Trump: arrangements under way for Putin Zelensky meeting

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This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Ankar Desai, and at 1300 GMT on Tuesday, the 19th of August, these are our main stories.

President Trump says he's begun arrangements for a meeting between the leaders of Russia and Ukraine after talks in Washington on how to end the war.

He's also said it will be European nations putting boots on the ground to defend Ukraine in the future.

A Los Angeles drug dealer, known as the Queen of Ketamine, has admitted supplying the narcotics that killed the friends actor Matthew Perry, and a huge operation is taking place in Sweden to move a church five kilometers.

Also, in this podcast, it's like a book of history: what was living in the seas, what is living now in the seas, and the our human influence.

I feel like you got the back of the prisoner.

Yes,

why scientists are digging up mud from the Antarctic seabed.

Donald Trump says he has begun work to arrange a face-to-face meeting between President Zelensky and President Putin to try to end the war in Ukraine.

He described Monday's day of diplomacy at the White House, which also included several European leaders, as a very good step towards peace.

The Europeans were also overwhelmingly positive while stressing the need to maintain support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.

President Trump also told Fox News he thought Vladimir Putin would most likely move towards ending the war in Ukraine because he said he thought he must be tired of it.

He also said it would be European nations putting boots on the ground to defend Ukraine in future and that Ukraine would not join NATO.

Although the fighting has continued, Ukrainians have given a cautious welcome to the outcome of the talks in Washington.

Lisa Yasko is an MP in President Zelensky's party and a member of the Ukrainian Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee.

We don't want another piece of paper.

We need something very tangible, something very effective that would include not just theoretical theories about security, but we need weapons, we need foreign troops, we need a very strict plan about what happens if Ukraine is invaded again.

And that's a very sensitive and very difficult topic.

And seeing so many European leaders ready to talk about this and making steps on this, this is a big achievement.

Fresh back from Washington, the French President Emmanuel Macron and the British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer jointly chaired a virtual meeting of the so-called Coalition of the Willing, those who've pledged to support Ukraine and commit forces to a peacekeeping force there once the fighting ends.

I heard more about the European position from our world affairs correspondent, Paul Adams.

Now, the British and the French have been discussing this so-called coalition of the willing, involving a number of countries, many of them European, but not exclusively, since around March.

And during that time, there's been repeated references to the need for some kind of American support or backstop, as Sir Kira Stamer has often called it.

He now feels that because of what Donald Trump said yesterday, that may now be a realistic possibility, that the Americans may be willing to offer some kind of practical support to enable this coalition of the willing to mount a properly viable operation inside Ukraine.

The details of that operation are still very unclear, and certainly the details of any American involvement in it are very unclear.

But Sir Kirstama and the others following those meetings yesterday feel that there is now an opportunity and they are racing to try and fill in the detail.

So there was quite a frisson of excitement when we first got the news from the talks, but a few hours on, pulses seem to have calmed, as you also mentioned.

In the cold light of day, how significant was the progress that was made yesterday in Washington?

Look, I think most people are relieved that it didn't result in another bust-up.

I think they are also relieved that their concerted effort by they, I mean, the Europeans' concerted effort to be there, to be seen to be expressing solidarity with Ukraine, backing up some of its core demands.

I think all of this is regarded as having been successful.

I mean, if you look at the scenes around the table yesterday, there were some interesting moments that could have gone wrong when, for example, Friedrich Mertz talked about the urgent need for a ceasefire before

any further meetings, particularly a meeting between Vladimir Zelensky and Vladimir Putin.

Donald Trump, frankly, looked a bit bored by this talk and was quite dismissive, saying, we don't need a ceasefire in this process.

I can manage this without a ceasefire.

I think the Europeans have used up a little bit of the political capital that they have been amassing in recent months quite successfully in getting alongside Donald Trump, in flattering him, in showing that they're willing to engage with him.

They used a bit of that up yesterday in this effort to initiate a process in which they hope that they will keep the U.S.

administration focused on what they regard as the key essentials.

Paul Adams.

In the first hints of Moscow's response to yesterday's talks, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been quoted as suggesting that, as he put it, territorial changes quite often are indispensable parts of reaching agreements.

So, how how are Russians viewing the outcome of that extraordinary summit in Washington?

I've been talking to Sergei Goryashenko of BBC Russian.

So, the significance of these talks has been downplayed, obviously, even before they have started.

