Global News Podcast - Zelensky says Trump row was ‘regrettable’ and Ukraine ready for peace talks

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

Zelensky says Oval Office clash was 'regrettable' and offers terms to stop fighting in Ukraine. Also: Arab leaders rally to avoid Trump’s 'Gaza Riviera'- and the party people making sequins, glitter and feathers more eco

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Krassi Twig from the Global Jigsaw podcast on the BBC World Service, where we are asking how Russia is transforming occupied eastern Ukraine. The status of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics is far less clear cut than it seems. An independent reporting from there extremely difficult. The Global Jigsaw looks at the world through the lens of its media. Find us wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles. And in the early hours of Wednesday, the 5th 5th March these are our main stories. Ukraine's President Zelensky says he's prepared to work under Donald Trump to secure a lasting peace. But will it work? We hear about reaction to an Arab-led plan for the future of Gaza, the dark and hidden cost for children in Sudan's civil war. And also in this podcast. Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds. A reimagining of one of Shakespeare's most famous sonnets

is uncovered at an English university. most famous sonnets is uncovered at an English university. And we're beginning with a conflict that appears to be running at two different paces. On the battlefield, the war between Russia and Ukraine has, for a time now, appeared to be slow and grinding. On the diplomatic and strategic level, though, things are developing at a breathless pace. Overnight in Washington into Tuesday, there was the latest move from the Trump administration, an announcement that it was suspending US military aid to Ukraine. Then on Tuesday afternoon, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky tried,

via the social media platform X, to repair some of the diplomatic damage from the Oval Office confrontation last Friday, saying none of us wants an endless war. Then, in his evening address, Mr Zelensky repeated his gratitude to America and Mr Trump for military support to Kiev. Ukraine will always be grateful to America for all the support that has been and continues to be provided, support that is now essential to preserving Europe's already fragile security foundations. This is not just about our country.

It's about all of Europe. We seek constructive cooperation, true partnership. What happened at the White House instead of our negotiations is regrettable. But we must find the strength to move forward, to respect each other, just as we have always respected America, Europe and all our partners. As we record this podcast, there hasn't yet been any reaction from President Trump's administration to the statement, but he's due to address both houses of Congress shortly. Jonathan Beale is the BBC's defence correspondent. He's been looking at how this could play out

and spoke to Tim Franks. We're talking about equipment, ammunition, which the US has supplied to Ukraine in large amounts. Now, I think at the beginning of the war, Ukraine was not completely but mainly reliant on US military support. Since then, Europe has stepped up, for example, its production of 155 artillery shells. It's producing more than a million shells a year. But essentially, that hardware is not going through the border. That's according to Polish authorities. They have noticed that the flow of ammunition,

flow of weapons from the US has now slowed down. We're never clear about the Trump administration, whether it was continuing to supply weapons. I think we know the answer was yes now, but they never went into detail about what they were supplying beyond what President Biden had supplied. But we know what Ukraine has been very, very reliant on. And that is what one Western official calls the cream of Western weaponry, which is Patriot batteries, air defense systems,

which have been protecting Ukraine cities and which are one of the few air defense systems that can take down ballistic missiles. And then the long-range weaponry such as High Mars, Atakens, which Ukraine has been using to hit high-value targets inside Russian-occupied territory of Ukraine. There has been, beyond that, discussion as to whether strategic intelligence could be affected and also whether it's not directly out of the Pentagon, but the satellite communication system that's delivered by Elon Musk's company, Starlink, whether that could be affected.

Have there been any... I mean, you said it's sometimes difficult to get all this information, but any rumblings on that? So we don't know how far, how deep it is and what exactly it applies to in the sense of when it comes to that military to military relationship that exists between, and to be honest, which is probably pretty close. I would imagine that it will be hard to break up that military to military relationship. And if you are a senior military officer providing information to Ukraine at the moment, you will not probably stop unless you are specifically told to. So we do not know whether the Trump administration has asked that to be stopped. What we do know is that Starlink, as you mentioned, which they use not just to communicate with

each other on the front line to their families back home, but also for targeting of drones and artillery, that they have been essential. And we do know the Pentagon, after Elon Musk had a warble, he did provide Starlink dishes at the start of the war. His position on the war has changed gradually. He's now, of course, part of a Trump administration, which appears to be very hostile to President Zelensky. We do know the Pentagon did fund that for a while, and one would assume that if they did fund it, and if they are pausing military aid to Ukraine, that that might be effective, but we don't know for sure. Lots of people are saying that, you know,

if this pause extends and, you know, Europe has said there's been lots of proclamations today that, you know, Europe will do all it can to step into the breach. That will take time. Could a workaround potentially be, if Europe can somehow get the money together, for Europe to purchase this US weaponry and send it to Ukraine itself?

