Trump says it's easier dealing with Russia

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This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles and in the early hours of Saturday the 8th of March, these are our main stories.
President Trump has again taken aim at Ukraine, saying he's finding it more difficult to deal with Kiev on a peace agreement than Moscow. Syrian troops are reported to have executed more than 160 people in a former Assad stronghold.
Police give an update on the cause of death of Hollywood actor Jean Hackman and his wife Betsy. Also in this podcast, they survived the Hamas attacks at the Nova Music Festival.
On October 7, I take MDMA. And today I know this has helped me.
So did drugs help the trauma heal? It has been another confusing day in the long and tortuous path towards peace in Ukraine. Less than an hour after Washington threatened to impose additional sanctions and tariffs on Moscow because of its latest heavy bombardment of Ukraine, President Trump seemed to come out in support of Vladimir Putin.
He said his Russian counterpart had done what any leader would, given its adversary had just been denied US arms and intelligence. I'm finding it more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine.
And they don't have the cards. As you know, we're meeting in Saudi Arabia sometime next week early.
That in terms of getting a final settlement, it may be easier dealing with Russia, which is surprising because they have all the cards. And they're bombing the hell out of them right now.
And I put a statement in, a very strong statement. Can't do that.
Can't do that. We're trying to help them.
And Ukraine has to get on the ball and get a job done. Nomiya Iqbal is our correspondent in Washington.
The president has done another sort of turnaround in terms of how he's managing the war in Ukraine. So we saw those posts on his social network platform in which he appeared to take a much tougher tone on Russia.
In fact, take a tough tone. He's been criticised for not doing that.
But it appears that he still seems to not have shifted much on his position in terms of being not convinced about Ukraine's desire for peace. It was all pretty confusing because we're not actually sure if he's going to impose any sanctions on Russia.
He has said that he might do. But at the moment, if you were to ask me, does he have a specific policy approach? All we know is that he just wants the war to end in Ukraine.
How that happens, we just don't know. And Nomia, Mr.
Trump's saying it's more difficult to deal with Ukraine than Moscow. That seems to bode badly for Ukraine in the US Kiev talks that are going to take place in Saudi next week.
What are we expecting? It does. You know, look, he and President Zelensky are said to have made up after Mr.
Zelensky sent him a statement praising Mr. Trump for his strong leadership.
Donald Trump even said in his address to the joint session of Congress that he was confident that peace could be achieved. But you do have these talks that are being held next week in Saudi Arabia, where the US envoy Steve Wyckoff will be going to meet Ukrainian officials.
And that includes Mr Zelensky, where they will discuss an initial ceasefire and then a framework for a longer agreement. Whether or not next week ends in some sort of ceasefire, who knows? Because Donald Trump has also said that he wants to go to Saudi Arabia at some point to have talks with President Putin, but we don't know when that would be.
And Nomiya, it is important for Mr Trump that these talks go somewhere because his approval ratings are not great. They're down from his inauguration and the economy is looking a bit shaky.
So he's setting quite a lot of store with this. He really is.
And, you know, he has boasted so much, and he continues to do so, that the war would never have started had he been president. And he promised on the campaign trail that he would end the war on day one.
Obviously, that's not happened. There's lots of rumours that he wants to be within a shot of the Nobel Peace Prize.
That's why he wants these wars to end. But there is pressure certainly on him to deliver on these promises, which is probably why he's taking such a heavy handed, albeit a very confused approach on trying to end the war.
Nomia Iqbal in Washington. On an earlier edition of this podcast, we brought you the news that civilians have been executed by Syrian security forces in an area which has seen clashes with those loyal to the former president, Bashar al-Assad.
Now, more details are emerging. A war monitoring group says the number killed in the coastal province of Latakia has risen to more than 160.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the total includes 13 women and five children, all of whom were from Assad's minority Alawite community. Syria's interior ministry has acknowledged what it called individual violations.
Mohammed lives in a village close to the provincial city of Jabla. He says he witnessed a convoy of motorbikes accompanied by vehicles in the city.
The people on the motorbikes were helping the people in the cars identify the Alawite houses in the area. Over the past months, we have witnessed an escalation in sectarian rhetoric in the area, where people are called out for being a Sunni or an Alawite.
This was never the case under Bashar al-Assad. I hate sectarianism, but this has become our reality.
Our correspondent Lina Sinjab is in Damascus. These attacks came after several ambushes attacked the security forces, leaving over 50 dead yesterday.
But there has been attacks across several Alawite towns and many civilians were targeted. This is a time where the new authorities will have to change its behavior, will have to show that they have control over the troops that they send.
And people are criticizing that they don't have control over their practices. And this is not the way that the country could stay together under one leadership that provides safety and security for the whole nation, regardless of their background or religion.
Yeah, I mean, Lina, just take us through the security situation since Bashar al-Assad was deposed in December. Looking at how the Assad regime was toppled and how Assad left,