And the rather cryptic comment by Putin's aide on the diplomacy and the foreign relations, Yuri Ushakov, who said that the Kremlin would consider maybe rising the level of the current delegation involved in the talks with Ukraine.

And that's, quote, it's left everyone just trying to guess whether this means that Putin is indeed ready to go to the bylaw or tri-light with Zelensky and Zelensky and Trump prospectively, or it just means that Vladimir Medinsky, another Putin's aid who is now the head of the Ukrainian delegation, would be replaced by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov, or maybe the Putin's aid Gurushakov himself.

In terms of what the commentariat are saying today in Moscow, how are people feeling?

Because it seemed like Russian commentaries were fairly confident after the talks in Alaska last week.

Well, they were, yes, but there's been not anything too different from what we have seen before in terms of Russian media pundits trying to laugh out of the significance of these talks and toast some names with Zelensky and Trump saying that those European leaders from the coalition of Willen

are those who will torpedo those negotiations.

So same old, same old, basically just very briefly before you go, uh the crux of the matter then for Vladimir Putin, what would you say is non negotiable for him?

Before yesterday it seemed that Putin meeting Zelensky before Ukraine surrenders is non-negotiable and Putin himself has told multiple times that he would consider meeting the Ukrainian President, but only to sign an agreement which would fulfil all Putin's desires and all his needs.

In this case, Trump is wants Putin to meet Zelensky to negotiate, and that's something that the permanent leader would not likely go to.

Sergei Goriashko

to the Middle East now, and we have had no word yet from Israel on a new ceasefire proposal put forward by Egypt and Qatar, which Hamas has accepted.

The plan includes an end to the fighting for 60 days and the release of hostages held in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

Our chief international correspondent, Lis Douset, is in Cairo and was traveling with Egypt's foreign minister minister and the Palestinian Prime Minister on Monday afternoon when news of this latest proposal came through.

She told my colleague Anna Foster that it sounded awfully familiar.

I think our listeners will be forgiven for thinking, haven't we heard this before?

For months now, including even from President Trump, we've heard the deal is 90% done, we've never been so close, and yet it still keeps dragging on.

This latest news came yesterday when we were actually travelling in northern Egypt along the Gaza border with Egypt's foreign minister, Badr Abdullah, and the Palestinian Prime Minister, Mohammad Mustafa.

And we suddenly heard news that the Qatari Prime Minister, one of the main mediators in this indirect talks between Israel and Hamas, was also coming

to northern Egypt.

And then the news came that Hamas has now accepted the proposals.

So at the same time that the Egyptians and the Palestinians were trying to draw attention to the growing humanitarian crisis right across the border in Gaza.

More and more people, more and more Palestinians, including children, dying of hunger, according to the UN.

They had to then focus on what was happening on the political front.

So when we landed in Cairo, the Egyptian foreign minister was making some calls to his mediators, and then I asked him, was this really a breakthrough?

In order to move forward with a ceasefire during this period of the ceasefire, we have to work out a final deal in order to make the ceasefire sustainable.

But what's very important is to allow the flow of humanitarian and medical aid without any obstructions, also to secure the release of some of the hostages, of course, and return of some of the detainees.

We will be in touch with the American side, with the Israeli side, in order to move forward with this deal as soon as possible.

Because as you see, the catastrophic situation in Gaza is unbearable, unbelievable, whether the humanitarian situation or the daily killings of people, either because of the Israeli attacks or because of the hunger orchestrated by the Israelis.

So we hope to move forward.

What are you being told is the last hurdle?

Well, there is a sort of acceptance of the Witkov proposal in general, and we hope that the Israelis will reciprocate that in order to move forward.

But is it a breakthrough?

We hope so.

And it depends now, Lise, on Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, who has varying competing pressures, international pressure, pressure from hostage families to reach a deal, but also pressure from ultra-nationalist members of his cabinet not to.

Yes, pressure amounting on all front, it has to be said.

You heard the Egyptian Foreign Minister refer to Witkopf, which of course is Steve Witkopf, President Trump's envoy for everything, everything, including the Middle East.

And I'll just say that under this deal, which is a partial deal, that Hamas would free 10 living Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza, the remains of 18

who have died in nearly two years there, and in exchange for a 60-day ceasefire.

Now, recently, Prime Minister Netanyahu, who had started saying, no, no, no, a partial deal is not going to work.

We have to go for a final deal.

All of the hostages, living and dead, have to be returned, and we'll discuss an end to the war.

Now they've gone back to this partial deal.

