Global News Podcast - Zelensky welcomes EU's $105 billion loan for Ukraine

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

European Union leaders strike a deal to give Ukraine a $105 billion loan after failing to agree on using frozen Russian assets. Zelensky welcomes EU backing. Putin tells BBC the West is "making Russia the enemy." Also: TikTok owners sign deal to avoid US ban. We travel down into the deep tunnels in Finland where nuclear waste is to be buried. The Bank of Japan raises its interest rate to its highest level in 30 years -- but it's still less than 1%. A mysterious object from outside our solar system heads to its closest point to Earth. Known as 3i Atlas, it's travelling at more than 200,000 km/h. 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]

This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Pete Ross and at 1600 GMT on Friday the 19th of December, these are our main stories. Ukraine's war effort receives a $100 billion boost from the European Union. President Putin says Russia is ready to end the conflict in Ukraine, but only on his terms. And the Bank of Japan raises its interest rates to its highest level in 30 years. Also in this podcast

So here we are Come down in a lift and it takes less than a minute to go down into bedrock 400 metres down Inside Finland's deep underground facility where spent nuclear fuel will be locked away for thousands of years We begin with Ukraine whose President Vladimir Zelensky has welcomed a decision by the European Union

to give Kiev a $100 billion loan. He said it would strengthen Ukraine's ability to resist Russia. EU politicians made the pledge after talks that went on until the early hours of Friday, but they failed to agree on a plan to use frozen Russian assets to back the loan to Ukraine. Belgium has always opposed the use of these assets on the basis that most are being held

in a Brussels-based clearinghouse, leaving them legally exposed to any Russian retaliation. The European Council President Antonio Costa said the agreement sent a clear message that Europe's support for Kiev would not falter. As a matter of urgency, we will provide a loan backed by the European Union budget. This will address the urgent financial needs of Ukraine. And Ukraine will only repay this loan once Russia pays to the EU. Reparations.

Alexander Moreshko is the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Ukrainian parliament and a member of parliament for President Zelenskyy's servant of the People Party. This is his reaction to the deal. For us, it's important to receive a Russian frozen sovereign essence. This money should be given to the victim of the aggression as a reparation. So we continue to hope, we continue to fight. But at the same time, we understand that this decision is a kind of compromise right now. and we don't care much about the source of this money

because for this year, for next year, we desperately need this money to enhance our defence capabilities. And I would like to quote one of German politicians who said that this money is the best investment in the Europe security. So, was this a compromise, or did Ukraine get the money it needed regardless of where it came from? Alex Ritson spoke to our correspondent James Waterhouse, who's in Brussels. If you look at it in a sense of a round figure, it is what Ukraine wanted. This was always a proposal that was agreed by the EU to prop up Ukraine over the next two years. And that proposal was 90 billion euros. And Kiev is hoping that other allies like the UK and Canada will plug the rest of an estimated 135 billion euro hole in its national budget. So in essence, if you consider that it's the money,

they wanted, alone they will unlikely ever have to repay, given the chances of Russia paying reparations in the medium to long-term future. As you heard there, it allows Ukraine to keep functioning. But I know what you're getting at. I mean, there is a more concerning barometer for Ukraine where the donors, its most immediate donors, its neighbours, are clearly more divided on how and even weather to help Ukraine as Russia's invasion continues. Yes, because this deal only happened because certain nations managed to negotiate their own way out of them? Yes. I mean, it was a it was a punchy minority that have changed the course of how this was expected to go. You know, clearly Belgium was not exercising brinkmanship. I mean,

Bart de Wever, the prime minister, was clearly under domestic pressure to not cave. There were concerns here that Brussels would be liable to repay Russia and give. given how this is, you know, currently illegal under international law to raid frozen assets in this way. And then you have the more Russian-friendly countries, like Hungary, like Slovakia, like Czechia now, where there's now a populist government. You know, they have removed themselves completely

from this loan for Ukraine because they have been completely reluctant to give Kiev more money. So I think Volodymizelensky knows that Europe is increasingly divided on how to help him. But he has the money he wants. And now he can once again pivot to these continued US-led peace efforts and crucially to trying to keep Washington on side in that endeavour.