there was hardly any bloodshed to be reported in the takeover.

And in fact, tomorrow marks three months since the toppling of Assad.

You know, there were very few incidents of violations,

mainly in Alawite strongholds like in the city of Homs

or coastal cities of Tartus and Latakia, but they were really on a lower scale. Now we're talking about unrest happening in Alawite strongholds, mainly by remnants of Assad regime.
The authorities here say that they are supported by Iran, but the authorities, the new authorities, they still don't have control over all Syria. In the north, you have the Kurdish powers, the Kurdish democratic forces, and they refuse to join forces.
And in the south, in the Druze-controlled communities, some of the communities are taking the chance and calling for separation, calling for international forces to protect minorities. And these calls have been widely condemned by a variety of the society, including the Alawites and communities among the Druze.
People are really calling out for calming down the situation, for unifying forces, for opening a new page in Syria and, you know, find a way to reconcile. Syria's transitional leader, Ahmed al-Shara, says he's going to pursue what he called the remnants of the Assad regime and bring them to trial.
Six Bulgarian citizens living in the UK are facing lengthy prison sentences for spying for Russia. Police say the case is one of the largest and most complex foreign intelligence operations the UK has seen.
Three of the group were found guilty on Friday, while the

remaining three had admitted their involvement earlier. The trial heard the group had engaged

in a series of surveillance and intelligence operations, targeting people and places of

interest to Russia over a period of three years. They were arrested in February of 2023,

