Global News Podcast - Ukraine says Russia broke pledge not to attack

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of launching air attacks after a limited pause was agreed. Also: Mexico City waves goodbye to bullfighting, and why the JFK assassination has sparked so many conspiracy theories.

You're listening to the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 14 hours GMT on Wednesday, the 19th of March. President Zelenskyy has accused Vladimir Putin of breaking a promise not to attack Ukraine's energy infrastructure. Turkish police have arrested the president's biggest political rival, Ekrem Immamoglu, the popular mayor of Istanbul. And the UN says two of its staff have been killed at one of its compounds in Gaza. Also in the podcast... Look I'm 67 years old, but that's nothing. Mick Jagger is what, 82? I'm young, I'm a whiplash snapper.

And look at the work of Hans Zimmer, composer of some of the world's most memorable film music. Putin is playing a game, so says the German foreign minister after the Russian president appeared to go back on his promise not to target Ukraine's energy infrastructure. Russia reportedly hit an electricity system in Ukraine just hours after the Trump-Putin phone call. President Zelenskyy said Russia's words didn't match its actions. Even after Putin's conversation with the President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, when Putin said that he was supposedly giving the order to stop the strikes on the Ukrainian energy sector, there were 150 drone attacks overnight, including on energy facilities. There were also strikes on transport. Unfortunately, two hospitals were hit and there were strikes on ordinary urban infrastructure.

That means to say Putin's words are very, very at odds with reality." For its part, Russia accused Ukraine of attempting to disrupt peace talks by targeting an oil storage facility on its territory. We'll hear from Moscow in a moment, but first to our diplomatic correspondent James Landau in Kiev. According to President Zelensky there were a number of drone strikes across the country and as a result of that there have been reports of a hospital in the town of Sumi being hit. There's also been reports of an attack on a rail power station in Dnipropetrovsk directly in

contradiction to Mr Putin's promises that he wouldn't target energy. And so in response to that, you know, Mr Zelensky is saying, well, look, the offer of a partial ceasefire is clearly positive. It's better than nothing. It was something that this idea of reducing the amount of tax on energy infrastructure was part of his original plan. But equally, the fact that the Russians have ignored and broken their promise already, he says, shows that Russia is not ready to finish the fighting. So there is some scepticism, I think, in Kiev

about the promises that Mr Putin has made to Mr Trump. But at the same time, Ukraine has also been striking Russia. Yeah, that's right. I mean, when Mr. Zelensky gave his briefing yesterday after the telephone call between Mr. and Mrs. Putin, he made it very clear that, you know, if Russia attacked Ukraine, particularly energy infrastructure, then Ukraine would hit back. He said, look, we're not going to stop doing this unless the Russians stop doing it. In other words, it has to be something that is mutual. Therefore, the fighting continues. As it is, a lot of analysts here have been saying, look, energy infrastructure is not the thing anymore because we're coming out of the winter. We're heading into the spring when Ukraine is warmer, when the focus on energy is less critical.

What Mr. Putin is offering to give up is actually something that he might benefit from more than Ukraine. And presumably the Ukrainians are worried that the Americans will accept Russian demands that aid to Ukraine is stopped as a precondition for any talks. Yeah, I mean they say that is a red line for them. They say Mr Zelensky insisted that he had confidence and that partners would continue to provide aid and intelligence to Ukraine.

I mean, the problem is, is that, as we've learned in recent weeks, the U.S. is prepared to suspend that aid because it's done it on its own without having any request from Russia. So I think it is quite natural and expected for Russia to make that request simply because the Americans are willing to contemplate it. I think there is quite natural for and expected for Russia to make that request simply because the Americans are willing to contemplate it. I think there's also a distinction

being drawn between the fact that the United States said to Ukraine, you need to sign up to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire across the whole of Ukraine, the air, the sea and on the front line. Russia has refused to do that and yet instead of being given threats by the Americans Mr Trump has put out a statement overnight saying that good progress was made so I think there's very much a sense here that Ukraine has been treated differently to Russia. James in Kiev, thank you. Well let's get the view from Moscow, our Russia editor Steve Rosenberg is there. Steve, why did Russia carry out these attacks after saying it wouldn't hit energy targets in Ukraine? Well, you'd have to ask Vladimir Putin that question.

