Global News Podcast - Zelensky urges Trump to visit Ukraine to witness war devastation

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

Ukraine's president invites Donald Trump to visit his country before any deal with Russia to end the war. Also: the trial that could change the social media landscape, and golfer Rory Mcllroy secures a Grand Slam.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. You're listening to the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 13 hours GMT on Monday the 14th of April. The EU calls for maximum pressure on Russia after the deadliest attack on Ukrainian civilians for two years. China's president visits Vietnam as he tries to shore up ties across Southeast Asia in the face of the US trade war. And Japan's population has fallen to a record low. Also in the podcast... We need fiction in order to fill the gap between what we are and what we would like to be.

We look back at the life of one of Latin America's most important writers, Mario Vargas Llosa, and the trial that could shake up social media as meta is taken to court. Vladimir Zelensky has called on President Trump to visit Ukraine so he can quote understand what Putin did. The people, civilians, warriors, hospitals, churches, children, destroyed or dead. The Ukrainian leader was speaking on US TV yesterday after Russia's deadliest attack on civilians for two years. At least 34 people were killed and 117 wounded in the double ballistic missile strike on the northeastern city of Sumi.

The White House sent its condolences but stopped short of condemning Russia, which claimed it had actually hit a meeting of Ukrainian army commanders. Our Ukraine correspondent James Waterhouse travelled to Sumy to investigate what happened. We're just approaching the second of two quite robust checkpoints outside the city of Sumy. It's a place which has become more of a front line in recent weeks with retreating Ukrainian forces from the Russian region of Kursk. But it has also become the site of one of the worst missile strikes in this war so far. So we're now through and we're going to go and see the site of the devastation. First impressions are the sheer force of

the impact. We're still about a hundred meters away from the epicenter of the impact. We're still about a hundred meters away from the epicentre of the blast. You can see a chasm in what was a white building. It's now this clay colour scarred from shrapnel up to 10 meters high and the authorities say cluster munitions were in these two missiles designed to spread shrapnel and kill as many as possible. It's on this blood-stained puddle where officials say a bus was at the moment of impact and it seems to be where the deaths have been concentrated. Here we meet Svetlana. She says her friend was on it. She's currently unconscious in the hospital.

It's Palm Sunday and I went to the church with my friends in the morning. When the strike happened, we ran quickly to this place. A friend of mine was injured in the bus which was hit here. She is in the hospital. She is still unconscious. Rescue teams faced an impossible task. They had to put out fires, but also victims were scattered all around both blast zones and they were either put in bags, covered in foil, blankets or even in some cases had to be cut out of destroyed vehicles. It is an immeasurable scale of human loss in such a concentrated

area in the blink of an eye. It was at the height of a clear morning that the first missile slammed into Suomi as people came out to celebrate Palm Sunday and not long after that another impact just a few hundred meters away. Moments like this feel profoundly at odds with the ceasefire narrative that the US is spearheading, despite official visits to Moscow. Cities like Sumy experience strikes like this almost daily. And not just that, Kiev is concerned that Russian forces are continuing to gather across the border to try and mount a major counter-offensive at some point this spring.

There is no evidence to suggest that Moscow is in any way deviating from its objective of taking as much of Ukraine as possible. James Waterhouse reporting from Sumi. Ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers today, Europe's top diplomat, Kaya Kalas, called for maximum pressure to be put on Russia to end the war, as I heard from our Europe regional editor, Danny Eberhardt. Most European leaders have been stressing this in the wake of the Sumy attack. That very much mimics the lines coming out of Kiev. That's what Ukraine would like to see.

The problem is, of course, is that Europe does not control the current ceasefire process so it's trying to influence it as best it can from the outside but it's not involved in the direct talks that are going on for example between Washington and Moscow and the extent of European influence on Donald Trump is possibly limited but it's not clear how much they're really being able to do to force those goals. One foreign minister Radik S Sikorski, he tried one line. He said that basically with the idea that Ukraine has unconditionally agreed to a ceasefire about a month ago, Russia still hasn't.