He can now pivot to trying to secure security guarantees and trying to work out just how a peace deal can be conjured up one that Kiev can believe in. James Waterhouse, who is speaking to Alex Ritzen. Just hours after the EU's decision, Russia's President Putin used his annual end-of-the-year television press conference to claim that Ukraine is losing on the battlefield and retreating. Mr Putin showed no sign that he was willing to compromise on his war aims, despite President Donald Trump's push for a deal to end the conflict by Christmas.

The Russian president said the EU's plan to funnel frozen Russian assets to Ukraine was daylight robbery, and he blamed the EU for starting the war. It's you who are waging a war against us, not us. You are waging a war against us with the hands of the Ukrainian neo-Nazis. We're ready to stop that fighting immediately, provided that Russia's securities provided in mid-term and long run, and we're ready to cooperate with you. Fatali Shivchenko is Russia editor for BBC monitoring.

He explained what President Putin said about the EU's decision to continue funding Ukraine. I'm sure he was pleased to see that the EU had failed to use frozen Russian money to help Ukraine. So essentially, what we're talking about is money borrowed by European nations to help Ukraine. And there's a big difference. And it's one of those messages that he used at today's pressure to say that, look, Despite the West's efforts to attack Russia, Russia is winning, not only did he accuse the EU of waging a war against Russia. He also accused Ukraine of starting this war that's been going on for so many years. And that's a key message in his event, because the message is that Russia is not willing to compromise at all. Yet again, he's spoken. He's about the so-called root causes of this crisis. And whenever anyone from the Kremlin uses that phrase, of course, it means that Russia is keen to achieve the original objectives of attacking

Ukraine. That hasn't changed at all. And in response to a question from our colleague, Steve Rosenberg, heavy praise for President Trump. Which is not really surprised. surprising these days, Alex. In the past, of course, America was Russia's enemy number one. That has changed after Donald Trump was reelected. It's Europe that has taken that place. The presenter, one of the two presenters of this event, asked Vladimir Putin about Donald Trump's lawsuit against the BBC. And Vladimir Putin initially, he said, oh, it's a family affair. Let them sort it out between themselves. And then he said, Well, of course Donald Trump is right.

And the Russian president also spoke at length about how the West is trying to bring Russia down, how the West disrespects Russia. And he kept addressing our correspondent Steve Rosenberg. But Vladimir Putin said, as long as you respect us and our interests, we are ready to work with you. Fatali Schochenko, who is speaking with Alex Ritsyn. For more on Ukraine and what the extra EU money will mean for the country, you can go on YouTube and search for BBC News. TikTok has reached a deal to sell its operation in the United States,

allowing the country's 170 million registered users to continue using the app. If the deal clears the requisite regulatory hurdles, it brings to an end years of efforts by Washington to force Chinese company Bight Dance to sell its US operations over national security concerns. Our technology editor is Zoe Kleinman. This feels like it's been going on for such a long time, doesn't it? And actually, that's because it has. I think we're looking at nearly a year now of are they or aren't they going to sell TikTok,

is it or is it not going to be banned in the US? So today we've heard the news that ByteDance, that's the Chinese company, that owns TikTok, is selling 80% of US assets to a combination of people, three investors, Oracle, Silver Lux and MGX, which is actually based in Abu Dhabi. And there will also be some involvement from Bight Dances, affiliates of Bight Dances investors. And Bight Dance itself will keep 20% of the assets as well. So lots of people involved in this New Deal, seven members on a board who will have to be mostly American, US people's data, US TikTok user data is going to be stored locally in the US.

And it will also be used to drive that algorithm, which means that hopefully, I think, the plan is that US TikTok users will see content that hasn't been manipulated elsewhere, which of course is one of the big fears about this platform, you know, whether or not there's any Chinese involvement in what American people are seeing. Still some Chinese ownership, though, as you say. And of course, it's still part of a wider Chinese-owned platform. Does it really lessen the security concerns? So TikTok would dispute that it's Chinese-owned.

