Global News Podcast - Zelensky proposes face-to-face meeting with Putin

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

Volodymyr Zelensky has written to Vladimir Putin inviting him to a face-to-face meeting with the aim of negotiating an end to their war. In an open letter to the Russian leader, the Ukrainian President said it would be "wrong to simply wait" until the war in Europe becomes the focus of the US's attention once again.Also: President Trump says he's spoken directly to Hezbollah about a possible end to the fighting in Lebanon, despite the US categorising the Iran-backed militia as a foreign terror organization. Some families of those who died in the Air India crash in 2025 have told the BBC the airline has offered them a final compensation settlement, if they give up their right to sue the company or its suppliers in future. A Nepali climbing guide is found alive on Mount Everest after surviving almost a week alone. Intelligence agencies warn that Chinese agents are posing as online recruiters to trick western governments and military personnel into disclosing state secrets. Scientists report that the world's mangrove forests are showing signs of recovery after decades of destruction. Plus, a lipstick worn by Marilyn Monroe and her recipe for stuffing are just some of the items belonging to the Hollywood star that have sold for thousands of dollars at auction.The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: [e-mail]: Photo by SERGEY DOLZHENKO/EPA/Shutterstock (16910105s) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks during a joint press conference with NATO Secretary General Rutte in Kyiv, Ukraine, 03 June 2026. Rutte arrived in Kyiv to meet with top Ukrainian officials amid the Russian invasion. NATO Secretary General Rutte visits Kyiv, Ukraine - 03 Jun 2026

This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Will Chalk and in the early hours of Friday the 5th of June, these are our main stories. Ukraine's President Zelenskyy has written to Vladimir Putin, inviting him to a face-to-face meeting to negotiate an end to their war. President Trump says he's spoken directly to the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah, officially designated in the US as a foreign terrorist organisation, about a possible end to fighting in Lebanon. A year on from one of the world's deadliest air disasters, grieving families tell the BBC their compensation is not being handled fairly by Air India.

Also in this podcast. How he would have crossed the Kungu Icefall with no ladders, beggars' belief, that takes it from a sort of utterly brutal ninja feat of endurance to just something else, just incredible. Yeah, an amazing story. The Nepali climbing guide thought to have died on Everest last week reaches base camp alive after six days exposed on the mountain. So we start with an open letter to President Putin.

It's over 1,800 words long, and in it, President Zelenskyy invites the Russian leader to a face-to-face meeting in a renewed bid to try and end the war. It's been translated into English and posted on, his social media platforms. And in it, the Ukrainian president says Russians have grown tired of Ukrainian drone and missile attacks, petrol shortages, rising prices, as well as the war in general. He calls for a full ceasefire for the duration of the proposed negotiations, but that's something that Putin ruled out earlier on Thursday. If you read the statement, it's got a defiant and at

times, even mocking tone. Here is part of it read by one of our producers. The world has not grown tired of Ukraine, as you long hoped it would. But there is growing fatigue with Russia, even among those in the wider world, who help you bypass sanctions and keep your economy afloat. You cannot fail to notice it. After 26 years in power, age is beginning to take its toll. And with time, the fatigue with you will only grow. Now, President Zelensky goes on to say that with America so focused on what's happening in Iran, it would be wrong to wait until Washington could give the conflict in Europe its full attention. And that's something journalists put to President Trump at the White House. Well, I don't know. I'm glad that they're maybe talking about media. I think we had a lot to do

with it. But I think it would be great if they meant they should get it done. So why has President Zelenskyi chosen to do this now? I got more from Vitali Shevchenko, who is the chief analyst at BBC monitoring and is in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. He suggests that Vladimir Putin should be interested in sitting down and talking to him because he says that Russia is losing too many people on the battlefield and the Russians are tired of Ukrainian airstrikes. Also notably, he says that it would be wrong for the United States to come back to trying to end the war in Ukraine because the Ukrainian president says Washington is focused on Iran. So in it,

These offers are not new. Vladimir Salensky previously also invited to Fulaguered Mertr Kutin to TORV. He also suggested a ceasefire. And that's why I think that this letter is more about messaging, and it would be very unlikely that it will lead to peace in Ukraine or even talks to the two presents. But that being said, the tone of the letter, it's not pleading, or kind of meek, it's almost mocking Russia in a way.