I mean, generally this morning I get the feeling that Russia is quite pleased with how the telephone conversation went. If we're talking about the Putin-Trump call believes, well, according to one pro-Krummen news site this morning, Russia scored a diplomatic victory here. And the reason I think the Russians are pleased with how it went is that Putin and Trump spoke for two hours. At the end of it, Vladimir Putin managed to retain good relations with Donald Trump. The US-Russia reset is still on.

The Russians managed to convince the Americans that Moscow is serious about wanting peace, while at the same time Moscow made no major concessions and basically rejected President Trump's idea of this immediate unconditional 30-day ceasefire. Instead, President Putin was very clear in laying out once again Russia's conditions, that the West must stop arming Ukraine, that the West must stop providing Ukraine with intelligence data, that Ukraine must stop mobilization, stop recruiting soldiers. The kind of conditions that Ukraine is not going to agree to, that Europe wouldn't agree to if Europe has any say in the matter. And so I think the question now is will Moscow convince the Americans to basically agree with these

conditions? Critics of the Kremlin say what's happening now is that the Kremlin is just playing for time. Yeah, playing for time. There's also some suggestion that Vladimir Putin kept Donald Trump waiting for an hour before making that call. Have you heard anything about that? No, I don't.

I can't confirm that. But I tell you what what's also happening What the Russians are doing in their conversations with the Americans the Russians are dangling various economic financial carrots in the face of the Trump administration Basically talking about how wonderful how mutually profitable the US Russia relationship will be When they can finally get to work on joint projects. We've already heard Vladimir Putin raise the possibility of joint projects in aluminium,

rare earth metals. The message is sinking in. Donald Trump gave an interview to Fox News last night and he said in that interview, we'd like to have more trade with Russia. They have some very valuable things for us. They have a big chunk of real estate, the biggest in the world. They have things that we could use. I suspect that Moscow is calculating that for Donald Trump, the prospect of getting a chunk of that, if you like, Russian real estate is going to Trump getting a good deal

for Ukraine when it comes to ending the war. Steve Rosenberg in Moscow. We also heard from James Landale in Kiev. According to the Hamas-run health ministry, 970 people have been killed since Israel launched new strikes on Gaza, though the figures haven't been confirmed. The fragile truce with Hamas was brought to an abrupt end with a devastating bombardment on Monday night. Dr. Tanya Haj Hassan has been treating some of the victims in a hospital in Harnunis in southern Gaza and a warning that some of what she told us is distressing. A lover of horror and evil that is really hard to articulate it felt like Armageddon. I'm in the pediatric ICU now and I have a little

infant only a few months old. She ended up having pretty significant internal bleeding in the bed near her. We have a little girl that is, I want to say, six years old. She has the word, Majhul, written on her, which means unknown. We don't know if her parents survived where they are. She had internal bleeding. She was operated on. She also has shrapnel penetrating her brain on the left side and is not moving the right side of her body.

The renewed attacks came after Hamas refused Israel's demand to renegotiate the Gaza ceasefire. The Palestinian group wanted to continue with the original plan to hold talks on a second phase including a full withdrawal of Israeli troops. That was always strongly opposed by right-wing members of the Israeli cabinet like Itamar Ben-Gavir who resigned over the original agreement and who has now been reappointed as national security minister. Shortly before coming into the studio we got an update from our Middle East correspondent Yolande Nel. We've actually been hearing within the past hour from the UN, which believes that two of its staff have been killed and others have been injured after a UN compound was apparently

hit. The Israeli military have been very quick coming out with a statement saying that they did not attack a UN building in Derebalach in central Gaza, but the BBC has verified footage that does show injured foreign workers, two of them are still wearing the blue UN flak jackets, arriving in a UN car and in a Palestinian ambulance at a hospital in Deir Ebalach. So we're still waiting for more information there. The UN has confirmed that it's investigating all of this, says that the cause at the moment is not clear. Otherwise, in the past few hours, we have been hearing about continuing Israeli

airstrikes elsewhere in Gaza from local people, suggesting that more than 20 people have been killed, with figures coming in all the time from the Hamas-run health ministry. We've got those images of people, those all-too-familiar scenes, people fleeing once again from the north and from the east of Chanyunas, where those evacuation orders have been dropped by the Israeli military. So all of this adding to the sense that Israel's offensive does go on in the Gaza Strip after the Israeli prime minister said that this was just the beginning, that the aim is to keep up, that the pressure on Hamas to release hostages,

there has been a failure of indirect talks to extend the Gaza ceasefire in the past week or so. And Israel said that now any talks on a ceasefire and hostage release would take place under fire. Yala Nel in Jerusalem. Now it was a seminal moment in US history that spawned endless conspiracy theories. But now the American government has released the final batch of documents relating to the JFK assassination. The 80,000 pages were made available after President Trump signed an executive order in January. I heard more from our reporter Charlotte Gallagher.