It says it has global investors and, you know, it would definitely put up a fight, I think, and challenged that assumption. That said, it is very clear that bike dance is a Chinese company and all that goes along with that. There has been so much talk about the security issues. Of course, that was behind the whole idea of banning it in the first place, which was brought in by the previous US President Joe Biden. It is still banned on official government devices in several countries, including the US and also here in the UK. We'll have to see whether this deal is enough to appease that. I think that would be a big signal from the White House, wouldn't it, if they said, okay, you know, TikTok is now

allowed back on government devices again. It's going to take some time, of course, for this to all happen. But I think those who had those concerns are going to say, well, actually, we haven't really seen any evidence that anything's changed as of yet. And TikTok, of course, would say that it had already been fragmenting US user data and keeping it separate precisely to try to allay these fears. So I think in terms of, is it the same? silver bullet? Is TikTok suddenly forgiven? We'll have to wait and see. Zoe Klyman talking to Alex Ritson. How do you safely dispose of radioactive nuclear waste?

That's the tough environmental problem facing many countries looking to scale up nuclear power operations. Finland is already further ahead than most. Last year it became the first country in the world to finish a deep underground facility, where spent nuclear fuel will be locked away for thousands of years. Our science correspondent, Victoria Gill has been to the site to discover how the process works. As we drive northwest from Helsinki, what strikes me about the scenery, apart from lots of trees, is dense grey rock. Some of the main road is cut through the granite. It's beneath that dense bedrock that some of the most hazardous material produced by humanity,

highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel, will be buried in a place called Oncolo, which is where we're headed. Disposal holes are drilled in the tunnels using a purpose-willed boring machine At ground level, above the tunnels is a visitor's centre with an exhibition explaining the whole containment and permanent disposal process In that time when we started

we were not the first in the world Sana Mostan is a geologist and project manager for Posiva, the company that operates on Kolo. How has Finland got here before anybody else did? Well, that's a good question. It's maybe we are stubborn or whatever but gradually other countries have had their own problems and we are now the first place in the world.

After this, all tunnels and shafts leading to it will be closed. More than 400 metres beneath our feet is a network of tunnels and underground facilities spanning an area of about two square kilometres. That will be the final destination for waste from Finland's two nuclear power plants. So you are with the helmets and your safety gear, all of you and then we can go on the ground.

I've been expecting a long drive down the five-kilometer corkscrew access tunnel. Instead, we're taking the lift and I am very keen to press the minus 433 button. Oh, yes, please, can I? Yes. Oh, I can feel my ears popping. Yeah.

No, it's getting warm. No. You can feel the temperature changing. So here we are. I was expecting it to feel a little bit more dramatic than it did. You come down in a lift It takes less than a minute to go down into bedrock 400 metres down. So far, about 10 kilometres of tunneling has been completed here.

But it's only the start. The plan over the next 100 years is to keep digging as the site fills up with waste. With about 40 kilometres of new tunnels planned, space for more than 3,000 canisters of nuclear fuel. A tunnel is 3.5 metres wide, 4 and a half metres wide. meters in height and some a little bit more than 300 meters long we put the canisters into the deposition holes and there will be bentonite in the holes as well bentonite is like a clay pentonite clay exactly and then this whole tunnel is filled with the penknit clay and the end

block is casted into the beginning of the tunnel and then everything will be safe there a tunnel dug dug 400 metres down in the rock. There are holes dug in that tunnel. The canisters are shielded in two layers of metal. Then there's a layer of clay. Then the whole tunnel is filled with clay and then plugged. Mankind has never made anything that's lasted that long, I suppose. How can you be confident that once your canisters have spent waste are down here,

they are isolated, gone. We can essentially plug the hole and forget about them. My confident lies there that there is decades of, research done for this system. So we know exactly what our better is like and we know what kind of waste we have. You're pretty confident that this is a secure place to lock away hazardous nuclear waste.

Yes, we are. Yes, we are sure of that. That report by Victoria Gill. Still to come in this podcast. We've discovered metals, carbon monoxide, other strange chemicals. It's been a wonderful, Wonderful, wonderful study for astronomy. We settle the debate, gripping the internet.