And he said attacks on Sumy and Kriviy Rih recently, earlier this month, was Russia's mocking answer to Donald Trump's efforts to get a ceasefire. So he's almost trying to goad President Trump to change his stance. Yeah, I mean the US president has been slightly more critical of Russia recently. Has the administration said anything about this latest attack? Well President Trump himself has called the attack terrible and a horrible thing, but he did not condemn Russia for it, neither did any of his officials. He said he was told it was a mistake.

We don't know who told him it was a mistake, whether that was US intelligence or some sort of direct contact with the Russians. But he went on to say that the whole war is a horrible thing and called it Biden's war. He didn't refer to it as Putin's war, despite the fact that President Putin launched the full scale aggression. So there's no sign, at least publicly, that the Sumy attack might herald a shift in his approach to dealing with Moscow, despite some of his officials clearly being discomforted about seeing images of dead civilians on the streets of Sumy on Palm Sunday.

And briefly, some suggestion that this may have been targeting some kind of military ceremony. That mistake comment by Trump could conceivably be a reference to the fact that some Ukrainian sources are talking about a military award ceremony being planned for Sumy at the time of the attack. There was also a Ukrainian MP who seemed to suggest the same thing, appealing to the military not to hold such ceremonies in civilian areas. But whether the Russians were indeed targeting that gathering and got it wrong or whether they were targeting, as Ukrainians say, that civilians deliberately to spread terror will need a lot more further investigation.

Our Europe regional editor Danny Eberhardt. The US may have focused its trade war on China, but Southeast Asian nations like Cambodia and Vietnam are very much caught in the middle. Vietnam, for example, imported about $30 billion worth of goods from China in the first three months of the year, while exporting roughly the same amount to the US. Against that backdrop, the Chinese President Xi Jinping is currently on a tour of three Southeast Asian nations, starting in Vietnam. Ceremonial drummers welcoming the Chinese leader as he walked down the steps of his plane in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi. For more on the visit, I spoke to our Southeast

Asia correspondent, Jonathan Head. It's in many ways opportune. It allows Xi Jinping to turn the tour into a showcase of the contrasts with the Americans, to be able to remind South East Asians that China is a dependable partner. It is also a partner that believes in expanding trade to encourage growth, all gratefully received. You've got to look past the superficial elements of this visit, particularly in Vietnam. These are two communist-run countries, and they lay on tightly choreographed pageantry whenever there are these mutual visits. Vietnam's relationship with China is an incredibly important one.

They share a border. China is actually its biggest trading partner, but its biggest export market, Vietnam's biggest export market, is still the United States and that's still important. And there are other traditional issues between the two countries, historic resentment among Vietnamese people of what's perceived to be China's dominance, they fought a war, a very brutal one, 46 years ago, and disputes over islands and the South China Sea. But at the moment, of course, China has an obvious offering to make, which is, you know, lean on us. We're a safe port in the storm while everybody tries to work out what on earth is coming out of Washington. I was reading that Vietnam has long practiced what's called bamboo diplomacy,

trying to stay on good terms with both China and the US. How difficult will that be at this time? It's always difficult. It's even more difficult for them to plot a path now. Vietnam, like other Southeast Asian countries, has responded to the... I mean, Vietnam got 46%, which stuns them and is an existential threat considering how dependent on US exports Vietnam is for its impressive growth. So all the countries of Southeast Asia reacted not the way the Chinese did, you know, with threats or anger, but with offers of concessions and offers to talk. And the reason is they don't really have an alternative. So Vietnam is not going to be veering away from the United

States and throwing itself into the embrace of China. Vietnam has always had an incredibly carefully calibrated, non-aligned foreign policy. But this attempt to maintain equidistance between these two superpowers is right across Southeast Asia. The whole of Southeast Asia has always wanted the US engaged as a counterbalance to China and vice versa. What they do not want is to be forced to pick sides and they're not going to do it now. Jonathan Haydn, our Southeast Asia correspondent. South Korea's ousted president, Yoon Seung-yeol, has denied wrongdoing on the first day of his criminal trial.