So there's some discussion.

Prime Minister Netanyahu not wanting to say in public, yes, he's now changed his mind, they'll accept a partial deal.

But he did set out before the conditions, five principles about ending the war, and I think he's going to stick to them.

And they are very tough conditions, not just for Hamas to accept, but Arab neighbours who will be called upon to try to make any deal work, which is that not only is Hamas to be disarmed, the whole Strip will be demilitarised, and that Israel will maintain a security control in the Gaza Strip.

And these are really, really difficult issues and one of the biggest gaps which will have to be closed.

Lise Douset.

Six elderly North Korean men, all of them soldiers and convicted spies, who've been imprisoned in South Korea for decades, have applied to be repatriated back to the north.

They were arrested in the 1950s and 60s and are now known as unconverted long-term prisoners because they refuse to renounce their communist beliefs.

I heard more from our Asia-Pacific Asia-Pacific editor, Jae-Sung Li.

These are men basically who are prisoners of war who'd fought for the North Korean army during the Korean War in the 1950s and spies that Pyongyang sent to the south following the war to carry out espionage activities.

Now, many of them have died of old age or illness, so these six men are believed to be the last remaining ones still alive in South Korea.

Now, as you say, they're aged between 80 and 96 and were arrested in the 50s and 60s and then locked away for decades for refusing to denounce their communist beliefs and abandoned their loyalty to Pyongyang.

Now, for some context, during the 50s and 60s, South Korea was lagging behind North Korea in terms of economic power, in terms of standards of living.

And worldwide, it was the Cold War era.

So you essentially had two rival ideologies competing for dominance.

South Korea was a capitalist society, North Korea was a communist one.

So in the eyes of Seoul, not only were these men a threat to national security, it actually viewed them as basically agents of Pyongyang who were helping helping it to try to overthrow and destabilize the South Korean society.

Just briefly, why do they want to be sent back to North Korea?

Well, essentially, they miss their home.

You know, they want to go back home, they miss their family members.

One of them actually spoke to the BBC five years ago, saying he misses, you know, his homeland.

They view themselves as North Koreans.

So Seoul says it will review their requests for repatriation, but acknowledges that it will be quite difficult because one man, Anak Saap, said he wanted to be sent back on Wednesday, and that's tomorrow, Wednesday tomorrow.

Seoul says this is virtually impossible because more time is needed to carry out such a process, and especially they need to consult with the North Koreans first before they can actually carry this out.

Jae-sung-li.

Back in February, the UK government secretly demanded it get access to some data belonging to customers of Apple who thought they could keep material private using a system called Advanced Data Protection.

The government was using the Investigatory Powers Act, known to its critics as the Snoopers Charter.

Apple said no.

Privacy campaigners were outraged.

And now US security services say the idea has been dropped.

Our reporter, Chris Valence, has been following this and told me more.

This is quite a major blow-up between two very close allies when it comes to things like surveillance.

Essentially, the Investigatory Powers Act is the law that regulates this kind of technical surveillance, and it enables the UK government to issue, if you like, a secret notice to tech firms demanding that they change the way their system system works.

And earlier this year, news broke from sources that the UK government had issued a notice demanding that Apple allowed law enforcement to access data protected by this advanced data protection system.

And it's an opt-in system, and that can include things like backups of photos, notes, voice message stored in Apple's cloud, which would otherwise be encrypted and inaccessible to everyone, including Apple.

Now, Apple didn't confirm the existence of the notice, but it has publicly said it will never put a back door into its services.

And again,

the company had filed a complaint, an appeal, if you like, to a court in the UK, challenging the Home Secretary's power to issue such a notice.

What can we say about the intervention of Tulsi Gabba then?

The US Director of National Intelligence has posted about this online, saying that she was instrumental in blocking this.

Yes, well, I mean, it is a significant intervention from Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence.

She's been a critic of this previously, but now the news she broke on X was that essentially the UK had agreed to drop its mandate for Apple to provide a back door that would have enabled access to protected, encrypted data of American citizens.

The UK government has declined to comment on what it calls operational matters, but says it has a strong joint security and intelligence arrangements with the US.

Chris Falance.

Still to come on this podcast.

We have built a road, 24 meters wide road, and then we have put all the trailers underneath.

And on the new location, we have done a new foundation as well.

An entire church begins a two-day journey across a city in Sweden.

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In a region as complex as the Bay Area, the headlines don't always tell the full story.