as our correspondent Daniel DeSimone reports. Police! Police! Police smashing a Russian spy cell by raiding a guest house.
The owner is Bulgarian Orlin Rusev. His guest house is full of gadgets used for spying, and officers find thousands of chat messages organising espionage.
He was one of three Bulgarians who pleaded guilty at earlier hearings to spying for Russia. Frank Ferguson is from the Crown Prosecution Service.
The sheer scale of what was recovered from the espionage base was unprecedented. We're talking about devices that can, for example, be taken close to a mobile phone and extract the data from that phone and exploit it.
And there were 11 drones, over 200 mobile phones, nearly 500 SIM cards. Orlin Rusev moved to the UK as a businessman over 15 years ago.
After being recruited as a Russian spy, he went on to sign up other Bulgarians, including Biza Jambazov and his girlfriend Katrin Ivanova, a couple who ran courses in London teaching British values. Their spy cell conducted operations in the UK and Europe, following people targeted by Russia and even seeking to identify Ukrainian troops believed to be training at a US military base in Germany.
They spied on a journalist, Kristo Grosev, who exposed Russia's role in the Salisbury nerve agent attack seven years ago. The cell spoke about kidnapping his fellow journalist, Roman Dobrogatov.
I'm very lucky to be alive, actually. I think it was about interrogating and then killing.
The cell leader, Orlin Rusev, was directed from abroad by a Russian state asset, Jan Marsalek, who's wanted in Germany for a major fraud. This was the first time a criminal court in the UK has heard such detailed evidence about how a Russian operational spy cell works.
Police warn it will not be the last. Daniel DeSimone.
Officials have revealed the likely cause of death in the case of the American actor Gene Hackman and his wife, who were both found dead at their home in New Mexico. Authorities revealed a timeline which suggests Betsy Hackman, the actor's long-term partner, died first and Mr Hackman a week later.
Our US correspondent Peter Bowes was following the press conference. We've learned some really very sad details and officials in New Mexico making the point that it's very unusual for them to talk about a case like this so soon after the post-mortem examinations.
Indeed, all the results are still not in, but they know enough, it seems, to piece together a timeline. And they say they believe now that Gene Hackman's wife, Betsy Arakawa, died on February the 11th from complications caused by Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, which is a rare, serious respiratory illness which is caused by the exposure to infected rodents.
He is believed to have died, Gene Hackman, a week later, approximately a week later, on the 18th of February, and this is according to cardiac data obtained from his pacemaker. He is known to have had significant heart disease.
They also say that another contributing factor could be the fact that he was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's disease. And perhaps most sad of all is that they say, and they were questioned about this at the news conference, that it is indeed quite possible that he wasn't aware because of his Alzheimer's disease, that his wife had passed away just a few days before he died.
Those details really are tragic. A carer dying and then leaving nobody to care for what was obviously an extremely vulnerable Mr Hackman.
Do we know what happens next in this case or where does it go now? Well, they are, they say, really trying to tie at the loose ends of this investigation. There are still some telephone, mobile phone records that they haven't managed to access and they're just trying to see if either one of these two people made any phone calls during this crucial time period.
So that is still pending. There's also the results of a post-mortem examination on their pet dog, one of their dogs, which was also found to be dead.
They revealed that that dog had had some veterinary treatment in the recent past and that might have been part of the reason that it died. But of course, it was in a cage.
It was in some sort of kennel. So it is quite possible that it obviously wasn't being fed and it didn't get any water during that time.
Peter Bowes. Now, what seems to be a bit of a first in women's professional sports? Hundreds of tennis players on the WTA tour will be eligible for 12 months paid maternity leave.
Everyone will receive the same amount, which hasn't been disclosed, irrespective of their ranking, and players won't have to repay the money if they later choose not to return to the sport. Grants will also be made available for fertility treatment.
So how important is this announcement, considering tennis players are self-employed? A question Tim Franks asked Eleanor Crooks, tennis correspondent for the Press Association. The WTA are keen to say that this is a first across sports for players who aren't contracted to say like a football club.
So, yeah, it's going to be a big thing, I think, especially for lower ranked players. We have seen quite a few women taking time off to have a baby and then coming back to the WTA.
but they've tended to be the higher ranked players for whom taking a year break or longer financially potentially isn't such a difficult thing, whereas for lower ranked players, that would be a huge decision to make. So I think for those players, yeah, this is going to be really important.
Yeah, correct me if I'm wrong, but I mean, it has been sort of relatively rare up to now, but I presume that this could mean that actually more women could take the opportunity to have a child or more and not feel that they're necessarily being punished for it. Yeah absolutely I mean in 2019 WTA introduced a special ranking so if you take a break to have a child and then come back you can play a certain number of tournaments using the ranking that you had before you took the break.
And they said that since then, 50 players have taken advantage of that. So it is quite a significant number.
But yeah, I think the key thing with this is it will enable the players to plan more in terms of, you know, when they would want to take a break and knowing that that safety net will be there.

So I think, yeah, in terms of being able to balance your professional life and your family life, I think this is a really big thing. The source of the money for this, it's coming from the Saudis, from one of their investment funds.
How is that being viewed, do you think, within the game? I mean, given, of course, the fact that Saudi does discriminate both in law and in practice against women in its country, what do you think the view will be within the sport? There's no getting away from the fact it's a little bit uncomfortable, isn't it? But in some ways, it seems like that ship has sailed a little bit. The WTA has got fully into bed with the PIF and you know they're a title sponsor of the rankings their branding is everywhere on the tournament so I mean there are still dissenters certainly and a lot of people I think who maybe are uncomfortable with it but at the same time you know there's not huge numbers of companies queuing up to to throw their money at like this.
So I think, yeah, maybe most people have just sort of come to accept it now and accepted that, yes, it's not in some ways an ideal situation. But maybe what comes out of it, you can see it as being a good thing and you can look past it in that way.
And just, I mean, briefly, it is women's tennis sort of pioneering perhaps for other women's sports? Yeah, I mean, potentially, they will certainly hope that other sports will follow. But women's tennis is the biggest women's sport in the world.
So the resources that they've got, maybe other sports aren't going to be able to match that at the moment. But they would hope that in the future, maybe it is a path that other sports with independently contracted athletes can go down.
Eleanor Crooks, tennis correspondent for Press Association. Still to come on this podcast.
For the past two or three years, unfortunately, we have nowhere to go. We can't even step out for a day.
The only places we can go are supermarkets, and even there we face restrictions. On International Women's Day, we hear from Afghanistan.
Neuroscientists working with survivors from Israel's Nova Festival after the 7 7th of October Hamas attacks say there are early signs that MDMA or ecstasy may provide some psychological protection from trauma. Preliminary findings from a large-scale study being carried out at Israel's Haifa University suggest that the illegal drug was associated with better mental health outcomes