Mr. Yoon is accused of trying to overturn the constitutional order through his short-lived imposition of martial law in December. Prosecutors say he deployed the military to try to prevent politicians blocking his declaration. Mr. Yoon argued that his actions didn't amount to an insurrection because he backtracked after just six hours. As Hannah Kim, associate professor at Sagaing University explains, it's likely to be a long trial. Today is just the first of many and

with this trial there are several things that need to be taken into account. One is whether or not former President Yoon's declaration of martial law can actually be considered an insurrection and whether his mobilization of the army and police can constitute a riot and overall whether he had any intention to interrupt the constitutional order. So in order to try to get at this, there are going to be several trials. The investigation records right now related to the insurrection charges exceed 40,000 pages and the prosecution argues that there should be more than 500 witnesses that should be called upon. So it's very likely that this is going to take a long time.

If he is convicted, he could face life imprisonment or even the death penalty, though I believe that the latter is very unlikely because no executions have taken place since 1997. It's also possible that he can be acquitted, but this is very unlikely considering that the Constitutional Court made a unanimous decision to uphold this impeachment. So we're gonna see the prosecutors arguing that the military and police

that were used to block the National Assembly constitutes an insurrection that aimed to interrupt the constitutional order while Yun's side is going to be arguing that there was no such intent and that because it was so short-lived, no harm was done. So it's very likely that the Democratic Party is going to continue to press criminal charges. It's also likely that acting president Han Deok-soo may veto some of these and the People Power Party is going to continue to try to minimize the repercussions that may come from this." Hannah Kim from Suggang University in Seoul, South Korea. For years, Japan has struggled to reverse a sharp decline in births. Figures just released

by the government reveal the extent of the problem. The population has dropped by a record amount to just over 120 million. Our Asia-Pacific editor Celia Hatton took us through the problem. The population has dropped by a record amount to just over 120 million. Our Asia-Pacific editor Celia Hatton took us through the data. This is really a story, Oliver, that comes down to the numbers. I'm going to throw a bunch at you, and they really are quite stark. So the Japanese authorities say that when they measured last October, the population had dropped by around 890,000 people. So that's the biggest since they started measuring the population in this way back in the late 1950s. And that's left some huge imbalances in the population. So there's just a quite small

group of people under the age, children under the age of 14 now, just 13 million people living in Japan. But when you go to the other end of the scale, those above the age of 14 now, just 13 million people living in Japan. But when you go to the other end of the scale, those above the age of 65, there's 36 million of them. And so this is a really big problem for Japan. If their population keeps shrinking like this by 2050, they'll be down to just 100 million people. And that's something that the former Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has said that Japan is on the verge of whether we can continue as a society. So pretty stark words from him. Yeah, existential. Japan has tried financial incentives for couples to have children. Is there anything else it can do? Well, they're looking at immigration, but it's always been a bit of a sticky topic in

Japan, this idea of who really is Japanese. And so they're basically fixing some workforce problems, allowing more manual laborers into the country, unskilled workers and their families to settle in the country. For example, in February, they had their first non-Japanese bus driver was allowed to begin driving a bus in Japan, a man from Indonesia. But, you know, they're not, these people are not being given permanent work visas. They're being given a series of temporary visas that can only be renewed a certain number of times. So it doesn't really increase the number of people who are given citizenship who are allowed to permanently settle in Japan and consider themselves to be Japanese.

Our Asia Pacific editor Celia Hatton. Still to come on the Global News Podcast. It's a dream come true. I've dreamt about that moment for as long as I can remember. Our golfer Rory McElroy finally won the coveted Grand Slam. Unless you've been hiding under a very large pixelated rock, you've probably heard of Minecraft. It's the best-selling video game of all time, and the franchise's first feature film is in cinemas now But how much do you know about the games creator software developer Marcus person? Find out about the man behind Minecraft on good bad billionaire the podcast

Exploring the minds motives and money of some of the world's richest individuals good bad billionaire from the BBC World Service Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts Drugs violence has transformed Ecuador from a popular tourist destination to one of the most dangerous countries in Latin America. But President Daniel Naboa's tough image appears to have paid off, securing him victory in Sunday's election. The 37-year-old president, heir to a banana fortune, beat his left-wing opponent, Luis Gonzalez, by 56% to 44% to win his first full term in office. He got the top job 16 months ago after his predecessor dissolved parliament to avoid

impeachment. His rival refused to accept yesterday's results, but the head of the Organisation of American States said it was consistent with what their officials had observed. Our South America correspondent Ioni Wells has this report. Defiant cheers and horns on the streets of Quito. After a decisive victory for President Daniel Nuboa, he called it a historic win. This victory was also historic. A victory of more than 10 points and over 1 million votes, leaving no doubt as to who the winner is.