So do you think, then, given that, that the offers at the heart of it are still genuine offers? I think it's the last thing you should say when you are genuinely inviting Vladimir Putin to Eni, when you say that, well, after so many years in power, age is beginning to take at all in you. That is going to sound insulting to the Russian president. And that's why I think that Haldim Rzalensky himself isn't really hopeful that this meeting is going to take place. And the Kremlin's initial response to this letter in which they said, well, if he wants to talk to us so much, let him come to Moscow, it also suggests that they're not really thinking that this is going to happen, because Wademr Zelensky is extremely unlikely to come to Moscow, that. would look so close to a surrender visiting the capital of the state that is waging war anew. And also this idea that Vladimir Zelensky should come to Moscow, it has been voiced before by Vladimir Putin himself back in September last year when he said that, well, he was told to me to him to come to Moscow.

But what is the point? And I do think that that attitude in the Kremlin, What's the point of talking to Zelensky? I do think that it hasn't changed. Is there a sense then, given that this has been published in English as well on Zelensky's Instagram, but actually the intended audience for this isn't Vladimir Putin. It's the rest of the world and it's Zelensky doing everything he can to get eyes back on the situation in Ukraine. Get eyes back on Ukraine and also possibly signal to allies in Europe. And Donald Trump himself that this war could be ended without America's direct involvement,

especially given that it's been so much focused on Iran. That is something that Valdim Voselensky has suggested before. And I think it's an invitation or a prod, if you like, at European allies of Ukraine to do more to help Ukraine. Vitalyevchenko there. Now Donald Trump made a number of claims to reporters at the White House on Thursday that talks to end the war in Iran are in their final phase, suggesting there's a deal coming soon. We have, of course, heard all that before, though.

Perhaps more surprisingly, he claimed that he had spoken directly with the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah after the group rejected a ceasefire deal in Lebanon. The president insisted that Hezbollah had called him about it and hadn't rejected the US proposals for peace. I asked our North America correspondent Tom Simons in Washington what to make of all this, especially since Hezbollah is prescribed a terror group by the US. It was a surprise and as always one has to slightly read between the lines of what Donald Trump said to reporters in the White House earlier. But this is what he said.

I spoke to Bebei Netanyahu, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli leader about that. and I spoke to Hezbollah about it and I think progress is made. So it does seem that Donald Trump is telling reporters there that he has put himself between the Israelis and Hezbollah in an attempt to get this ceasefire to work. And just to remind you, the ceasefire involves Hezbollah pulling out of parts of southern Lebanon, currently Israeli occupied, the Lebanese army moving in to replace the group. and the leader of Hezbollah, Naim Qasem, has said that that is not something it accepts as a group,

that the negotiations around that were futile, humiliating and widely opposed in Lebanon, and that effectively there will be no ceasefire, and there have been further airstrikes from the Israelis. So if Donald Trump is saying he's seeing all this going on and he's trying to get involved personally talking to Hezbollah, that is certainly a new development. He, of course, is saying progress is being made, but he's also said that the Iran deal will be signed this weekend

and I think we'll have to wait and see, of course, but he said something like that many times in the past. Yeah, a sign all of this maybe then, that he is just trying more and more things, isn't he, to try and get out of this situation? Because it's all linked. I mean, Iran wants to see progress in Lebanon. He wants to see Israel to stop military action in Lebanon.

and Israel wants to see Hezbollah stop military action in Lebanon so that Israel can feel safer. And Hezbollah says it hasn't got a deal. It doesn't see that there's any progress. And it's not necessarily going to surrender in its own words and fulfill Israel's objectives. So it gets more and more difficult for Donald Trump. And of course, every time we get to another weekend where he says there's going to be progress and there isn't progress, we're getting a little bit closer to the midterm elections. There are primaries going on and have been for some weeks now, reminding everyone that Americans will get a vote on effectively on Congress, but of course with his activities and actions and successes or failures in mind.

So it all ramps up to a lot of political pressure on him. We'll take you back to last June when just seconds after it had taken off, Air India Flight 171 from Ahmedabad to London crashed. killing all but one of the 242 people on board and another 19 on the ground. An investigation into the crash is still going on, but as grieving families wait for those answers, many have already been given final settlement offers from Air India. Some have told the BBC the amounts being offered to relatives differ wildly, and they say the settlement includes a clause to give up their legal rights forever.

Archina Shukla reports from Ahmedabad. May I have your attention, please? As we settle in, we requested. That announcement is from Air India 171. That crashed seconds after take-off in what was one of the world's deadliest air disasters. Mariam Padria had shot the video on her phone and sent minutes before take-off.