That's where KQED's podcast, The Bay, comes in.

Hosted by me, Erica Cruz Guevara, The Bay brings you local stories with curiosity and care.

Understand what's shaping life in the Bay Area.

Listen to new episodes of The Bay every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, wherever you get your podcasts.

Why would anyone brave icy weather and rough seas, sometimes working through the night to dig up mud from the Antarctic seabed?

A new mission, part of Convex Seascape Survey, has brought together a team of scientists from around the world.

Their samples have now arrived back in labs, and analysis has begun to work out how human activity, including a century of industrial whaling, has affected Antarctica and the rest of our planet.

Our science correspondent Victoria Gill reports.

I spent time in the Antarctic Peninsula doing a story about whales last year, and I didn't expect to have quite so many close encounters.

We've been all around the boat, under the boat.

This icy haven for marine life is changing, so one particularly adventurous team of scientists has gathered some physical evidence of that change.

This is the sound from on board a Spanish research vessel earlier this year.

Working at night, lashed by ice and wind, scientists are pulling up a coring drill from the bottom of the southern ocean.

It brings with it six long tubes of seabed mud.

They extracted more than 40 of these mud cores, each a record of what lived and died in the ocean laid down in layer upon layer of sediment over centuries.

You can hear the cicadas chirping around me because I am at the University of Barcelona.

These pieces of Antarctic seabed have been shipped here 15,000 miles and it's taken six months.

So we're going to find out what the scientists here are planning to do with them.

Analysing the DNA, bacterial communities, carbon.

That's lead researcher Dr.

Elisenda Beleste.

You go to a place where nobody has taken samples and you will have this course of sediments that nobody knows what is there and you have the opportunity to know what nobody knows.

Those are the samples?

Yes, these are the samples that we keep at minus 80 degrees.

Dr.

Beleste shows me the carefully labelled frozen samples taken from the cores.

So you slice them and then you take those small samples and you put them in these little vials.

Yes, with a little, it was quite tricky.

Like cryopreservation and minus 80 degrees.

Yes, some samples are at minus 20 and some others at 4 degrees.

It's okay.

So it depends on the type of analysis that we're we're going to do.

That analysis will build a historical record of Antarctic ocean life.

The sediment can be dated, and DNA preserved in the deep freeze can be decoded to see what marine life it came from.

It's like a book of history: what was living in the seas, what is living now in the seas, and our humaning.

I feel like you got the back of the freezer then.

I came from Saudi Arabia to take a look at what is the sample that we have to take with us to there.

It's an international scientific mission, and Dr.

Carlos Precler is here to arrange for some of these frozen vials to be taken to his labs at King Abdullah University.

What will happen in the labs there?

We are specializing in environmental DNA, so we have the laboratory and all the facilities to perform all the analysis there in Saudi Arabia.

You have to think that in the water column, you have a lot of different creatures living there, and they are releasing DNA because they die, sometimes because they poo.

So, you have all the DNA that is going through the bottom of the sediment.

So we are able to retrieve the biodiversity of the past.

Preparing for a long cruise in the Antarctic is the new whaling factory ship Balena of 15.

The scientists will also try to measure the effect that industrial whaling in Antarctica had on our ocean and on our atmosphere.

It pushed many species to the brink of extinction, and whales have huge amounts of carbon locked up in their giant bodies.

This research could reveal how much of that carbon ultimately gets buried in the seafloor mud for centuries, and how removing so many whales from the ocean affected our planet.

So, look out for those whale meat sausages when Belena returns to port.

If we realize that they can help us with the fight against the climate change, we should enhance the population not just to keep what we have, but to fight to have much more whales in the ocean.

So, this evidence of the health and history of the ocean could reveal more about how this vast ecosystem and its giant residents can help in the fight against climate change.

Victoria Gill there.

Four and a half million people sounds like a vast number for a militia, but that is what Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro has announced will stand ready against what he calls outlandish threats from the United States.

Announcing the move on television, Mr.

Maduro called for rifles and missiles for the peasant force.

The empire has gone mad and has renewed its threats to Venezuela's peace and tranquility.

So we must advance on all fronts simultaneously and prepare ourselves to in sovereignty and peace in any circumstances.

I asked BBC Online's America's editor, Vanessa Buschluter, why President Maduro is doing this.

He's doing this because of two events that happened in the last couple of weeks.

One of them is that the US doubled the reward it is offering for information leading to the capture of President Nicolas Maduro to $50 million.