His left-wing challenger Luisa Gonzalez did not accept the result. She claimed fraud but did not produce evidence for this. claimed fraud but did not produce evidence for this. We don't recognise the results presented. We, all the people who have united against violence, against lies, will demand a recount, the most grotesque electoral fraud we Ecuadorians are witnessing. She demanded a recount but will need to provide evidence for her claims for this to happen. This result gives Daniel Naboa a mandate to continue his tough crackdown on violent criminal gangs. A state of emergency has been in place since the start of 2024.

The military control the streets and prisons. He wants to allow foreign military bases in the country again. And in a recent interview he told the BBC he wants armies from the US and Europe to join the fight. We're talking about armies, US, European special forces, Brazilian special forces. This could be a great help for us because our forces initially are low. We need to have more soldiers to fight this war." For his allies, there may be celebrations now, but he has a tough tenure ahead. January was one of Ecuador's bloodiest months on record, with more than 780 murders.

Unemployment is high. After this election left the country deeply divided, he will also need to prove to voters like these that he can unite the country. Let both candidates take responsibility, knowing that they are in a highly polarized country. I believe it is necessary to work together with a common purpose. Let a president come who will bring us peace, who will end the violence and all the pain that our country is experiencing, who will bring justice, solidarity and work for all. That report by our South America correspondent Aoni Wells.

Could the Facebook owner Meta be forced to sell off Instagram and WhatsApp, effectively breaking it up. That is what is at stake in a landmark court case starting today. The US Federal Trade Commission says the acquisition's crushed competition, even though it approved the deals itself more than a decade ago. The case has gained fresh attention amid reports that Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, personally lobbied President Trump to drop it. Our North America Technology correspondent, Lily Jamali, has the details.

This case was brought by the US Federal Trade Commission, which is this regulatory body in charge of making sure that companies abide by antitrust laws. And they brought this case actually under the first Trump administration in 2020 because they say that Metta, which was once Facebook, instead of growing by creating better and newer products, ended up buying other products to grow the company. And what I'm talking about specifically there would be Instagram, which they bought for a billion dollars in 2012, now seems like a real bargain. And then two years later, they bought WhatsApp

for the equivalent of $19 billion. So the FTC alleges that they are meta as we know them today because they kept quashing their competition by effectively absorbing them into their company. That's the case that the FTC is expected to make starting on Monday. So the way these antitrust cases work is you first, as the government of the US, have to prove that the company does in fact have a monopoly in the social media space. Metta does not agree with that. You're going to hear them argue that there

is a whole lot of competition in social media. There is TikTok. There's X. If you look at WhatsApp, there is iMessage, if you have an iPhone. Or Snapchat is another one. So that's what we'll hear from them. But if the government is able to prove

that Meta does have a monopoly, then it goes to a second phase, which is known as the remedies phase. That's when they decide, okay, well, what are we gonna do about it? One option that the government is expected to push for is a breakup of the company, potentially a spin-off of Instagram, whereby Instagram and Facebook would once again be competitors, not be part of the same company under the same corporate umbrella.

Lily Giamale, one of Latin America's most important writers, Mario Vargas Llosa has died at the age of 89. The Nobel laureate was a fierce critic of authoritarianism and said that for him writing was his weapon against despair. Richard Hamilton looks back at his life. Mario Vargas Llosa was a playwright, an essayist, a journalist and a politician, but he'll be remembered most for his novels and for him, fiction was a vital part of life. We need fiction in order to fill the gap between what we are and what we would like to be. He was born in Peru but spent the first ten years of his life in Bolivia. As a young man he moved to Madrid and then Paris to fulfil an adolescent dream of living as

an impoverished writer in Europe. But it was Peru that fired his literary imagination. His first novel, The Time of the Hero, was based on his own painful experiences at a military academy in Lima. With a string of literary awards under his belt, he became a champion of Latin American literature, along with his friend, the Colombian writer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. But while Garcia Marquez blurred the line between fiction and fantasy, there's nothing magical about Vargas Llosa's realism, both in his serious and more comic novels, such as Aunt Julia and the script writer.