Now it's the last memory that her son Abbas holds on to. I met him in Wadudra town in their one-room home where life has stood still since the crash. A year on, the grief here is still very raw. It is made even harder by the final compensation offer they got from Air India. They have put a number on my mother's life and the compensation offered to us is way lower than other families. Was a life less valuable? They're offering a few thousand dollars in addition to the entry amount and say we can't hold anyone responsible for the crash later.

We give up all future claims. We haven't signed yet. Abbas showed me the letter on his phone. He hasn't signed yet. A hundred kilometres from Marian's home is where her plane crashed in Ahmedabad. While the probe still pieces together what happened, the BBC has seen these settlement documents asking, families in India to waive all legal action. Not just against the airline, but manufacturers, suppliers, even the government, all of whom are potentially under investigation.

But offers to families in the UK are different. Lawyers for 25 UK families say offers are significantly higher and has no sweeping ask to waive legal claims beyond Air India. We met several other families who received these offers. None wanted to be named, but all have. had the same concern. Some like Ajay Parma, regret signing it. He was on the scooter passing by,

meters from where the plane crashed. He got severe burns, which are still healing. I thought they were giving money for my scooter, which was burned. I don't know how to read, and there was no one at home. I want to return the money and get my rights back. It's a blazing side. summer afternoon and Ajah is playing with his two-year-old niece in this one-room house that doubles up as a bedroom at night. He's not able to find work because after the burns from the crash,

his skin itches every time he goes out in the sun. And that's why the compensation meant a lot to him. He says he had no idea and it was not explained to him what the signature meant. In a statement, Ayrindia told the BBC, the offers are fair and in accordance with the law. where requested, translations were provided and content explained to families. Full waivers are sought including for other parties to prevent direct or indirect claims in the future. It's extremely unconscionable, very, very unfair. US-based lawyer Chuck Chiu-Numa represents 110 families and has advised them not to sign. Money is their easy way out, and I think India is trying to do exactly that.

minimize their exposure and close the case while the families be at the brunt of the grief and losses. Back in Abbas's home in Vadodra, talks still circle back to the crash. For families like his, the hardest choice still lies ahead, to settle or keep fighting for accountability. Archina Shukla. Now, to a tale of one man's survival that is so extraordinary, that his family, who believed he died, had started organising his funeral. The Napoli climbing guide, Hilary Doa Sherpa, spent six days alone on Mount Everest, at the world's highest mountain, before he was spotted crawling towards base camp

by a rubbish management team doing their final checks. He is now, understandably, undergoing medical treatment, so the world's waiting to hear his account of what happened and how he survived. In the meantime, my colleague Sean Lay has been seen. speaking to Chris Thruill, a mountaineer and former British soldier, and perhaps the last person to see Hilary Dawa Sherper on the mountain because they'd been climbing down together. We were descending from the death zone after myself and another Sherper had summited. Hilary Dower sat down on his backpack as he had done hundreds of times before to take a short rest.

and as I descended the next 50,00 metres alone, I came across the Polish primer with no oxygen battling fairly severe frostbite. So immediately my attention obviously turned to the weakest member of the trio. And that was that as I look back up the mountain as I helped this guy descend, which what should have taken two hours, the conditions were so bad, and with no oxygen, took about 11 hours. and in this time Hillary Dower didn't appear to have moved and certainly wasn't descending because we would have seen his head torch.

So by the time you reached base camp, I guess you'd assumed that he'd just died in the conditions. Yeah, you'd assume so. It took us 19 hours to get to camp too. That's how bad it was. And then it took us a further day, think another 19 hours to cross the Kumbu Ice Force. and get into base camp.

Complete white out. All the ropes were afoot under snow. We were just, you know, guessing which way to go and that we didn't all end up in a crevice is quite a godsend. Can you tell me when you heard the news that Dawa Shurpa had actually survived and what your reaction was to that? I started to see on my social media, my Instagram and my YouTube channel a couple of comments saying he's alive.

Obviously, I thought they were spanned initially because it really does defy the odds. I did a quick search, obviously, because, you know, I met the family yesterday to offer my, you know, utmost condolences and to offer my, you know, financial assistance if I'm able to raise any. So it's kind of crazy one minute to be fighting back tears

with his daughter, and then the next minute to see him during a crocodile Dundee and crawling into town, it's absolutely amazing. Beyond words, I'm a bit, how can you say, my emotions aren't fluctuating because if they were fluctuating, I'll be all over the place.

