European leaders hopeful after Trump call before Putin summit

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

I'm Julia McFarlane, and in the early hours of Thursday, the 14th of August, these are our main stories.

European leaders have given a positive account of their talks with President Trump ahead of Friday's meeting with Vladimir Putin as they seek to influence the terms of any any ceasefire in Ukraine.

The Peruvian president has signed a law pardoning military and police officers who are accused of human rights abuses during a bitter conflict with leftist rebels.

And Lebanon's president has warned a visiting Iranian security official against interference as the government moves towards disarming Hezbollah.

Also in this podcast.

Please have mercy on us.

Our suffering is worse than you can imagine.

Help us in any way possible, especially the children.

They are innocent in all this, and they are dying before our eyes.

The crisis intensifies in the besieged Sudanese city of Elfasha.

On Wednesday, just two days before Vladimir Putin is welcomed back onto American soil, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders spoke to Donald Trump to make clear their red lines in any negotiations with the Russian president.

Neither Mr.

Zelensky nor his allies in Europe have been invited to the U.S.-Russia summit in Alaska, but President Trump took a call from Berlin.

The German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told him that he and other European leaders, some of whom were also on the call, would never recognize a land grab by Russia.

His words are spoken by a translator.

A legal

recognition of Russian ownership of this territory

cannot have

guaranteed

there has to be robust security guarantees.

The sovereignty of Ukraine has to be respected.

If there is no movement

on the Russian side,

the U.S.

have to put more pressure on Russia.

President Trump knows this position

and largely agrees with it.

President Zelensky, also in Berlin, said an immediate ceasefire must be top of the agenda.

He urged the U.S.

President to impose tougher sanctions on Russia if Mr.

Putin did not agree.

After the coup, the French President Emmanuel Macron said the American will was to obtain a ceasefire, and the British Prime Minister, Keir Stahmer, said there was a viable chance of one.

European leaders may be claiming they and Mr.

Trump are on the same page regarding the outcome of Friday's summit, but Mr.

Zelensky signaled a warning.

He said that Vladimir Putin wanted to trick the United States into agreeing to give Ukrainian territory to Russia.

His words are also spoken by a translator.

Putin is bluffing.

I have been talking to Trump, European colleagues, that Putin doesn't want peace.

He wants to occupy our country.

And we understand it.

Putin cannot fool us.

We need to pressure him.

Sanctions not only from the US but also from the European Union.

Together, our Union of partners can really, really stop Putin's war.

Speaking a few hours later in Washington, President Trump said that he had a positive conversation with Ukraine's president, who could potentially meet Mr.

Putin after the summit in Alaska.

where we are and what we're doing.

If the first one goes okay,

we'll have a quick second one.

I would like to do it almost immediately, and we'll have a quick second meeting between President Putin and President Zelensky and myself if they'd like to have me there.

And that would be a meeting where maybe it could be absolutely worked.

But if the second meeting takes place, now there may be no second meeting because if I feel that it's not appropriate to have it because I didn't get the answers that we have to have, then we're not going to have a second meeting.

Our correspondent, James Waterhouse, has been covering the Ukraine war since the beginning, and he spoke to me from Berlin.

What struck you when Zelensky and Mertz came out of this virtual summit is that they looked shattered.

It was clear they'd had some pretty intense conversations in there.

You know, this is an incredibly significant week diplomatically for Ukraine, of course, and Europe, because they are trying to muscle in on a process that will define its very future.

And so they were very keen to point out: yes, Donald Trump agreed to the need for a ceasefire first.

He agreed the current front lines would be the starting point for any kind of negotiation.

He ruled out any legal recognition of occupied territory.

Now, there are, of course, technical workarounds, but I think this was Europe throwing the kitchen sink at trying to influence Donald Trump's thinking in any way.

But, you know, for all of the notes of reassurance and positives they might feel, there is so much that can happen between now and the end of Friday's summit in Alaska.

And I think there's going to be a lot of nervous waiting to see what developments, if any, are announced after that.

When, as we know, Donald Trump can change his mind very quickly.

Indeed, I mean, how much of a difference do you think all of this will make today on Friday?

Well, clearly, Europe has been able to change, even improve its relationship with the US, not least through its increased defence spending.

I mean, going from, you know, in some cases, two and a half to five percent is not to be sniffed at, and Donald Trump points that out.