Is 3-Ey Atlas a comet or an alien spaceship? This is the Global News podcast. For anyone who's taken out a personal loan or has a mortgage, you won't need telling how annoying high interest rates are. But it's not an experience they're used to in Japan, where for decades, interest rates have been hovering around zero, or even below zero. The aim was to stimulate the economy, which for many years stagnated. But now the Bank of Japan has raised its interest rate to its highest level in 30 years,

putting it up by a quarter of a percentage point to 0.75%. Our business correspondent, Nick Marsh, told Alex Ritson, what's going on? Interest rates doesn't sound like the most thrilling subject, does it? Alex, but they are very important. And basically you keep interest rates low in order to encourage borrowing, make it cheap, encourage spending, get the economy going, investment and all that. And you make them high to discourage that. And therefore, discourage inflation and keep prices low or lower.

In Japan, they have been very, very low for a long, long time. And the reason is because Japan's economy has been struggling. It's had poor growth. So the rates have been low to try and encourage people to borrow money, higher people. There's staff shortages in Japan all the time, not much immigration as well. And it's been below 1%, it still is below 1%. When you think about the UK, US other places, traditionally it's been around 3, 4, 5%. It's even gone down into negative interest rates in Japan, which is like free money, basically.

It's incredible. And now the Bank of Japan, though, has decided to increase its rates, and that's the highest it's been since 1995. Why now? Because of inflation, pretty much. So even though Japan's economy has been struggling and stagnating, food prices, energy prices have been going up. The cost of living has been going up. So by increasing interest rates, it's basically saying to people, okay, it's going to be a bit harder to spend your money, but maybe a bit more attractive to save your money as these prices are high and maybe dampen down those costs.

It's been nearly two weeks since fighting broke out again between Thai and Cambodian forces over a disputed border. efforts to broker a ceasefire, even by President Trump, have made little progress. The Thai Army, which is much bigger and better equipped than Cambodia's, is slowly gaining ground, while its Air Force continues to bomb targets across the border. The Cambodian government says it wants to return to the ceasefire signed in July. Our Southeast Asia correspondent Jonathan Head reported last week from Thailand. Now he's been to see the effects of the conflict on the Cambodian side of the border. Along the forested ridge marking Cambodia's northern border with Thailand,

fierce gun battles have continued for a second week as each army tries to gain control of a few hilltops. The fighting is harder than it was the first time in July, the cost to both sides higher, but especially in the ranks of the Cambodian army. Dr. Sartan Raksimi, an anesthetist who's been transferred from Phnom Pen to a provincial hospital to treat the wounded soldiers, showed me images on his phone of some of the terrible injuries he's encountered. His hands shake and his eyes are rimmed with tears.

I've never seen anything like this in my life, he says. We need a real peace, okay? You can speak to the world, that we need a real peace, not the war. in one corner the young wife of a soldier whose arm has been amputated sits smiling to encourage him in another the soldier with a shattered leg bandaged up to the thigh recalls how he was injured last weekend as Thai forces surged forward they just kept firing he said shells landing in my trench until one exploded close to me i don't remember much else Cambodia doesn't publish its military casualties, but the Thai's estimate at least 500 of its soldiers have been killed this time.

On the Thai side, the toll is just 21, starkly illustrating the imbalance of forces between the two armies. Thailand's Air Force has been able to fly unopposed over Cambodia, bombing targets at will. Right, we're standing now looking at a yawning gap on. a high bridge over this river. The gap is probably 20, 30 meters. This was the result of bombs dropped by Thai F-16 fighters over the weekend. There's twisted metal, shattered concrete, and far below us, we can see the river. The ties say that was to stop Cambodia from reinforcing its military units that are on the other side of the bridge, and these kinds of attacks on big infrastructure suggests this is now much more than just a limited border war.