among survivors from the festival. It's thought to be the first time scientists have been able to study a mass trauma event where large numbers of people were under the influence of mind-altering drugs.
Our Middle East correspondent Lucy Williamson has this report from Jerusalem. moments before Ham gunmen attacked, thousands of people were dancing at the Nova Festival near the Gaza border.
The stories of what happened to their lives, their friends, their bodies, have largely come to light. Now scientists are looking at what was happening to their brains.
Many of those dancing at sunrise were high on illegal drugs like MDMA and LSD. One of them was Michal Ohana.
On October 7, I take MDMA. And today, I know this has helped me.
Michal now believes the drug helped save her life, preventing her from freezing in fear. I feel like this has saved my life because I was in so high and I feel like not in this real world.
If I didn't take, I stop and I sit on the floor and take me or kill me. Despite feeling detached from reality at the time, Michal is still struggling to return to normal life.
I wake up with this and I go sleep with this and people don't understand. We live this this day, every day.
Researchers say there's no hard evidence that drugs helped people like Michal escape the attacks. But Roy Salomon, leading the research on more than 600 NOVA survivors, says initial results suggest MDMA in particular could have helped protect them against the effects of trauma.
People that were on MDMA during the attack, they were sleeping better, they were experiencing less mental distress. Even during the event itself, they were able to see the love of their friends, the camaraderie they had within escaping with other people.
And then when they got home, they were open to receive the love and care of their families and friends. And this is key.
So right now you're in a therapy room for MDMA, mood lighting, candles, even a bed that we can open up for the treatment.

MDMA is already being explored as an experimental treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and this study is fuelling growing interest from scientists in its potential use. Anna Harwood Gross, Director of Research at Israel's Metiv Psychotrauma Centre, says the early results from the NOVA research also helped to answer concerns about using it in countries with a high risk of attacks or sirens occurring during treatment.
They've talked about using MDMA in Ukraine. They've talked about using psychedelics in Rwanda.
They're questioning, you know, can we use psychedelics in an environment which is not safe? MDMA opens up a lot of potential, but it also makes you vulnerable. You're very vulnerable to everything that's going on around you.
And I think that we've learned that if we create the right framework, despite the fact that we're still a country at war, we're able to do this psychedelic treatment. The Nova Festival site today is home to many memories of pain and heroism, hundreds of memorials for the dead, and perhaps lessons for the world in surviving trauma from those still struggling to live.
Lucy Williamson. Train services at the Le Gardu- in Paris saw a day of disruption on Friday caused by the discovery of a large unexploded bomb from the Second World War.
No Eurostar trains ran all day between Paris and London and the company said normal cross-channel services will not resume before Saturday. The bomb, weighing just more than 450 kilograms, was found by maintenance workers near tracks north of the station.
Our Paris correspondent, Hugh Schofield, spent the day at the Gare du Nord. In one of Europe's busiest stations, not a single train in or out.
The platforms standing empty.

Very early this morning, a team working on tracks north of the station

found buried in the ground a large, metre-long bomb.

Immediately, police were alerted and the whole network out of the Gardu Nord,

local, regional and international, was shut down.

The discovery was not a complete surprise.

The rail yards were heavily bombed by the Allies in the war

and crews working there are still under instructions to be on the lookout for ordnance. Mathieu Chabanel is a senior executive at the state rail company SNCF.
Finding bombs near the railway network is not uncommon. However, discovering one of this size, as we have today, is truly exceptional.
For Eurostar travellers to the UK, it was a wrecked day, with plans having to be abandoned. But most seemed to take it phlegmatically.
There was, after all, not much they could do, and no one to blame. Well, we've been here for my wife's 50th birthday.
We've had four wonderful days in Paris, so it looks like another night in Paris, enjoying ourselves and home whenever it's possible. Go with the flow, enjoy Paris, and all will be well.
Just a bit of patience. A couple of hundred people had to move temporarily from their homes, and for a time a section of the Paris ring road was closed.
By mid-afternoon, the operation to make the bomb safe had been successfully completed. Services are returning gradually to normal.
Hugh Schofield. It has been a difficult few days for commercial space exploration.