There are thousands and thousands of pages of documents and they are accounts from CIA agents. There's also looks like they're ledgers to me of accounting. There's maps. There are all sorts of things in this trench of documents. The problem is you can't search, you can't filter. So even if you know what you're looking for, it's actually really hard to find it. And this document here, it's a really bad photocopy and it's actually even hard to read the text. And there's acronyms that people like me and you won't understand, there's codes, some people have code names. So I think even for the real history buffs that know a lot about JFK and a lot about the JFK assassination,

this is going to be something that's going to take a few days, a few weeks to really get to the bottom of. So it's impossible to say if any new information has emerged so far? There are a few nuggets that we don't think we knew before. So for example, there's a conversation between a CIA agent and someone in the KGB, which was the Soviet intelligence agency. And they're talking about Lee Harvey Oswald who shot JFK. And KGB say, oh, he wasn't one of ours. But when he was in the Soviet Union, we were watching him. We know he had a pretty tempestuous relationship

with his wife. We also watched him doing target practice with a rifle and he wasn't very good at it. They called him a lousy shot. And then there are other documents and you think, well, how did they relate to the assassination of JFK? It's quite confusing. So will it be enough to end the conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination? Absolutely not, Ollie. Because I think people that are really invested in the conspiracy theories and many Americans do not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. They think it was either another government agency, a foreign government or the mafia. A lot of people are going to say, well, these records are from the US National Archives. They were given to them by the CIA and the CIA wouldn't have handed over anything embarrassing. They must still have

secret records about the assassination. The CIA say that isn't the case and they've handed over everything. But there are still some redactions. President Trump said none of the documents would be redacted. You'd be able to see what was on them. But on a lot of them you can see that familiar black rectangle which is blocking out names and addresses, kind of obvious things. But some documents are still redacted. So I think no one is expecting a huge bombshell. There's going to be gems I think, but there's not going to be a big smoking gun. Charlotte Gallagher, but why has the 1963 shooting of President Kennedy inspired so many conspiracy theories? We asked author David Aronovich. Because it was so traumatic.

The idea that an incredibly popular president could be murdered by a single deranged individual was simply unacceptable. We had a kind of equivalent of it after Princess Diana died when some people had to have a conspiracy theory. It just wasn't psychologically acceptable to believe that something so kind of contingent could happen. It had to be the result of a much, much bigger story. And so people have spent 60 years trying to find out that bigger story. One of the words that conspiracy theorists traditionally used about people who don't believe in conspiracy theories is they call them sheeple, sheep who simply go along with the, what they call the orthodox version of something or the conventional

wisdom. In other words, you know something that other people don't. And the other thing is quite often conspiracy theories are just a more satisfying story. So there is that kind of element. It's a bit like a kind of, you know, TV thriller. They're actually improbable, but if they weren't improbable, they wouldn't make very good stories. So there's a kind of desire. I think we all have a little bit of a desire to believe that there's something kind of more to it out there. One of the ways in which Donald Trump became the Republican candidate back in 2015-2016 was that he alone had appealed to that small section of Republican activists who believed that Barack Obama was not really an American,

the birth of theory. And so the truth is you don't actually necessarily need an enormous number of people to believe a particular thing for it to be a very powerful belief. Author and journalist David Aronimich. And still to come on the Global News podcast... Mexico City votes to ban traditional bullfighting. The Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has a long history of targeting his critics. Now his main political rival has been arrested. The mayor of Istanbul Ekrem İmamoğlu was detained as part of an anti-corruption investigation. On Tuesday Istanbul University said it had annulled his degree, meaning Mr

İmamoğlu won't be able to be the opposition's presidential candidate as planned. He posted this video as Turkish police surrounded his house. I regret to say that a handful of individuals are trying to usurp the will of our nation by abusing police power. The security forces of this country have gathered at the door of my home. Hundreds of police are here. We are facing intimidation. But I want you to know that I won't be intimidated. I love you all so much. I entrust myself to my people. Let all our nation know that I will stand up strong." An Ekrem Emamelu supporter staged a protest near Istanbul's main police headquarters. Today a coup was made against Turkish democracy, a civilian coup against the opposition and against the Turkish nation.