And the other one is the fact that the US has deployed air and naval forces to the southern Caribbean to counter what it says is the threat from Latin American drug cartels.

It argues that President Maduro is the leader of such a drug cartel, the cartel of the Sons,

and that's why President Maduro has reacted in such strong words.

And how big a military threat then does this militia pose?

Not a very big one.

First of all, I would say that the number of 4.5 million militiamen

people is wildly inflated.

Now, what you have to know about this force, it was created by the previous president, Ugo Chavez, in 2007, 2008, and everyone can join it.

So there's no requirements of fitness or of age.

And many of those who have joined it are senior citizens.

The reason why they do join it is that when they go and train on the weekends, they are offered free meals and priority access to government aid.

So probably the 4.5 million is everyone who's ever gone and trained on a weekend and wanted a free meal.

And what's happened to the opposition to Maduro, which the US and other countries used to back?

Well, in order to know what has happened to the opposition, you kind of need to go back to last year when the elections were held.

The opposition had documents showing that it won the election, not President Maduro.

But in the wake of that, there were mass protests and a lot of them were arrested.

And in fact, its main leader, Maria Corina Machado, is in hiding.

Vanessa Buschluter, a woman who U.S.

prosecutors accused of selling the drugs that killed the Friends actor Matthew Perry, has pleaded guilty to five charges in Los Angeles.

Jasphine Sanger, who holds dual British and American citizenship, was due to go on trial next month.

From Los Angeles, David Willis reports.

Prosecutors say Jasveen Sanger was known to her clients as the ketamine queen.

According to her plea agreement, she worked with an intermediary to provide vials of the prescription anesthetic to Matthew Perry's personal assistant, who injected the friend star with the drug.

Matthew Perry was found dead in a jacuzzi at his Los Angeles home in October 2023, and a raid of Jasven Sangha's Hollywood apartment led to officers recovering ecstasy tablets, cocaine, methamphetamine, and other drugs.

David Willis reporting.

Now to a historic town in Sweden whose very existence is being undermined by a mine.

Planners in Kiruna say the old city centre is at risk of collapsing into the ground as the community sits above the world's deepest iron ore mine.

But as the newsroom Stephanie Prentice reports, they have a plan.

In the far north of Sweden, above the Arctic Circle, lies Kiruna, a town.

The modern community of Kiruna was built around 125 years ago with robust wooden structures designed to withstand the Arctic cold.

The jewel in its crown has always been the church there, dubbed one of Sweden's most beautiful buildings.

But now it's under threat.

And while many people find going to church moving, this one actually is.

The 600 ton structure has just started being rolled to a new location.

Hel Ulofsson is project managing the plan, described as one of the most ambitious urban relocation projects in recent history.

We have built a road, 24 meters wide road, and we have digged all underneath and lifted it all up with yaks, and then we have put all the trails underneath.

And on the new location, we have done a new foundation as well.

Travelling at a maximum speed of 500 meters an hour, the move is expected to take two days and is being broadcast live on Swedish TV.

But the stakes are high.

One delicate aspect is the protection of the church's interior treasures, including a 1,000-pipe organ and a painting made by a member of Sweden's royal family that's glued into the masonry.

And it's not just the church that's on the move.

Kirina has had to gradually shift in the past two decades.

Niklas Uhanson works for the mining company.

We've been mining here since the turn of the century.

And when we went underground in the 50s, what happens is that gravity makes the land want to fall into where we mined out the iron ore.

And now we've been mining down to 1,300 meters.

It continues to fall down slowly, slowly, and we need to move.

Moving towns isn't new, but moving an entire building in one piece is unusual.

And while Kirana's mayor says his wife is angry at him about the old city relocating, he says moving the church is about more than logistics.

It's a symbol of the town's move from the past to the future.

Stephanie Prentiss.

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 at bbc.co.uk.

And you can also find us on X at BBC World Service use the hashtag globalnewspod.

This edition was mixed by Nikki Brough, and the producers were Richard Hamilton and Peter Hyatt.

The editor is Karen Martin, and I'm Uncredits I.

Until next time, goodbye.

In a region as complex as the Bay Area, the headlines don't always tell the full story.

That's where KQED's podcast, The Bay, comes in.

Hosted by me, Erica Cruz Guevara, The Bay brings you local stories with curiosity and care.

Understand what's shaping life in the Bay Area.

Listen to new episodes of The Bay every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, wherever you get your podcasts.