Look, Marito, her voice was cold, affectionate. I've done all sorts of really crazy things in my life, but this is one I am not going to do. She burst into laughter. Me seducing a kid? Never. Like many Latin American authors, Vargas Llosa was politically active throughout his career and his writing highlighted his commitment to social change. He was initially a supporter of the Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro, but he turned away from socialism and became an advocate of free market liberalism. In 1990 he ran for president but lost to Alberto Fujimori. He later stood by his decision to enter politics.

I think it's interesting for a writer to have some permanent contact with what is going on in the street, you know, and some kind of political commitment. I think it's healthy for literature, for a writer. I don't like the idea of a writer completely isolated, submerged in a fantasy world, and without touch with what is going on in the street. In 1994, he won the coveted Miguel de Cervantes prize, seen as the most important accolade in Spanish language literature.

He continued to write both journalism and fiction well into his old age, cementing his legacy as one of Latin America's most successful and controversial novelists. Richard Hamilton on Mario Vargas Llosa, who's died at the age of 89. After years of narrow misses and heartbreaking defeats, the Northern Irish golfer Rory McElroy has finally emerged triumphant at the US Masters in Augusta. It means he's completed the career grand slam of the sport's four major tournaments. And the 35-year-old joked that pundits would now have to find a new topic of conversation in the run-up to the next Masters tournament. What are we all going to talk about next year?

Look, it's a dream come true. I've dreamt about that moment for as long as I can remember. Having won the US Open, the Open and two US PGA Championships by the end of 2014, McElroy finally completed the full set at the 11th attempt. The feat had only been achieved by five other golfers including Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. McElroy beat England's Justin Rose in a tense playoff on the final day. After his victory, he had time to reflect on his achievement with the BBC's golf correspondent Ian Carter. Honestly with the way I'm playing, the way I'm feeling about my game, I feel like this could be the start of some really good things.

Rory, I've commentated, I've been lucky enough to commentate on some many extraordinary moments in sport, but I've never had a day like that, commentating on what you were part of and you emerged from. What was going on there? Because it was truly extraordinary sport, nevermind just golf, but it was just sport of the very rawest kind.

It was incredible. Honestly, when you're doing it and when you're in there, you don't realize what's happening, but I'm glad everyone enjoyed it. Glad everyone got some entertainment. I didn't say we enjoyed it. Yeah. Look, there was a lot of ebbs and flows and I think that's what makes this golf course such a wonderful championship test because there's magic waiting around every corner but there's

also misery and trouble at the same time. I keep saying this, you have to have your wits about you on every single golf shot out here and that makes for some very compelling viewing, especially at the end of the week. How big has this hurdle been? It's been huge. It's been a burden. And whether I've made it more of a burden, I don't know. But yeah, it's something that's just has always, it's been there for a while. And I desperately wanted to, if I had to won the US Open last year, I don't know if that would have made this burden go away because it was the master, it was this one that I sort of needed to win.

It's just amazing to be able to say that I persevered and I was able to come out on top. And you're an all-time great now. It's true. Yeah, I look I it's amazing. Look, it's amazing to be mentioned in the same breath as some of the people that we're talking about here. The other five in that Grand Slam club. I try not to think about it because I just want to keep trying to get the best out of myself and try to play the best golf possible. And I always say that I'll reflect on that stuff at the end of my career. I always say that I'll reflect on that stuff at the end of my career, but it is sometimes nice at 35 to think back and think about what I've been able to achieve already. Rory McIlroy. And that is all from us for now, but the Global News podcast will be back very soon.

This edition was mixed by Daniela Varela-Hernandez and produced by Stephanie Zacharison, our editor's Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye. In the fall of 2001, while Americans were still grappling with the horror of September 11th, envelopes started showing up at media outlets and government buildings filled with a white lethal powder. Anthrax. But what's strange is if you ask people now what happened with that story, almost no one knows. It's like the whole thing just disappeared. Who mailed those letters?

Do you know? From Wolf Entertainment, USG Audio, and CBC Podcasts, this is Aftermath, the hunt for the anthrax killer. Available now.