A new generation of rocket made by Elon Musk's SpaceX firm exploded in the skies over North

America on Thursday morning. And the company which landed one of its craft on the moon

now says that the mission has ended prematurely because the machine can't generate any power.

Our science reporter Georgina Ranard has more details. It started so well.
Three, two, one. SpaceX was testing its new rocket, blasting Starship into space from Texas shortly before midnight on Thursday.
Then this. And we just saw some engines go out.
It looks like we are losing attitude control of the ship. Starships spun out of control and exploded.
Debris rained down, fiery material shot through the skies, captured on video by stunned unlookers on Caribbean islands. I just saw that starship blew up.
There it is. That was insane.
Did you see it explode? It was Starship's eighth test flight and the second in a row to end in failure. But Elon Musk's company did return the booster to the launch pad.
What an incredible sight to see the super heavy booster gliding down into the chopstick arms once again. Hours earlier, a different mission had also gone wrong.
If you're watching the viz and it looks like Athena is traveling parallel essentially to the lunar surface, that's because it is. A private company initially hailed its lunar landing as success, but it then turned out Athena had landed lopsided and cannot now search the moon's south pole for water ice.
The position of its solar panels and the area's extreme cold mean the craft cannot recharge, according to the company Intuitive Machines. NASA is using these private companies to advance its space programme.
The setbacks are a reminder of the high risks of space exploration and just how difficult it is to get it right. Georgina Rennart.
It is International Women's Day and we're hearing from women and girls in Afghanistan about how their lives have changed over the course of more than three years of Taliban rule. Girls over 12 years old are now barred completely from education and banned from speaking in public.

UN experts have warned that the policies amount to gender apartheid. Our producers have voiced

over the women we've heard from, but not using their real names either, so as to not put them

in danger. Let's first hear from Lima, an 18-year-old from a rural district in Afghanistan

who loves to sing. First, you hear her singing Wildflower by US star Billie Eilish.
I know that you love me You don't need to remind me You put it all behind me But I see her I've been singing and listening to songs since I was young. As I got older, everyone told me that I've got a beautiful voice.
I sing by myself while cooking, walking, showering, and that's it. I can sing.
I spend my days with music. At night, I think a lot.
I'm a crazy overthinker about the uncertain future I face.

I can free my soul by singing, despite being limited in many ways. Between these old mud walls, there's a girl that sings against the rules they made and makes herself free through that.
Lima there and this is Freshta, a midwife who had her education interrupted during the Taliban's first period of rule more than 20 years ago. She gets one Friday a month off but her free time used to look very different.
We used to visit parks, gardens or even the zoo. Sometimes we would take our children to the city for a change of atmosphere.
This brought us a sense of freshness and when we returned to work on Saturday, we felt good and motivated. However, for the past two South Asia and Afghanistan correspondent Yogi Talimai.
Higher education is completely banned. Women are unable to work in most sectors.
There are some exceptions, you know, in health care, in security, if you're doing some kind of arts and crafts business or a sewing business from your home. But even that, you know, often they have to face a lot of difficulties.
Women are banned from working for international or domestic NGOs. They can't go to parks.
They can't go to amusement parks. They can't go to public baths.
They have to be covered from head to toe. But even their faces have to be covered according to a law passed by the Supreme Leader last year.
And one of the most striking things about that same law was it was said that women's voices cannot be heard in public. I have to say they're not uniformly implemented all over Afghanistan.
And in some places, you know, the enforcement is a bit more relaxed than others. But for the large majority of Afghan women, this basically means they're staring at days where they're essentially stuck in their

homes, unable to work or study. Every single time we've spoken to a woman in Afghanistan,

she said, you know, we feel like we're being forgotten by the international community

and that nobody's hearing our voice.

Yogita Limai.

And that is all from us for now. But there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast

Thank you. and that nobody's hearing our voice.
Yogita Limai. And that is 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 at bbc.co.uk.
You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag Global News Pod.
This edition was mixed by Masood Ibrahim Kyle and the producer was Rebecca Wood. The editor is Karen Martin.
I'm Nick Miles and

until next time, goodbye.