If you look at how Donald Trump is talking today in terms of being on good terms with Zelensky, clearly the words and tone have changed.

He's also made quite sizable threats to Russia and its major trading partners in terms of sanctions and heightened tariffs.

But asides from giving the green light for US-made weapons to be provided to Ukraine via Europe and paid for, by the way, there still isn't the action that the bloc would like to see exerted on Russia by the US to force it to reconsider, to slow its war machine in any way.

And I think until that happens, if there is a stumbling block on Friday, then Europe will be hoping something else happens.

James Waterhouse.

As President Zelensky arrived for the talks in Berlin, the governor of Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region ordered the evacuation of a dozen settlements in the face of a Russian advance.

More details now from our diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams.

As all eyes start to turn in the direction of Alaska, something is unfolding on the scarred battlefields of eastern Ukraine.

Close to the town of Dobropilya, Russian units have broken through front lines and pushed deep into Ukrainian territory.

The move threatens key supply routes, and the local authorities have ordered civilians to evacuate.

But what does it amount to?

Matthew Saville is Director of Military Sciences at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

What we don't know yet is: is this a genuinely extensive breakthrough, or have we got small bands of Russians now roving more deeply behind Ukrainian defensive positions and they will be rounded up in the next few days?

But it's certainly of a significant concern to the Ukrainians.

Ukrainian officials say the Russian units involved are being detected and destroyed.

But the move, possibly designed to allow Vladimir Putin to claim that Ukraine's defenses are collapsing, highlights the fragility of the Eastern Front Line and, for Kiev's European allies, the urgent need for a ceasefire.

If Donald Trump manages to persuade Vladimir Putin to halt the fighting, a very big if, then the so-called Coalition of the Willing, headed by Britain and France, wants to be in a position to deploy what Sakir Stamer is calling stabilization forces to help on land, in the air, and at sea.

But the shape, composition, and role of such forces remain unclear.

Paul Adams.

International aid organizations have intensified warnings about starvation in the the Sudanese city of El Fasha.

The city has been under siege by paramilitary fighters for over a year and no aid is getting in.

The Sudanese army has been battling the rapid support forces militia for more than two years now.

The army regained control of some parts of Sudan, but El Fasha remains one of the most brutal front lines.

The BBC has obtained rare footage showing the desperation inside the city.

From Nairobi, Barbara Pletusher sent this report.

In this place of relentless need, your best hope is to find a way to suppress the hunger.

This community kitchen in Al-Fasher is one of the few still functioning.

The kitchen of goodness, it's called, now crammed with women and children sitting on the ground waiting for food.

The kitchen manager is talking about the meal, if you can call it that, that, filming it on his phone.

It's a porridge made of ambas, the residue of peanuts after the oil has been extracted, normally fed to animals.

Sometimes it's possible to find cereal grains in the market.

Today he says there is no flour or bread.

May God relieve us of this calamity.

There's nothing left to buy.

Al-Fasher has been under siege by the paramilitary rapid support forces for more than a year, a front line in Sudan's terrible civil war, and a death trap for the people inside it.

No aid is getting through.

This woman told us she was displaced to the city from a village nearby,

only to find herself besieged from all sides.

We don't know what to do.

We can't find food.

Please have mercy on us.

Our suffering is worse than you can imagine.

Help Help us in any way possible, especially the children.

They are innocent in all this, and they are dying before our eyes.

Hospitals can't cope with the crisis.

I am in the pediatric hospital.

We have now, for example, five severe, malnourished children,

and also they have medical complications.

And unfortunately, there is no

even drop of milk to give them.

Dr.

Ibrahim Abdullah Khatr sent us this voice note from the Al-Saudi hospital.

Many others have closed, damaged by shelling, and desperately short of medical supplies.

Again, I can see the situation is so miserable, it's so catastrophic.

The children of Al-Fahir

are dying on a daily basis due to lack of food, lack of medicine.

This week, the battle intensified.

The rapid support forces launched a major push on Al-Fashr.

They published this video claiming to have advanced.

In social media posts, the army and its allies insist they repelled the assault and inflicted heavy losses.

But civilians caught in the middle are fighting for survival.

That fight continues even after they've fled, fled, and hundreds of thousands have, ending up in squalid camps at a place called Tuila, some 60 kilometers away.