I mean, Trump is a transactional politician, and if Europe is willing to spend money inside America, it would be odd for Donald Trump to say no. But we don't know whether the pause affects European nations buying American kit, essentially. We do know that when European nations wanted to give Ukraine F-16 jets from their air force, that the US did have to approve that.

We don't know the detail of how deep this pause is and how much it affects. We know it affects hardware, ammunition, the stuff that you can touch and feel. We're not so sure about the stuff that goes under the radar, if you like. Jonathan Beale. Well, Donald Trump's decision to halt military aid to Kiev and Mr Zelensky's latest attempt to heal the rift with the US are, of course, being watched closely by Moscow. But as yet, there has been no word from the Kremlin about the latest turn in the Trump-Zelensky relationship. So is President Putin content to just watch on from afar? A question I put to Steve Rosenberg, our Russia editor. I think

that's true to a large extent. I mean we haven't even heard any comment yet from Vladimir Putin to that drama that played out in the Oval Office on Friday and the Russians are quite happy I think with how things have been developing. They can see public arguments between Ukraine and its ally, United States. They saw Donald Trump picking fights with his traditional allies like Canada and Europe. And the Russians are very pleased with how things are going. At the same time, they have been rebuilding their relationship with Washington. We've had two rounds of talks between Moscow and Washington and Saudi Arabia and in Turkey. You know, this talk of a summit between Putin and Trump, possibly soon, talk about lucrative joint projects. So, you know, the Russians are quite

confident. They're confident on the battlefield too. They're making some gains in eastern Ukraine. And they're confident because they know that there's a man in the White House, in the Oval Office, Donald Trump, who apparently has embraced Russian narratives on the war in Ukraine and spreads those narratives and a US president who has been fiercely critical in public of Volodymyr Zelensky but avoids any public criticism of Vladimir Putin. And there has been reaction from Moscow on that decision late on Monday from Donald Trump over military aid for Ukraine, hasn't it? Absolutely, there has been reaction and the Russians are very pleased. There's a sense of satisfaction here.

So that's because they understand how important that US military aid is to Ukraine. So when President Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, gave his daily conference call, he said that that decision by Washington was the best contribution to the cause of peace. Now, I think to critics of the Kremlin, it looks more like the best contribution to the cause of Russia. But you know, you haven't heard the Russian authorities saying that today. And certainly Russian state television was getting very excited about the news. So there's a daily political talk show and it kicked off with the host very excited about the news. So there's a daily political talk show, and it kicked off with the host very excitedly saying,

this is an incredible sensation. I don't know how incredible it is when you consider just how positive Donald Trump has been in relation to Vladimir Putin in recent weeks. But still, the Russians consider it very good news and I think they are increasingly confident that if there is going to be a conclusion to this war it will be on Russia's terms. Steve Rosenberg, and if you've got any questions about the fast moving situation with Ukraine,

Russia and the involvement of President Trump and European leaders, we would love to hear from you and get some answers from our correspondents. Send us an email globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. Now to another international conflict with the US President orbiting its centre after Donald Trump suggested his Riviera of the Middle East plan for Gaza. It would entail the US taking over Gaza and the nearly two million Palestinians living there leaving possibly for good. Faced with international outrage and fierce opposition from Arab leaders, Mr Trump has since said he would not force his proposal on anyone. Egypt, meanwhile, has been leading Arab efforts to come up with a viable alternative future for Gaza and a plan has

now been approved at an emergency summit in Cairo. Our chief international correspondent Lise Doucet was at the meeting in the Egyptian capital. Lise Doucet We've heard from the Secretary General of the Arab League, Ahmed Abul Gait, who was absolutely categorical in speaking for the Arab leaders who were present. And bear in mind that there were also senior European officials the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is also here in Cairo for this gathering and Amitabh Gait said there were two two purposes of this one is that they want to reject without saying was President Trump's idea but an idea that

He expressed that shocked the Arab world and beyond that he would, in his words, take over the Gaza Strip, move out the Palestinians and develop a Riviera of the Middle East. This consensus from this summit is that there is the Egyptian plan, which they now say is an Arab plan, that they believe they can rebuild Gaza within five years, not the 10 to 15 years that President Trump talked about. And crucially, it can be done without having to move Palestinians away from Gaza.