You know, I've just taken this amazing bit of news kind of in my stride, very happy for Hillary, looking forward to speaking to him. But moreover, I'm absolutely fascinating to know what happened. How he would have crossed the Kungu icefall with no ladders, beggars belief. That takes it from a sort of utterly brutal ninja feat of endurance to just something else again.

I mean, you're talking serious, serious ice climbing. Just incredible. Amazing story, isn't it? That's Chris Thrill speaking to Sean Lay. Still to come in this podcast, a nature success story. They're these kind of unsung superheroes. They are protecting our shorelines. They're creating fisheries.

And they're taking up our carbon emissions. And they're doing all of this for free. Intelligence agencies from the UK, US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, an alliance known as Five Eyes, a warning that Chinese agents opposing as online recruiters to try and trick government, and military personnel into disclosing Western state secrets. Agents are said to be luring government employees into fake job interviews

or setting them assessment-style tests to try and probe them for information. Our security correspondent, Frank Gardner, told my colleague Valerie Sanderson about how serious this warning is. It's not the first time that this warning has been issued, but it is the first time that all five countries that make up the so-called Five Eyes Alliance have joined forces to send out a... a coordinated, synchronized warning. And their warning is that China's Ministry of State Security

is using front companies and front covers to try and lure professionals who are working in sensitive positions, particularly people who work, for example, in government, in parliament, in defence, security, tech, to lure them with tempting job offers through bogus recruiting ads to then eventually get them to try and steal secrets on their behalf. Look, spying is, I don't know, what is it, the second or third oldest profession in the world.

Everybody does it. Britain and the US and the countries that are making this claim also do spying, and they spy on China. Is it very different from what China did in the past? Well, I think it's the scale of it. And I'm tempted to say the sophistication of it, but it's not always that sophisticated, because there was a case last year where a couple of people were identified by MI5 as being fronts for, China's Ministry of State Security. One of them posted a very attractive photograph of herself online. It all looked very innocent. But it was very badly worded in broken English. It kind of reminded me of

those scam letters that used to come out of West Africa saying, you know, I've just inherited millions of pounds. I'd like to give them to you. So I think there are varying degrees of sophistication here. But it's the fact that they're doing this in a very modern way, rather than the old-fashioned honey trap or the two-way mirror in your hotel room on the businessman's visit to Shanghai and Beijing. I mean, maybe that stuff still goes on, but it kind of belongs in the 1970s. This is very much a 21st century way of doing it. So what this bulletin saying is that China is using platforms like LinkedIn to warn people who are on these professional networking sites, perfectly legitimately to be wary. And these reports get rewarded, they say, with hundreds,

if not thousands of dollars. If we assume that it's true, and China, by the way, the Chinese embassy has responded in London saying this is totally untrue, and it is malicious slander. I mean, they normally do react to any criticism of People's Republic of China as being malicious slander. It's a kind of stop phrase. And they pointed out, by the way, that collectively the Five Eyes is the largest intelligence gathering organisation of the world. And they would be right because the biggest partner here is the NSA, the National Security Agency of the United States, which has enormous electronic eavesdropping and interception capabilities.

That was Frank Gardner. Now, if you're a football fan, you'll already know that we are just a few days away from the start of the World Cup. And in an earlier edition of this podcast, we reported on a new rule imposed by FIFA ahead of the competition that fans won't be allowed to bring in reusable water bottles to the games. Instead, they'll have to pay for water in the stadium.

FIFA promised not to charge above their usual venue prices, but the decision has been criticised by health experts who've warned that easy access to water will be a necessity because of how hot it's going to be. But the question of water access has already sparked controversy for the World Cup. In Mexico City, locals living near the Azteca Stadium have been fighting to secure a safe and consistent supply of water for the community.