In Tuwila, at least, aid workers have access, but the challenges are still daunting, says John Joseph Ocebi.

He's the on-site project coordinator for a group called the Alliance for International Medical Action.

We are having shortages, as you can see, in terms of wash, in terms of medical supplies to be able to deal with this situation.

We have limited supplies currently in the field due to access constraints.

Lying on one of the beds in the tent is Ubaida Ismail Ishaq, looking gaunt and exhausted.

She arrived from Al-Fasha a few days ago.

She is seven months pregnant.

Her story is a tale of trauma told by many.

We drink water without boiling it.

We have no one to get us water because my husband was captured on the road to El Fasha and my daughter has a head injury.

The United Nations is appealing for a humanitarian truce, but the enormous costs of this unending war continue to be paid by the weakest.

Barbara Plettusher.

Artificial intelligence is starting to play a bigger role in all of our lives, but is it always helpful?

A new study has found that doctors who regularly use AI-assisted systems to evaluate footage and data from colonoscopies, an examination of the bowels, become less able to detect precancerous growths without it.

Could technology be eroding the very skills it's meant to support?

The researchers say the findings were concerning.

Our technology editor Zoe Kleiman reports.

The study analysed around 1,400 colonoscopies carried out across four centres in Poland, both before and after AI tools were introduced.

The research team found that the rate at which experienced professionals identified precancerous growths independently of the technology during the procedures fell once the tools were in use.

One of the report's authors, Dr.

Martin Romanczyk from the Academy of Silesia in Poland, said it wasn't clear why this was the case, but other potential factors such as increased workloads or staff working longer hours have been ruled out.

There are some suspicions that perhaps we are over-relying on AI systems because we are basically waiting for the machine to show us where the polyps are and maybe we are not paying that much attention for careful inspection.

I would not say that based on our research we should stop using AI, but we should identify the

risk factors.

The use of AI tech in healthcare is increasing and it's considered to be very successful at spotting specific symptoms.

The tools are trained to use large amounts of data, as many different images as possible, for example, of the symptom they're being developed to recognise.

Supporters of the tech say it frees human doctors up to spend more time with patients.

Zoe Kleiman.

Now to Scotland, where AI is having a less ominous impact.

Scientists there are developing what they're calling superpower glasses, which could improve people's hearing.

The device uses a mixture of lip reading technology, AI, AI, and cloud computing to filter out background noise and isolate a speaker's voice in real time.

Dr.

Asen Adil of Sterling University told us how it all works.

You would have a camera on the glasses, or it could be on your

earrings, or it could be a locket.

So, that visual camera is going to actually capture your visuals, specifically your lips, so because lip movements are associated with the speech, right?

So, when I say hello, you would see that my lips are saying hello.

If you're in a very noisy environment, so the speech is going to be really buried under the noise.

And you can imagine yourself being in a cocktail party or, you know, in a get-together, even people, even people with normal hearing, you know, they just struggle to hear speech.

But what they do, I mean, the brain automatically uses the visuals to clean the speech.

So these visual images from your cameras, they're going to go into the audio-only hearing aids.

And of course, they're going to improve the speech.

We are developing an AI chair specifically for these multi-sensory hearing aids that are going to mimic a paramedal cell in the human brain that is now suggested to be the hallmark of conscious processing.

So we are able to mimic these cells and we have showed that we can really process these big data, audiovisual information on the chip.

Dr.

Asan Adil.

Still to come.

For thousands of years, the native people of Alaska and the Russian Far East traveled back and forth across the Bering Strait to share a common culture and speak similar languages.

And all that came to a halt as the Cold War erupted after World War II.

We return to Friday's Trump Putin Summit and hear how Alaska, where they will meet, has been a key contact point for generations.

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Human rights groups have condemned the move by Peru's President Dina Boluarte to grant immunity to hundreds of military and police officers for human rights abuses committed during the country's internal conflict back in the 1980s and 90s.

According to official data, 70,000 people were killed during the fighting between the government and left-wing rebel groups like the Shining Path, which endorsed Maoist ideology.

I asked our America's regional editor, Leonardo Rocher, why Miss Boluarte had decided to sign the legislation now.

Well, she said that she was restoring dignity to people who fought for democracy and fought for the country.