They will be housed in containers. They may have to move around as different sections are rebuilt, but they are not going anywhere. They also tackle the issue of, well, who's going to run Gaza? They have proposed, not the first time, but they've put a little bit more detail into it. A technocratic committee, not that big, about 20 in all, qualified technocrats with oversight by the Palestinian authority. What they didn't spell out was that Hamas would not play any role in this governance structure. They've also, interestingly interestingly enough called for the

Security Council to deploy international peacekeepers. That's the first that we've heard officially like that. And they've also emphasized, this was very much one of the main points made by the Egyptian President Al Sisi in his opening remarks, that this plan to rebuild Gaza has to unfold in parallel with a political process which deals with issues like the status of Jerusalem and movement towards what the Arab states and their allies in many capitals around the world believe is the only way forward and that is a two-state solution. Wow, so many moving parts to all this, so many potential stumbling blocks. What are the next steps?

So the next steps is money, a lot of money. There's going to be an international conference shortly where they hope to raise money from major donors. There is an expectation that wealthy Arab states, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, will put in quite a bit of the cash but of course no one is going to do that if they believe that it will only be a matter of time where rebuilt buildings will come crashing down again in yet another war. Liz Doucet, in the next few weeks the US private space venture Blue

Origin which is owned by the billionaire founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos, will launch its next mission, this time with an all-female crew, including a film producer, a news broadcaster, a civil rights activist and even a global pop icon. Also on board is Aisha Bo, an African-American rocket scientist who was formerly with NASA. She told Victoria Uncunda more about the mission. I'm absolutely thrilled. It's really like every day I'm going to space, I'm going to space and so I have to try to remind myself to calm down. I've got to focus on planning

and preparation but it's just such an exciting moment to be a part of. Do you know what you'll be doing up there then Aisha? For my mission, I'm focusing on a couple different elements. The first is scientific research. I partnered with a historically black college and institution in the United States called Winston-Salem. And we're going to be looking at plant genetics. That's right, plants in space.

What we're particularly interested in is how plants respond to microgravity on the molecular level because the more we understand about how plants grow in space, the better we can optimize them to grow here on Earth. And this has implications globally for food security, even growing plants in hospitable environments. You are part of quite a group. You've got Gayle King, the legendary broadcaster. You've got Lauren Sanchez. You've got singer Katy Perry. Quite a group to be part of it, isn't it? It's absolutely incredible. I'm so inspired by the women that are on this flight. Not only are they incredible explorers, but they really represent so many different facets

of not only women, but of people, right? And when we think about space, and when I think about the future, it takes everybody. We have an Emmy award-winning journalist who's also a helicopter pilot on the flight. We have a storyteller, Engale King who's going to be able to bring the experience of flying to people who may never have even seen anything that had to do with space. We have an international superstar, Katy Perry, who I don't know about you, but I've definitely

sung a number for songs into a hairbrush. Her songs have been a soundtrack for many exciting moments in my life. And now she in person will be bringing her dream of going to space to our crew. We have a civil rights activist in Amanda Wynn and a filmmaker in Carrie Ann Flynn. I mean, these women are incredible. And they are a reflection of who we are here on Earth that we'll be able to see in the sky. This means to me that there will be women and girls

all over the planet who are gonna see themselves in this mission. Studies have shown that women can decide at middle school to not pursue space or STEM fields because they don't see themselves represented in them. This mission is not only going to do that, but it's going to inspire all people to reach higher. Aisha Bo, talking to the BBC's Victoria Owunkunda. Still to come in this podcast.

The work that goes into like creating these costumes, I'm like people cannot get rid of this. You have to reuse it. An annual festival of extravagance turns its gaze in a new direction. I'm Krassi Twigg from the Global Jigsaw Podcast on the BBC World Service, where we are asking how Russia is transforming occupied eastern Ukraine. The status of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics is far less clear-cut than it seems, and independent reporting from there extremely difficult. The Global Jigsaw looks at the world through the lens of its media.

