there are lots of unknowns rather than knowns. Now the Pakistani military says they have sent special forces as well as helicopters fighting against militants and one of the state ministers a short while ago told a local

television channel that the rebels had taken some hostages and about a hundred security personnel, those who were going on leave or on different posting from Quetta from Balochistan to northern province, probably they were taken as hostages by the militants. Now a group of passengers had been released according to the rebels, whereas the military said they had been recovered from this in this fighting. About a hundred of them have already reached another station.

They were asked to walk to the nearest station and then from there they were taken by another train. So this is quite extraordinary. It has come as a big shock to many people in Pakistan, also a wake-up call for the Pakistani military. Yeah, do we know how they were able to stop the train? Now, the version according to the militants were that, because it was passing through a mountainous area between the tunnels. So it was very difficult for any security force to reach or even to send reinforcements.

So they basically attacked the train, well, it was before it was entering a tunnel. So the train was stopped and the driver was severely injured. Now who are these rebels? So they're basically they were fighting for the rights of the Baloch at the people and they say the federal Pakistani government they have been taking mineral resources but not giving anything back to the region to the people of Balochistan and that's their grievances and they have been fighting not only against the Pakistani military but also against Chinese investment projects. Our South Asia regional editor Anbar Hassan Etivarajan. More than 20 million people around the world are considered

to be at high risk of contracting HIV. A drug in the form of a daily pill can prevent it but only about three and a half million people take it. Now researchers are hoping that a yearly injection can be a game changer in the fight against the virus and it's just passed an important safety trial as I heard from our health correspondent Dominic Hughes. There are already drugs available, daily pills, even an injection that you can have every eight weeks that reduces the risk of contracting HIV. Now these are known as pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP medicines. These treatments are really effective, around 90% effective, but taking them consistently, particularly if you're taking daily pills,

can be a real challenge. Particularly if that's not a part of your life that you want to concentrate on all the time and you're taking daily pills for it, you can see that might be challenging. So a drug like this that lasts much longer can be a real help and is being seen as a really significant breakthrough. Yeah and what did this trial reveal? So this is what's known as a Phase 1 safety trial. It's all about that really. Is the drug safe to take? So 40 people, none of whom have had HIV, they were given the drug with what's called an intramuscular injection. Otherwise it's injected into the muscle. They reported no major side effects or safety concerns. Now interestingly even after 56 weeks the

medicine, that drug, was still detectable in their bodies. So this trial was focused very much on safety and how the body responds to that, the physiological response. It wasn't measuring how well this drug might prevent HIV infection but we know there's a version of this drug that is like basically the six month version of this drug that is much further down the road in clinical trials and so they are confident that this version of that other drug is also going to be effective. And so what's the next stage in working out whether this injection can be rolled out around the world? Yeah, so they have to now see through further phased trials whether that protective element does persist to a degree that it will give actual protection against HIV and also how

it will react in different groups of people. So will it react differently in men or women? Will it react differently in people from a South Asian background, from an Afro-Caribbean background? So they need to do those trials to make sure that it is the sort of drug that is going to be useful. And how long might that take? Well, people are talking about trying to end the HIV epidemic by 2030 and experts are saying this could be a real game-changer this drug and it could play a very very important part in that. So clinical trials are a bit elastic sometimes in how long they take to complete and how

long they take to go through the system but experts are confident, they're hoping I think, that this drug could play a really important part in certainly curbing the number of HIV infections within the next few years. Dominic Hughes, our health correspondent. President Trump has dropped his threat to step up his trade war with Canada after he said he would double the tariff on steel and aluminium. The White House says the proposed 50% duty will not now take effect. The change of heart came after the Canadian province of Ontario decided not to impose a planned 25% surcharge on its electricity exports to the US. President Trump told reporters

he respected the decision by Ontario's Premier Doug Ford. Our North America Business correspondent Erin Delmore has more details. Ontario's action was itself a retaliatory move against President Trump's sweeping 25 percent tariffs on all imported goods from Canada. Mr. Ford said that he and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick were now planning to meet later this week to discuss the trade tensions between the U.S. and its biggest trading partner. It's a remarkable turnaround after President Trump earlier threatened to increase tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum by an additional 25 percent, bringing the total import tax

to 50 percent. President Trump has now walked that back, but he reiterated his desire to absorb Canada into the U.S. as its 51st state. And a scheduled 25% tariff on steel and aluminum is still going into effect tomorrow. Canada is America's biggest supplier of both. Erin Dallmull. It's not unusual for people to like different music to their parents. It turns out that the same is sort of true for birds.

A major study of one of the most common species, the great tit, has found that over time the tunes they sing change. The BBC's Evan Davies found out more from Professor Ben Sheldon of Oxford University. What we were interested in was trying to understand why it is that you get variation in the kind of the pattern of different song types in a population. So we know that song in birds like great hits is learned when birds are early in their lives in their first year of life. And then the birds will sing more or less the same range of song types throughout their life. But if you go through a population, through a woodland, you can hear lots of different song types. The greater has quite a characteristic song.

Sometimes described as a squeaky hinge. I was saying teacher, teacher. Actually, there's lots of variation in the population. So sort of different song types sung by different individuals. So each individual bird tends to stick to its tune. It's got a little repertoire. So it has synced between four and ten song types and it keeps those over its life. And of course it's learned those to where it was growing up and then it's moved to

settle down and breed itself. So in principle it takes its songs from its local environment with it and brings them to a new place. If you compare birds that are born at different times, that older birds sing slightly different types of songs than the younger birds. So if you have an area that is primarily composed of older birds, it will sound slightly differently than one bird's born just a year or two or three later. If you have an area that is composed of a mix of ages, that's actually where you get the most variation locally. You'll have the most variable soundscape, if you like, is when you've got lots of different ages of

birds in a place. That's really nice because it shows us that these old birds act as cultural stores of these songs in the past. Just to remind me, why are they singing? Why do we think they evolved to sing? Two main reasons that the male birds are singing. Females sing as well, but that's been neglected. But males sing at this time of year for two reasons. One is to advertise their presence. If they haven't got a mate, they're advertising the fact that they're there and they're available to a female if she wants to come along and breed with them. And then they're also singing to other males, effectively saying, this is my bit of the woodland, keep out.

The reason I was asking the purpose of the singing was to understand whether, when it changes, do the other birds, do they understand the signal that's made by the song? You can tell that in a sense, all of these songs sound like a great song, even if they sound a bit different from one another. So it's not that they won't understand each other. There is some evidence that when populations of birds get really small and fragmented, so when birds become rare, then you can have this problem that effectively birds may not learn to recognize all of the variants of song as being of their own species.

So you can then have some degree to which the recognition of species breaks down. Obviously, if a population is large and there's lots of movement, then that means that the song types move around and the birds get exposed to lots and so on. So it's not a problem with the common bird like the great tit, but actually there is some research suggesting that this can become a problematic issue when populations become very small and fragmented. Ben Sheldon of Oxford University. Now, have you heard of space weather? We're planning a collaboration with our colleagues from BBC Weather about just that phenomenon and we need your help. To explain more I caught up with our lead weather presenter Simon King. So space weather is

a really interesting topic in its very simple definition. It refers to the changing environmental conditions on Earth and our atmosphere created by solar activity. So we know the Sun spurts out lots of plasma and energy, radiation, geomagnetic winds. They're constantly coming out of the Sun and sometimes like volcanic eruptions we can get coronal mass ejections which basically push out you know large quantities of plasma and radiation and then that interacts with our atmosphere and it can give us impacts on Earth. Now the beautiful side

of space weather is one that we'll all be familiar with and that's the Northern Lights or the Aurora Borealis. That is basically these charged particles the energy from the Sun interacting with oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere to give us those beautiful colors. But space weather is actually also really important on a global scale for security because it's a big hazard. We can get these geomagnetic storms that can impact spacecraft. So it can cut out the electrics, it can give radiation poisoning to astronauts who might be in the space station, it can

interrupt with our satellites and that can obviously have big impacts to global trades, the economy, banking, you know, how much do we rely on now on our smartphones and electronics, the internet to do everything. You know, everything is controlled by that. And a big geomagnetic storm can actually wipe all that out. So we're talking about very severe consequences because of space weather. And that's why it's also on the national risk register,

which is why the government is particularly concerned about it. And that's why we monitor the sun 24-7 to kind of notice these and spot these events as they're happening. So, yeah, it's really important. And as you look at the sun, it's getting quite busy at the moment. It is. So the sun goes through an 11-year cycle from maximum to minimum activity.

And 2024, 2025, we are now in a solar maximum and that basically means that we know there are a lot of sunspots on the surface of the sun and these sunspots are like volcanic eruptions and they spurt out extra energy out into space and if they're directed towards the earth that's where we can get the aurora and these geomagnetic storms. So we're in the maximum period at the minute and which is why actually throughout 2024 we saw some incredible aurora. Talking about looking up to the sky, you also keep across meteor showers and eclipses even though they're not strictly included in the definition of space weather. That's right, so well because that's essentially because we need clear skies most of the time, don't we, to see things like meteor showers or

We've got a lunar eclipse coming up in March also a partial solar eclipse coming up So we're keeping a close eye on those as well because of course They're no good if you can't see them. So we need to know about the cloud cover We want to know about the weather forecast So it falls to us at the BBC Weather Center to be kind of the people in charge of kind of communicating these events. So yeah it's certainly interesting throughout March. Of course we've got the equinox coming up as well. So there are a lot of celestial things that are going on which we hopefully can tell you more about.

Simon King, we're aiming to record something around the Equinox so that is next week. If there's anything you'd like to know please email globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk or find us on x at BBC World Service using the hashtag globalnewspod and it will be great if you could record your question as a voice note. Thanks.