Back in July, President Trump successfully brokered a ceasefire using the threat of tariffs. But attitudes in Thailand have hardened. After a political crisis, it blames on Cambodian interference and the laying of landmines during the last ceasefire, which maimed several of its soldiers. Last week, Prime Minister Anitin-Chal-Wirakun rejected a second attempt. by the US President to intervene. Cambodia's leaders, in particular the veteran strongman Hun Sen, have a big responsibility for igniting this conflict. Cambodians have mostly rallied around the flag and blamed Thailand,

but they are paying a very heavy price for it. Now, to sport, or perhaps entertainment, on Friday in the US City of Miami, a former world heavyweight boxing champion will take on a YouTube personality who's now himself a fighter. The match has attracted particular attention because of what many boxing experts say is a potentially dangerous mismatch between the Olympic gold meddlist Anthony Joshua, who at 36 some might say could be past his prime,

and 28-year-old internet influencer Jake Paul, who only took up boxing seriously a few years ago. Despite the reservations of some, Jake Paul claims he'll win the fight. In terms of boxing, I'm a better boxer than AJ, which is hilarious to stay. but he's got two left feet. He's stiff. If I was his coach, I put him in a dance class first before trying to box. Here's our boxing correspondent, Steve Bunce, talking to my colleague Amorajan. For Jake Paul, there's an awful lot in it.

Jake Paul truly believes that Anthony Joshua is not right. He's finished. He's taken too many hard fights. Jake Paul believes he can leap throg literally hundreds of heavyweights. There are 1,500 heavyweights in the world. And Jake Paul's trying to jump from about position 1,100 to position number 7. He's the one that's taking the giant wrist. Now, here's the real sort of nub here.

Does Jake Paul truly believe that Anthony Joshua is shot to pieces and is fragile? Or is he just taking a massive gamble on going down, as we say, on his shield, blazing, throwing shots and getting some respect and still pocketing a fortune? And just to be clear, Steve, I want to put to you directly, the argument of the traditionalists who say that Anthony Joshua is fighting someone as they would cast it who's essentially a YouTuber and the discrepancy in their height and in their weight violate some fundamental principle of boxing and boxers should fight boxers. What do you say to that traditionalist argument? We've had crazier, we've had sillier, we've had more insulting fights

in the past when the men haven't shared as much money, we've had bigger mismatches in the past. This is just the latest in a long line. It's become a long line now of fights between not traditional style boxers and other boxes. It's just the business. It's not the box in apocalypse, people. Steve Bunce. A mysterious object from outside our solar system is heading towards its closest point to Earth. Known as Comet 3-E-Atlas, it's travelling at more than 200,000 kilometres per hour.

Dr Jennifer Millard is an astrologer. and presenter of the awesome astronomy podcast. It is exactly its closest approach to Earth today. So not too close. We don't have to worry about it hitting us. It's going to be a little under two times the distance between the Earth and the Sun, but it is as close as it's going to get to our planet.

And as everyone's been studying it with telescopes on the ground, in space, even orbiters, and we've turned the Mars rovers onto it, we've discovered metals, carbon monoxide, other strange chemicals. We've seen tales develop in slightly unusual motion as it's near the sun. It's been a wonderful, wonderful study for astronomy. So are you with the internet consensus that this is an alien spaceship, or are you with some of those scientists who've been suggesting it's just a comet? I am on the side of the comet, 100%. And that is because although we have detected some unusual signatures,

because nothing is completely unexplainable. So if we really did think that it had a chance of being an alien spacecraft, astronomers would be jumping for joy. It is one of the biggest questions at the minute facing astronomy. Are we alone? But unfortunately, this 3-Ey Atlas is not going to be the thing that answers that question. It is absolutely a comet, just an alien one. It is very, very, very old, isn't it?

Yes, we believe that it could be 7 billion years old, even older. We think it comes from a place in our galaxy that we call the thick disk. So if you imagine our spiral galaxy is flat and thin, like two fried eggs back to back. Well, you put those fried eggs in a burger bun and it's kind of light and fluffy. That burger bun is what we call the thick disc. And it's where we find old stars in our galaxy. Based on its trajectory and its great speed, that's where we think it's come from. So older than our solar system.

One more question. It's definitely not Santa, is it? is definitely not Santa. It's been travelling far too fast for Santa. I mean, you, Rudolph already has to do an awful lot of work to get around the world. And in order to kind of have the speeds that it has moving through the solar system, I dread to think how many carrots he'd have to eat. Dr Jennifer Millard, talking to Alex Ritzen. And that's all from us for now, but there'll 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 Global Podcast at BBC.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag Global NewsPod. This edition was mixed by Rebecca Miller and the producer was Richard Hamilton. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Pete Ross. Until next time, goodbye.