Find us wherever you get your BBC podcasts. We're going to turn now to a corner of the world we often struggle to cover because of access or lack of it and a warning that some listeners may find this story disturbing. The UN children's charity UNICEF has issued an urgent call for international intervention to protect and support children in Sudan after collating data which suggests the widespread rape and sexual assault of children by armed men. The country has been destabilised by the civil war which erupted in April 2023. Millions of people have been displaced, leaving many children vulnerable. In September, the BBC's Barbara Pledarsha was in the country.

Just outside the capital city is a crossing between the warring parties. These women have come out of RSF territory. They carry bags to buy food and also tales of horror. There are women here who have been raped, but they don't talk about it. They hide it. What difference would it make if they speak? What can we do? Tell me, what can we do? I asked them why they didn't leave. We're too poor, they told me. We have nowhere else to go.

My colleague, Rebecca Kesby, spoke to Tess Ingram from UNICEF, who was involved in compiling the report. And once again, a warning, what she describes may be distressing to some of you. We found data and stories that really were beyond our worst expectations. We knew that there was a somewhat hidden sexual violence crisis in Sudan with children really among the survivors there. And the data that we've now released today tells us that there are 221 children who have been raped in Sudan since the beginning of 2024, two-thirds girls and one-third boys.

And the youngest survivors, I think among the most startling findings of this research, there are 16 children under the age of five, including four one-year-olds in that cohort. They're recorded in nine states from north to south to east to west of Sudan. So this is a widespread issue that is affecting children of all ages and I think it should ring alarm bells across the world today to try and drive action to protect these children from this ongoing violence. As you say, the country's been in chaos, hasn't it, for years and various armed groups as well as the two main warring parties. So has it been possible to get any support through to these children and helping them deal with the trauma they must continue to suffer?

They do and this was one of the things that I heard when I spoke to these children in Sudan when I was there meeting with them in December that after experiencing the horrors of rape or sexual harassment, the suffering doesn't end. And for many reasons in Sudan, one as you say, because access to service is incredibly difficult in the world's largest humanitarian crisis where hospitals have been decimated and medical staff are again operating under threats for their own life. But also because of social stigma, people are afraid to come forward and talk about what had happened to them like we heard Barbara reporting

on there. Because in Sudan, like in many other contexts, it's the survivors, not the perpetrators, who carry that cultural burden of shame and stigma for the rape. So it's been very brave for the families that we spoke to, including these children, to come forward and speak about what has happened to them. And I suppose it means that there could be even more victims than you managed to find briefly. That's right. We think that this is the tip of the iceberg, unfortunately. That was Tess Ingram from UNICEF. Police are investigating at Serbia's National Assembly following a day of chaos in the debating chamber. At the opening of a new session of the parliament,

members of the opposition threw tear gas canisters and smoke grenades. Two lawmakers were injured. One was said to have suffered a stroke. The demonstration in the chamber was said to be in support of ongoing student-led anti-corruption protests. These followed the fatal collapse of a train station roof last year. The BBC's Slobodan Maracic was at the Serbian Parliament. First regular session of the Serbian Parliament in 2025 started with a national anthem, but quickly descended into chaos with physical conflict between the MPs, smoke bombs and eggs being thrown. MPs could be seen running out of the National Assembly Hall, coughing with swollen and red eyes from something that seemed like a tear gas or a pepper spray.

That is just one of the many protests and incidents in the last four months that many are calling the biggest political crisis in Serbia since 2012 when the ruling Serbian Progressive Party and President Aleksandar Vucic came to power. On November 1st recently reconstructed canopy at train station in Novi Sad, the second biggest city in Serbia collapsed and killed 15 people. Immediately a number of mass protests started which are now being led by students of the several Serbian universities that are under a blockade. Students have several demands which can be summed up by two words accountability and responsibility for the death of 15 people at the Novi Sad tragedy.

Slobodan Maracic reporting from the Serbian Parliament in Belgrade. Now to a battle between Apple and the UK government over data. The tech giant has announced it's taking legal action to try to overturn the government's demand to view customers' private data held in Apple's most secure cloud storage systems. Our technology editor Zoe Climyn reports. Apple's legal challenge is the latest development in an unprecedented row between one of the world's biggest tech firms and the UK government over data privacy. In January, the firm was issued with a secret order by the Home Office.