And we have to bear in mind here that President Boloarti didn't make the decision herself.

This was a measure that was approved by Congress only a month ago, and she just signed it into law.

Of course, she supports that.

She has spoken about that very, very often.

And what she said is that these people were fighting communism, fighting violent groups, and they've been attacked by a human rights group, by the left, and that they deserved to be respected for what they did in her views for the country.

And this is expected to affect five, six hundred people who were being tried, and now they will be basically released.

And Leonardo, this conflict happened decades ago.

What exactly was it all about?

Can you bring us up to date for those of us who aren't so well informed on Peru's history?

This conflict that started with Tupacamaru, a left-wing group, a guerrilla group, and then the Shining Path of the Sendero Lominos, who were a Maoist group.

They were

mainly

the Maoist group, the Sendero Lominos, they were vicious.

They killed people, they carried out massacres, and then you had paramilitary groups, very violent groups that came on to fight them.

And for a while, it looked like these rebel groups are going to defeat the government.

They almost brought them down.

And then you had President Fujimori, who died a year ago.

ago and he came back and they fought with a lot of violence.

You have many people who say they saved the country because these rebel groups were really very violent and also committing huge abuse.

But what you had here is innocent people, indigenous people, poor people who are

basically executed for being considered to be close to the rebels or helping the rebels or sometimes living in the same areas as them.

So for many people it's a complete disgrace that you have innocent people who won't have any justice for that.

Leonardo Rocha.

There's been a tense visit to Lebanon by a senior Iranian official.

Under pressure from the US, the Lebanese government has committed to disarming Hezbollah, which is based in Lebanon, by the end of the year.

Iran backs the Shia Muslim group and does not want this to happen.

Speaking at a news conference in Beirut, Ali Larajani, the Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, accused America of bossing Lebanon around.

Other countries should not give orders to Lebanon.

The Lebanese nation is a mature nation.

It can make decisions itself.

Our correspondent Hugo Beshega in Beirut told me more.

This is part of a regional tour.

First, he was in Iraq, where the Iranians support a number of militias, part of what Iran has described as the axis of resistance.

And here in Lebanon, obviously, you know, Iran supports the group that used to be the most powerful of this alliance, Hezbollah.

Iran has spent a lot of time, a lot of money building Hezbollah, and the group was obviously significantly weakened in last year's war with Israel.

So it is a very difficult situation for Hezbollah.

This is the worst moment in their history.

So I think this is a way for Iran to tell Hezbollah and also the Shia community that we've got your back, and also a way to send a message to everybody.

everybody that Iran has been weakened, but it's still in the game.

The recent decision by the Lebanese cabinet to disarm all the non-state actors hasn't been very popular with Iran, sure.

How has it gone down in Lebanon?

And you mentioned the Shia population.

How have they reacted to that?

Yeah, so there is obviously some discontent in the Shia community, especially because there's been almost no money to rebuild communities that have been destroyed because of the war.

But outside Hezbollah's support base, there is a lot of support for the idea of disarming Hezbollah.

For many Lebanese, the idea of having an armed group inside the country with the ability to drag the country into wars is over.

So there is a lot of support.

This visit is happening just days after the Lebanese cabinet approved a roadmap backed by the US for Hezbollah's disarmament.

Hezbollah so far has said, look, we're not going to accept.

So there is obviously the fear here that if there is any kind of move against Hezbollah, this could lead to some kind of violence.

And obviously, a lot of people here, you know, still have memories of the civil war, so this is something that is being taken very seriously by a lot of people here.

Hugo Beshega in Beirut.

Let's return to our main story.

And it's tomorrow, Friday, when the media glare will be on the US state of Alaska as the US and Russian presidents fly in to talk.

President Trump has a five and a half thousand kilometre trip.

But President Putin's trip from Moscow is even further, around seven thousand.

The westernmost coast of Alaska is only about 90 kilometers from the easternmost coast of Russia.

The northern US state was once a Russian colony sold by a 19th-century Tsar who needed the money for a war in Crimea.

In 2025, the talks will revolve around another war in the same part of the world.

So, how does this meeting fit into the history of Russians and Americans crossing paths in Alaska?

David Ramser is an Alaskan journalist and author.

There are only about 800,000 Alaskans here, even though our state is so huge.