So given this, do Mexican football fans care about this water bottle controversy? Andrew Peach asked Andrew Luce Solov, a freelance sports journalist based in the city. Already it is a very elite event where only the people that have so much money to get the tickets, which are highly coveted and largely inaccessible to most of the Mexican. Mexican population, it's probably not that much of a big deal for them to pay five or ten dollars extra for water. The issue is that all the working class people that live in the neighborhood around the stadium actually don't have access to water. There is a well that was re-diverted to have the water go largely to the stadium. They made a new fountain that has all this water. And many people, I've been reporting on

the area, Santa Ursula, Guapa, which is by the stadium in Mexico City. And people showed us how they don't have any drinking water. They don't have any water to wash their dishes or prepare their food, and they have to pay for water tankers to come and bring them water. So I actually think that here in Mexico, that more relevant issue is the lack of access to water. I mean, we're talking about that people don't actually have water to even cook food or flush the toilet. But I think it further goes into prioritizing profits over accessibility. And will there be some economic benefit in the end to Mexican city,

where World Cup games are being hosted? Yes, this is a very good question, and I could say as a resident of the city, it's really just caused a lot of chaos in our lives. I live very close to where one of the main remodeling of the subway is happening. The World Cup is a few days away, and the subway is closed. They have not finished remodeling it. They have actually increasingly spent more money on this floating bridge

that no one wanted, and is considered one of the most expensive public works here in the city and people are saying the subway barely works. We don't care about some floating bridge. Andalusia Soloff there. It's not often we get to report on nature success stories, but scientists say the world's coastal mangrove forests, which protect millions of people from storms and erosion,

and, crucially, soak up vast amounts of planet warming gases, are staging an unexpected comeback. For decades, these trees have been declining rapidly as they were cleared for fish farms or housing. But this new research, which has been published in the journal Science, says conservation efforts and natural expansion, mean that since 2010, the world has gained more mangroves than it's lost. It has, however, not been uniform across the globe. While the trees have expanded in places such as Indonesia and Myanmar, West and Central Africa have emerged as hotspots of destruction. proof, scientists say, that conservation efforts need to continue. Professor Daniel Fries from Tulane University and director of the Mangrove Lab

takes us for a walk on Louisiana's coast. Around the world, there's about 70 species of mangroves, but we only have one here in Louisiana, is this one here, has these beautiful white flowers. It's pretty kind of short and shrubby, because we're basically at the northernmost limit of mangroves in the world here. The great thing about mangroves is that they're these kind of unsung, superheroes, right? You think they're just, they're not that important or they're just there,

they're in the way, but they are protecting our shorelines, they're creating fisheries, they're a great place for recreation and education, and they're taking up our carbon emissions, and they're doing all of this for free, right? Hundreds of millions of people around the tropics rely on the benefits and the livelihoods provided by mangroves. The root systems are able to kind of hold the soil together really well. They're able to add. roots and add soil, so they're also able to build up the elevation of the surface, so it can keep pace as sea level changes. And then all the roots and all the biomass is a really good sponge to incoming wave energies.

The future is uncertain for mangroves. They're still under threat in many parts of the world by human activity. So now we've got to build on this, right? We've shown that it works. And let's make sure that we're still having the same success story in 10, 20, 50 years. Professor Daniel Fries. That would have been Marilyn Monroe's 100th birthday this week, and even six decades after her death,

she remains the ultimate symbol of Hollywood's golden age. And she clearly still means a lot to fans and collectors as well, because hundreds of the star's possessions and memorabilia, everything from her bras to a handwritten recipe for stuffing, have sold at an auction in California. Shantau Hartle reports. Marilyn Monroe shot to fame in the 1940s and 50s with films like The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot. She's continued to captivate Americans and collectors worldwide, long after her death at the age of 36.

Even before the 100 years of Marilyn auction got underway, hundreds of thousands of dollars in bids had already been placed. Some of Monroe's makeup products sold for several times as much as expected, including a hot pinkie. lipstick which went for $12,000. The auction company Julian's noted that younger generations are attempting to recreate Monroe's signature look on social media, seeking out the same techniques and brands that she used more than 60 years ago. Other items at the pricier end include a yellow sofa that Monroe posed on for a series of photographs that fetched more than a quarter of a million dollars. A buyer paid $140,000 for a page of the star's handwritten notes in blue ink pen outlining her acting methods.

As for that stuffing recipe, it's sold for $16,000. A note on the corner reads, No garlic. According to the auction house, Monroe's former husband Joe DiMaggio wasn't a big fan of garlic, so this lightly dates back to when the two were married briefly in 1954. Chantel Hartall there. That's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at

Global Podcast at BBC.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service using the hashtag Global NewsPod. We have a sister podcast called The Global Story, which goes in debt from beyond the headlines on one big story. This edition of the Global News podcast was mixed by Joe McCartney. The producer was Rebecca Wood. The editor is Karen Martin and I'm Will Chalk. Until next time, goodbye.