It was instructed to be prepared to share encrypted data belonging to Apple users around the world with UK law enforcement in the event of a potential national security risk. But Apple said it would not compromise its security features and rather than comply, it suddenly removed its toughest privacy tool, advanced data protection, from the UK. It's still available in other countries. The instruction angered the US administration. President Donald Trump described it as like something that you hear about with China. The Home Office has refused to confirm or deny the existence of the notice.

Zoe Kleinman. A rare handwritten copy of one of Shakespeare's most famous love poems has been discovered after hundreds of years with a few little tweaks. The sonnet was tucked away in a 17th century poetry collection at the University of Oxford in England. It's thought the handwriting is not Shakespeare's but that of an unknown scribe. Frances Reed reports. The well-known start of Shakespeare's sonnet 116. Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds. Dr. Leah Veronese, a university lecturer, had been leafing through an old collection of poems at the Bodleian Library when she made the discovery of the handwritten poem.

But on this manuscript the beginning has been changed to Self-blinding error sees all those minds, who with false appellations call that love, which alters when it alterations finds. It's thought the changed first line and the lack of mention of Shakespeare on the script were the reasons why the poem had gone unnoticed as a copy of Shakespeare's sonnet for so long. Dr Veronese believes the sonnet may have been changed during the English Civil War, possibly to make a political statement. The university said it was an exciting discovery which would help researchers understand the bard's popularity not long after his death.

Francis Reed. It has been carnival season in many parts of the world with dancers and attendees wearing bright costumes made of feathers, sequins and glitter of course. Some of the most extravagant looks can be found on the Caribbean island of Trinidad where the carnival is often dubbed the greatest show on earth. But in recent years the ecological impact of the festivities has come under the spotlight and companies are looking for new ways to make the celebrations more sustainable. A reporter in Trinidad Anselm Gibbs has been looking into this. Carnival is filled with tens of thousands of people dressed in these brightly coloured

costumes covered in feathers, beads. Researchers found that it produces three and a half tons of waste every year, carnival in Trinidad and Tobago. And also just to produce and transport one carnival costume bra, it can generate approximately over 37 kilograms of CO2 emissions. So picture all these tens of thousands of costumes times that amount of emissions, you know, it's really a lot and a cause for concern. So Altham, what's being done about this there? A number of people are picking up what you call side hustles to try to have, find ways

to help make Carnival more sustainable. One group is called CarniCycle, they're a social enterprise and they've started a costume recycling program where they collect thousands of unused carnival costumes from masquerade bands and also use costumes and then they take those costumes, strip them down, get the raw materials like feathers and beads and then they resell these materials. Then there was a group called Second Closet, which is a thrift shop, a pop-up thrift shop,

to resell clothing. But they started offering tips on social media, tips about reworking your clothes to get more use out of them. And then they said, well, hey, we can apply this to carnival costumes as well. So we have Aliyah Clark will tell us more about what they have been doing at Second Closet. From seeing the work that goes

into like creating these costumes I'm like people cannot get rid of this you have to reuse it so that's why I was like okay after I finish up my costume I would rip it apart to the literally the wire down to the wire and figure out how to make this into something else you know to wear outside of carnival paired with other things in my closet. So Anson, that's how costumes are being recycled. What about other ways waste is being reduced? Well, I mean, apart from the parade, Nick,

parties are a big part of Carnival. There are probably hundreds of thousands of parties every year. Now, there's one specific event called Fet with the Saints and they've been really doing a lot to recycle and help the environment over the past three years. All of the delicious food is served with cutlery that's made out of wood. They give you one cup, a reusable cup,

and they say that over the past three years prevented over one million single-use plastics from entering the landfill. The hope is that organizers from around the world, especially here in the Americas, that they would learn from some of the current practices in terms of using more sustainable products, paying attention to packaging and it's about trying to change the overall culture of not just the revelers and the masqueraders but also of course those who are organising the events. And some gibs reporting there.

And that's all from us for now but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag at globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll and the producer was Stephanie Prentice. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles. And until next time, goodbye. I'm Krassi Twigg from the Global Jigsaw podcast on the BBC World Service, where we are asking how Russia is transforming occupied eastern Ukraine. The status of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics is far less

clear-cut than it seems, and independent reporting from there extremely difficult. The Global Jigsaw looks at the world through the lens of its media. Find us wherever you get your BBC podcasts.