About 40% of the state population is in Anchorage, and we have about 200 very remote, mostly indigenous villages in the north and western part of Alaska that are from 50 to a couple of hundred people.

So take us back to 1867, when the then Tsar of Russia needed some money, he sold Alaska to the United States.

Well, we certainly got a very good deal.

$7.2 million, about two cents an acre, is what the United States paid for Alaska.

We produced that much in about a day of oil production from the north slope of Alaska.

But the history between Alaska and Russia is actually very long.

For thousands of years, the native people of Alaska and the Russian Far East traveled back and forth across the Bering Strait to share a common culture and speak similar languages.

And all that came to a halt as the Cold War erupted after World War II.

And so both countries agreed to a treaty that basically sealed the Bering Strait.

No travel was allowed.

And that pretty much lasted from 1948 to the mid-1980s.

Despite that, how Russian does Alaska still feel?

There are a number of Russian Orthodox churches and Alaska communities.

A lot of Alaska Native people became Russian Orthodox back in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and that still continues.

There are a number of Russians that came over during the heyday of positive relations, and so there are a few hundred Russians who married Alaska citizens, started families and businesses, and remain here.

That's only 55 miles between the two mainlands, and there are two islands in the middle of the Bering Sea, Russian Big Diomede and U.S.

Little Diomede, and they're only two and a half miles apart.

Starting in the mid-1980s for about 25 or 30 years, there was really a heyday of positive relations between the two countries.

And those really continued till Mr.

Putin came to power and slowly shut all that down.

Did you take the opportunity to go during that period?

I did my first trip to Russia in 1988.

Alaska Airlines, which is a carrier in our part of the world, loaded a plane with mostly Alaska natives who flew over to the Russian coast and met some Russian natives who they had not seen in 40 years because of the Cold War closure.

And it was a very emotional time on the tarmac there being reunited.

When something like this...

President Trump, President Putin meeting comes to Alaska, does the state enjoy the scrutiny of being the center of the world's attention for a while?

We've actually long been a meeting place for international dignitaries.

A number of U.S.

presidents, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, have held summits here.

And so we're used to the tension that we get internationally.

But I think Alaskans are pretty upset about this summit where Ukraine is excluded and it legitimizes Putin by allowing him to land on U.S.

soil.

And I think a majority of Alaskans and Americans oppose that.

David Ramsey, speaking to Ben James.

Now, while President Trump has been planning the Alaska talks, his vice president, J.D.

Vance, has been on a family holiday in England, though he's had a few official meetings as well.

He spent the past few days in the scenic Cotswold countryside.

It's hard to imagine anywhere more, well, English.

But not everyone is pleased at having a VIP visitor.

Rather shockingly, for the sleepy Cotswolds, there have been protests against him.

So we're calling it J.D.

Vavs Not Welcome Party.

Essentially we just we got everybody bringing along their homemade banners, we brought along loads of images of that meme that we know he hates with him with the bald head.

He's entitled to holiday here just like anybody else is but we're also entitled to express our opinion.

Police everywhere in the fields, you know our taxpayers are paying for all of that.

He's not welcome here so we want him to go home.

And there's been trouble too for one of his hosts earlier in his stay, the British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who welcomed him to the government's countryside retreat of Chevening in Kent.

There, the two families fished for carp together.

But, as Charlotte Simpson reports, perhaps they should have tried another activity instead.

Angling to maintain the smooth relationship he enjoys with J.D.

Vance, David Lammy invited him to cast a line out on the property's private lake.

An innocent enough activity, the Foreign Secretary must have thought.

But he's since realized the Environment Agency requires all anglers in England and Wales aged 13 and over to have a rod license to fish for freshwater species.

The Foreign Office spokesperson said Mr.

Lamy quickly purchased the relevant license and alerted the agency once he realized what they called the administrative error.

Despite the slip, the visit seemed to be a success, diplomatically, at least.

The one strain on the special relationship is that all of my kids caught a fish, but the foreign secretary did not.

I'm sorry.

No.

It seems the only thing David Lammy caught was the eye of the authorities.

I've haddock with all these fish puns.

Charlotte Simpson reporting.

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 any of 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 globalnewspod.

This edition was mixed by Holly Palmer and the producers were Alison Davis and Peter Hyatt.

The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Julia McFarlane.

Until next time, goodbye.

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