We all knew, we actually predicted that our Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu would soon go through such a detention process. We knew very well that we would wake up in the morning with such a decision when we went to bed last night. Emily Wither is a reporter in Istanbul. She says it's been a dramatic day there. This is a political earthquake here in Turkey. In the very early hours of the morning,

the popular mayor, Ikrem Ömümölü, had his house raided by over 100 police officers. He then was taken into detention on corruption charges, as you said. And alongside his detention, over 100 other linked opposition members were arrested too, that included journalists and business leaders. There are small protests already breaking out here in the city and in cities across the country but at the moment they are quite small because you have to be brave to protest in Turkey these days. The police are very very quick to break up protests, they arrest people and this all comes against

a backdrop of the authorities here trying to make it very hard for people to protest. They've closed key roads in Istanbul, they've closed down key metro stations and they have said that they are banning all demonstrations and rallies for the next four days but still small groups of people are breaking through. Now Mr. Imamolu was about to be declared the main opposition party's candidate for president. Does this put paid to his challenge? It certainly does. I mean, Imamolu is very charismatic and he's very, very popular. And in opinion polls, often Imumolu is right alongside Erdogan,

so he is a key challenger to Erdogan's presidency. And Erdogan is taking a gamble here because in 2019, when Ikrem Imumolu was elected to be the mayor here, the government called the first round of the elections rigged, and so they did a rerun. And in that rerun, Imomolu gained even more popularity with even more votes. So it could be that his detention today makes him even more popular, turns him

into something of a hero. Ederwan is also gambling on the fact that the international community isn't going to say much about this. Quietly, for months now, the government has been arresting hundreds of opposition figures, community isn't going to say much about this. Quietly for months now the government has been arresting hundreds of opposition figures from mayors across the country to journalists to business leaders and Edwin may be gambling that because there hasn't been much international

condemnation of that, that the world will not have much to say about the arrest of this very popular mayor either. Emily wither in Istanbul. The UN migration agency says more than 60,000 people were displaced in a month in Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince. The city has been ravaged by violence with gang members in control of large areas. According to the International Organisation for Migration, it's got worse over the past two months as increased attacks on civilians have led to repeated and historic displacements. Port-au-Prince airport remains closed and much of the capital is under siege. We heard from the IOM's chief in Haiti, Gregoire Goodstein.

Basically, you have a city that's under siege. There are no roads that you can actually take to leave the city, you have to think that the sort of secure radius that you can live in, meaning that is not under gang control, is only about 15 to 20% of the entire city. And the rest of the areas are either controlled by gangs or influenced by gangs. There are sirens going off all the time. People who are close to the gang violence hear shooting all the time. There's a lot of stress. It's very difficult to move around

and to support the people who need it the most. There's close to a million people now that have been displaced by gang violence. Some people were able to leave the city probably early on. People are still hoping they can leave the city. So out of the 1 million people that have been displaced, there's close to 260,000 trapped inside of Port-au-Prince. Those who have left and gone to the provinces, mostly to the south, they're living with host families. It could be their family or it could just be people taking them in.

IOM is providing support inside the campsites. We have teams that are providing dignity kits, hygiene kits. There's also hot meals that are provided by the World Food Program. We are providing also mobile clinics, psychosocial support, and we're also trying to get people out of the camps. These are very crowded, unsafe areas where there's a lot of gender-based violence. You have to keep in mind that there's such a small area left in Port-au-Prince that is safe and secure. There's not a lot of housing available. So even families that could take them in, they're overwhelmed themselves.

Gregoire Goodstein of the International Organisation for Migration in Haiti. Traditional bullfights have been banned in Mexico City. Matadors are no longer allowed to kill or injure the animals they face in the ring. But it's a decision that's divided Mexicans as Isabella Jewel explains. The tradition of ball fighting goes back centuries in Mexico, with crowds flocking to arenas to watch fighters known as matador de toros who taunt balls with colourful capes while trying to injure and then kill them. But the blood sport has been increasingly under the spotlight in recent decades,

with animal rights activists across the country calling for a ban. Now the Mexican capital has joined a handful of other states in prohibiting the sport. The decision was overwhelmingly approved in the city's congress, and campaigners are celebrating. Jesus Cesma is a member of the Green Ecologist Party and supported the bill. This marks a turning point in the evolution of human beings that were conscious enough to work towards a city free of violence against non-human living beings for future generations. Mexico's city is home to the biggest bullfighting ring in the world, which seats 42,000 people.

Under this new law, the fights there will continue, only with strict rules against violence and shorter rounds of fighting to protect the bull's welfare. But it's not just the potential economic impact that worries supporters of the sport. Many fear the erosion of Mexican culture. Marbella Romero is a bullfighter. This country would be dead without its traditions. They are what make us great. Since 2013, five of Mexico's 31 states have banned bullfighting.

The battle around the sport has come to symbolise a larger culture war between tradition and more modern views on animal rights. Isabella Jewell reporting. For 40 years, Hans Zimmer has been making some of the most memorable film music. From Rain Man to Gladiator, the James Bond film No Time to Die and Dune. Today his own film lands in cinemas Pan Zimmer and Friends Diamond in the Desert turns his live show into a big screen experience. Our entertainment correspondent Colin Patterson sat down with him at the piano. What an honor it is for us to be here. What a joy it is to play for you.

There is an element of you living out some rock star fantasy in this show. No, no, hang on. It's not living out a rock star fantasy. I am being a rock star at that point. Look, I'm 67 years old, but that's nothing. Mick Jagger is what, 82? I'm young, I'm a whiplash snapper. Hans Zimmer and friends Diamond in the Desert features a complete concert interspersed with comments from his film friends, including Timothy Chalamet, with whom he's just made the Dune films... Your music carries across generations. And his Bond collaborator, the singer Billie Eilish.

For us it's our like, whole childhood. We found a piano for him to play while we talked. This piano barks much too much. It won't let me play really softly. When you play the piano, how does it make you feel? Like a failure. No, I'm not a great player. When you play the piano, how does it make you feel? Like a failure. No, I'm not a great player, I'm a composer, so you know, most of my tunes, I'll give you an example. Two fingers.

If you can't play with two fingers, it's not really worth it, is it? I read lessons what you had, you didn't have many when you were a kid, did you? No, two weeks of piano lessons. But actually it wasn't piano lessons, it was some nuclear war between him and me, you know? Because he wanted me to play other people's music and I as a six year old was firmly under the impression that this whole game was about him teaching me how to get the stuff that's in my head into my fingers. You were composing at the age of six?

The operative word in music is play. We play music. So other kids played with little red cars, I played with the piano. MUSIC PLAYS And then it goes... The concert features music from across his career, including Inception, Pirates of the Caribbean and The Lion King, which has a deep personal significance. So I'm writing away at it because the story was never quite finished.

I'm writing away at it and suddenly the father dies. And my father died when I was six years old, and so I tucked all that away. You know, you don't get over it. You know, they say, oh, the child got over it, over the trauma. We don't get over the trauma. We just get really good at hiding it because we don't want to be embarrassed by it somehow. So suddenly, you know, all that stuff came Suddenly, you know, all that stuff came sort of pouring out and really it's a love for my dad. I didn't decide, I just automatically wrote a requiem for my father. No, I'm not going to play it right now because it needs more than two hands. And for Hans Zimmer, the film is a chance to showcase the importance of an orchestra.

It's a way to show a modern audience that an orchestra is relevant. If we lose orchestras and if we lose orchestral music, we lose such a large chunk of what makes us human. Hans Zimmer talking to Colin Patterson. And Hans Zimmer was behind the theme music for our podcast 13 Minutes to the Moon. If you'd like to hear it, search for 13 Minutes to the Moon wherever you get your BBC podcasts. And that's all from us for now, but the Global News podcast will be back very soon. This

edition was mixed by Kai Perry and produced by Carla Conti. Our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye.