Zelensky rules out giving up Donbas

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

I'm Valerie Sanderson, and in the early hours of Wednesday, the 13th of August, these are our main stories.

President Zelensky vows to reject any proposal from Russia that would mean Ukraine giving up territory or withdrawing troops from the eastern Donbass region.

The U.S.

has issued charges against a gang boss who controls most of the capital of Haiti and offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture.

The wife of South Korea's jailed former president has been arrested on charges of stock manipulation, election meddling, and bribery.

Also in this podcast.

We've downloaded these videos of executions.

I hope that every perpetrator of those crimes is concerned that their name is in our files and in our evidence.

A new UN report details torture of civilians by the authorities in Myanmar.

Days before a summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, President Zelensky says his forces will not leave the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine.

The Ukrainian army has been defending the area against Russian aggression since 2014, long before Mr.

Putin's full-scale invasion.

The Donbass is prized by the Russian president and may be a key demand when he meets President Trump in Alaska.

But on Tuesday, the White House tried to lower expectations of what could be achieved on Friday.

Mr.

Trump's press secretary, Caroline Levitt, told reporters that the summit in Alaska is one step towards peace.

The goal of this meeting for the President is to walk away with a better understanding of how we can end this war.

And the President said at this podium yesterday when he joined all of you in the room that he hopes in the future there can be a trilateral meeting with these three leaders to finally bring this conflict to an end.

But this is a listening exercise for the president.

Look, only one party that's involved in this war is going to be present.

And so this is for the president to go and to get, again, a more firm and better understanding of how we can hopefully bring this war to an end.

Nevertheless, President Trump has said that any peace deal would likely involve some swapping of territories, with Russia keeping land it has seized in the invasion, a position that Mr.

Zelensky has always rejected and did so again at a youth forum in Kyiv on Tuesday.

As for the negotiations, they are important at the level of leaders, but it's impossible to talk about Ukraine without Ukraine, and nobody is going to accept this.

On Wednesday, Mr.

Trump will take part in a virtual call with Mr.

Zelensky and other European leaders ahead of Friday's summit in Alaska.

In Kyiv, Mr.

Zelensky spoke to journalists, among them our defence correspondent, Jonathan Beale.

A lot of what he was saying was restating what he said when he heard about those talks first between President Trump and President Putin in Alaska, which is that essentially he's not been invited and he's not sure exactly what they will be speaking about.

He said it was a personal victory for President Putin to be invited on US territory.

He's already stated, President Zelensky, that any deal without him, in his words, is a dead deal.

He also has made clear that ceding Ukrainian territory goes against the constitution.

Today he was more emphatic, saying he would not give up the Donbass.

Tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have lost their lives there, the areas of Luhansk and Donetsk.

And the reason why President Zelensky said he would not give up the Donbass is because he says he believes in future it could be used as another launch pad for Russia to launch another attack in the future, just like he said Crimea was used to launch the full-scale invasion.

So that is essentially what he is saying ahead of that meeting with Donald Trump, who is talking about land swaps.

Certainly President Zelensky at the moment not entertaining thoughts of a land swap.

He welcomes Donald Trump's efforts for a ceasefire, but he wants a ceasefire before negotiations start.

Well you mentioned the Donbass and there are reports coming in that Russian forces have breached Ukrainian defenses in the strategic area of Pogrovsk in Donbas.

Is that what you're hearing where you are?

Yeah, so President Zelensky again addressed this and what he said had happened was that small groups of Russian soldiers, I think he said three groups in all, of about 20 to 30 Russian troops, had made an advance of about nine to ten kilometers.

One of those groups he said had been hunted down, had killed or captured.

He said the other two would be hunted down as well.

But he admits that the situation in Pogrovsk is difficult.

He says the city of Pogros has not been surrounded as some people have suggested, but he admits the fighting is difficult and he is sending more troops there.

And he is also clearly worried that Russia will be sending more troops to take more territory in that part of eastern Ukraine in the future because he says their focus was for some time Russian forces retaking Kursk.

Troops are now being deployed to that Pokrosk region.

And clearly, in his view, he thinks President Putin wants to show President Trump ahead of those Alaska talks that Russia is winning this war and Ukraine is losing.

Now, he says that's just information warfare, but that is clearly his concern.

Jonathan Beale, President Trump's former national security advisor, has warned him about President Putin ahead of Friday's summit.

Lieutenant General H.R.

McMaster told the BBC that it could be a mistake if the President fails to directly convey to Vladimir Putin the concerns Mr.

Trump has already been airing airing in public.

General McMaster warned that President Putin knows exactly how to flatter his U.S.

counterpart to serve his own agenda.

Here's our security correspondent, Frank Gardner.

Lieutenant General H.R.

McMaster, a highly decorated former U.S.

Army general, served in the first Trump administration as his national security advisor for 13 months.

Speaking to the BBC today, he voiced his fears that Friday's Trump-Putin summit risked playing into the Russian leader's hands.

I hope

Reducing nuclear weapons stockpiles and reducing global tensions would certainly be a welcome byproduct of any future ceasefire or peace deal in Ukraine.

But European leaders worried that any deal reached with Putin should not come at the price of Ukraine's freedom.

Asked if he thought those leaders still had the ear of the US President, he said they did, especially Sakir Stalmer and the NATO Secretary General.

But A.

J.

McMaster added that they must convince Donald Trump that the outcome of the war in Ukraine was inextricably tied to Europe's security, and that what he called the axis of aggressors, i.e., Russia and its allies, were working together to help it prevail.

Frank Gardner.

Security forces in Myanmar are systematically torturing people, according to a new investigation by the United Nations.

Its latest report says there's significant evidence of widespread torture.

The Burmese army overthrew the elected government in 2021 and is thought to have detained tens of thousands of people in order to crush dissent.

The UN team leader, Nicolaes Kumjian, says the testimony they've gathered makes it possible to identify who committed some of the atrocities.

We have an awful lot of evidence and an awful lot of names in our database.

And so much information is on social media and on the internet.

We've downloaded these videos of executions.

I hope that every perpetrator of those crimes is concerned that their name is in our files and in our evidence.

The UN report was published in Geneva, where our correspondent, Imogen Folks, gave us more details.

This report is really, really shocking at the amount of repression that has been taking place.

We hear reports of terrible, terrible torture in prisons, things like electric shock treatment, people having their fingernails pulled out, sexual violence, gang rape, people being strangled, many people who have died as a result of torture.

and also the kind of fear that is being instilled in the population.

For example, that children are sometimes detained and tortured to put pressure on their parents, who are perhaps seen as dissidents.

And we're talking about what?

Tens of thousands of people being involved?

Many, many thousands, yes.

But I think one of the most interesting things about this report is that

the UN investigators, although they were not allowed in by the regime into Myanmar, they have 1,300 sources and over 600 eyewitnesses.

They also have really extensive electronic evidence from social media.

They've had videos of people being executed inside detention.

So they know, and they have also been able to identify some of the perpetrators.

They're not naming them in public, but they know that the people committing these violations are very often Myanmar security forces.

They know their names, names, some of them are senior, and this is evidence which they say they will pass to international courts like the International Criminal Court.

And the government in Myanmar was overthrown, wasn't it, back in twenty twenty one?

That's right, but we shouldn't forget that UN Human Rights has been investigating Myanmar, keeping its eye on Myanmar long before twenty twenty one.

We had an investigation team set up after

the events of 2017 when a million Rohingya Muslims were hounded out of Myanmar and they are still living in Cox's Bazaar in Bangladesh.

All the reports show that terrible violations took place then.

So Myanmar, to put it bluntly, has a very poor human rights record.

What the UN investigators on this latest report are offering to do is share their new evidence, which continues to show systematic, patterned, planned human rights violations of the most serious, serious nature.

Imogen, folks, we asked the Myanmar authorities for a response and we're still waiting for one.

A prolonged heat wave in many European countries is stretching resources, with firefighters scrambling to tackle outbreaks that are devastating huge swathes of land.

Portugal reached a new national high of 46.6 degrees Celsius in June, and Spain also set new records with temperatures topping 44 degrees Celsius in several regions.

Stephanie Prentiss has this report.

Helicopters dumping water over the town of Tarifa in southern Spain trying to put out the second major fire there in a week.

Further north near Madrid, scorched earth in the city of Trecantos where a fire that's still active has killed one man.

It's one of many active blazes across Spain with thousands of people evacuated and firefighters working through the night.

Across Europe, it's a similar story.

An early onset of heat waves, record-breaking temperatures, and fires that are difficult to contain.

In Italy, an intense heat wave is sweeping across the south, with planes trying to put out fires on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius for a fourth day, and thousands more fires reported by officials than last year.

Marta Freguerio, a climate and environmental journalist based near Milan, says the government is moving too slowly on climate goals, but the impacts of global warming can't be ignored.

Some people and the government are still denying the impact of climate change, but the point is that tourists are choosing new destinations in Italy, such as lakes and mountains oversea.

So it's also having a very big economic impact.

Seaside

is empty, and tourists tourists are choosing other destinations.

Parts of Croatia have been battling fires since the middle of June.

Vedrana Simicevich is a Croatian climate journalist and mountaineer.

One of the biggest consequences of heat waste in Croatia is the warming of the Adriatic Sea, which is quite dangerous for the species in the sea.

She's just been climbing Mont Blanc, a regular trip, with a big difference this year.

I have to say that it's really concerning, and I'm talking specifically not only about glacier melting but also about permaforce melting.

The ice inside of the rock walls, six or seven meters deep inside and now because of the heat waves this ice is towing, melting and because of that we have really large rock falls all over the place.

In France, temperatures of up to 44 degrees have also been recorded, with some areas offering free entry to swimming pools.

Paris is one of many European cities that residents say are are not built for extreme heat with historic architecture and limited air conditioning.

Peter Jung is a Paris-based journalist who's been investigating how climate change could be driving inequality in the city.

I think particularly in Paris there's more of a feeling of being sick and tired of this heat.

It's not something that is pleasurable at this point and I'm particularly reporting in a neighborhood called Aubervilliers.

It's a very poor suburb where there's a high number of immigrant communities.

The housing is often old.

It's quite a bleak picture, and people are often sort of lacking any sort of resource.

Europe is warming faster than any other continent at twice the speed of the global average since the 1980s, according to experts.

Scientists warn of a dangerous cocktail of climatic conditions fueling the wildfires across the Mediterranean, with warm weather predicted until the end of August.

Stephanie Prentiss.

Still to come, a surgeon operating in Gaza tells us he has to recycle surgical parts from dead bodies to save the living.

External fixeter pins are being taken off of patients that have died or have had their X-Fixes removed and reused.

The spinal equipment is incredibly limited and the screw sizes are completely random.

This is Larry Flick, owner of the Floor Store.

Labor Day is the last sale of the summer, but this one is our biggest sale of the year.

Now through September 2nd, get up to 50% off store-wide on carpet, hardwood, laminate, waterproof flooring, and much more.

Plus two years' interest-free financing, and we pay your sales tax.

The Floor Store's Labor Day sale.

Don't let the sun set on this one.

Go to floorstores.com to find the nearest of our 10 showrooms from Santa Rosa to San Jose.

The Floor Store, your area flooring authority.

This Labor Day, gear up, save big, and ride harder with cycle gear.

From August 22nd to September 1st, score up to 60% off motorcycle gear from your favorite brands.

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This is Larry Flick, owner of the Floor Store.

Labor Day is the last sale of the summer, but this one is our biggest sale of the year.

Now through September 2nd, get up to 50% off store-wide on carpet, hardwood, laminate, waterproof flooring, and much more.

Plus two years' interest-free financing, and we pay your sales tax.

The Floor Store's Labor Day sale.

Don't let the sun set on this one.

Go to floorstores.com to find the nearest of our 10 showrooms from Santa Rosa to San Jose.

The Floor Store, your area flooring authority.

This is the story of the wand.

As a maintenance engineer, he hears things differently.

To the untrained ear, everything on his shop floor might sound fine, but he can hear gears grinding or a belt slipping.

So he steps in to fix the problem at hand before it gets out of hand.

And he knows Granger's got the right product he needs to get the job done, which is music to his ears.

Call clickgranger.com or just stop by.

Granger for the ones who get it done.

Haiti is in an official state of emergency due to gang violence.

Now, one of the ringleaders is being pursued by the U.S.

government with a $5 million reward on his head.

The notorious Jimmy Barbecue Charizier runs Vivan Sam, an alliance of gangs that have taken over most of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince.

Many of his soldiers are children who he's forcibly recruited.

The US government is accusing him of working with an associate in the U.S.

to channel funds to the gangs, bypassing U.S.

sanctions.

Announcing this, the U.S.

attorney, Janine Pirrault, said her department will also go after anyone else who helps him.

Haiti is a hotspot right now.

There is incredible violence going on there, which is why the State Department has gotten involved and why we have made the decision to make it very clear that we're coming after you if you give money to Charizie A.

Our Central America and Caribbean correspondent Will Grant told me more.

I think we heard there in that clip just the fact that they believe that this was part of a grand conspiracy, a wide network of financing the gang network in Haiti, led by Chirisier.

The accusation is also against a naturalized U.S.

man living in North Carolina called Basile Richardson.

He has been arrested last month in Texas, and it was said that he was raising funds for the G9 and for Vivaldsin, which was being channelled to barbecue in order to pay for his gang members and pay for illegal weapons in the country, essentially to hold down their control of the capital Port-au-Prince, which is at somewhere like 90% control of the capital.

And tell us more about Jibby Charizier himself.

Well, he's a former elite policeman who, in essence, flipped to running the gangs in about 2019.

He had pretensions, I think, of high office, still does, really.

Is sort of almost a media personality, has given interviews and so on.

Is the most visible face of the gang issue in Haiti in that he is a media personality to an extent and certainly the best known of the gang leaders, although there are of course others.

He is very powerful and he has of course created this alliance with

another important gang group to create Vive Ensemble and certainly is extremely ruthless.

He controls swathes of the capital and interrupts transport, for example, when it comes to aid coming in to help the beleaguered communities of the capital.

So is Haiti essentially lawless?

It is looking very much so.

I mean let's cast our minds back to last year and earlier this year when it was hoped by the United Nations that a Kenyan-led police force would have some impact on the security situation in Haiti.

So far, it's had next to none.

It has taken back control of the international airport, the presidential palace is on lockdown.

But beyond that, when it comes to the law and order on the streets, there's very little difference at all going on, and the humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate very, very fast.

Will Grant.

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says a new offensive to take control of the entire Gaza Strip will start soon, starting with Gaza City.

Civilians have been advised to leave.

Adil Khalil is an orthopedic surgeon from Texas who's currently working at the Al-Ali Hospital in Gaza City.

He told us that he's recycling surgical pins and plates from dead bodies because his equipment is restricted.

Before his current visit, he previously worked in Gaza last November.

Even back in November, it just blew my mind how destroyed everything is.

I mean, it literally looks like a sci-fi movie.

It's most apocalyptic.

It actually seems worse this time around.

I don't think there's really very many buildings left that have not sustained damage.

So, I mean,

we go between hospitals to get cases done.

So, I do go out into the city a little bit.

You know, I do spine surgery, so that is being done at a neighboring hospital.

And so, we have to get in an ambulance and move to the other hospital, and you just see the destruction around the city.

So, we know that there have been these aid drops happening over the past couple of weeks, and apparently, more aid is getting into Gaza.

But again, today there's been an update on the number of people who have died from malnutrition.

The Hamas-run health authority putting it at five in the past 24 hours.

It's terrible.

That's one of the most striking things, I think.

You know, it's largely a young population.

Their capacity to withstand injury and recover was always pretty remarkable.

I think now people's reserves are quite depleted.

We operated on an 18-month-old whose hemoglobin just happened to be just over six on arrival, which is severely anemic.

What kind of injuries are you seeing this time around?

A lot of gunshot wounds and injuries that are a result of patients going to these aid distribution sites and getting shot.

You know, I do orthopedics and spine, so we're seeing a lot of fractures from these gunshots.

And so significant amount of bone loss, large open injuries from entry wounds from these high caliber gunshots.

When I came in November, it was largely explosive injuries.

That's what stood out in the north, that there's been a very high level of bombardment.

And so a lot of it was explosive injuries.

And now we're seeing quite a mix of explosive injuries, plus a lot of gunshot wounds from these aid distribution events.

You are an orthopedic surgeon.

You specialize in spinal surgery.

Do you have the facilities you need to do that sort of surgery there?

No, it's very limited.

The amount of equipment that is able to be brought in has been severely restricted.

You know, when I came in April, we were able to bring equipment with us through the Ruffah border in November.

And this time, we're limited to only bringing personal supplies.

And we do pack some of what we can get in as far as what we need to do our daily work, but it's incredibly restricted.

So, external fixetor pins are being taken off of patients that have died or have had their X fixes removed and reused.

The spinal equipment is incredibly limited, and the screw sizes are completely random.

The amount of equipment that has been getting in is very insufficient.

Right, so you're effectively recycling things like pins and screws and the sorts of things that you use to fix these injuries from patients who have already deceased.

You're having to do that.

You say you're being restricted.

Can you just clarify exactly where those restrictions are happening?

At the border.

Okay, so you're responding to the advice from the WHO and they're responding to the rules coming from the Israeli authorities.

Yeah.

The orthopedic surgeon Adil Khalil speaking to Rebecca Kesby from Gaza City.

The Israeli military says it's examining reports of civilians being harmed while approaching aid distribution centers in Gaza, run by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

South Korea's former First Lady, Kim Kun-hee, has been arrested after a court issued a warrant.

It means she and her husband, former President Yoon-seek-you, are the first presidential couple to be jailed.

Jae-Seng Lee has the details.

Kim Kun-hee is the first wife of a South Korean president to be arrested.

She's been accused of stock manipulation, election interference, and bribery.

And she's said to have accepted luxury gifts from a shaman from the very influential Unification Church in exchange for business favors.

Kim Kuni is the wife of the former President Yoon Song-lil who was impeached over that botched attempt to impose martial law last December.

Now he's already in jail.

He's charged for insurrection.

Jae Sung Lee,

a US woman who was hired as a killer and tried to shoot a man in the UK at point-blank range while using an Islamic headscarf to hide her identity has been found guilty of conspiracy to murder.

Would-be assassin Amy Betro from Wisconsin flew into the country as part of a plot to attack a family in central England in 2019 before going on the run for nearly five years.

Jill Black reports.

Resembling a scene from a film, CCTV shows Amy Betro wearing a nikab to disguise her face as she walks up to Sikanda Alley and points a gun at him.

She tries to shoot him at close range, but the gun jams and his car can be seen screeching away

as he seizes the opportunity to flee.

Hours later, this is Betro ordering a taxi so she can return to the scene.

And in the darkness of the early hours, she is picked up again on CCTV.

This is her second attempt as she shoots three rounds at the windows of Sikanda Ali's family home, but the property is empty.

The would-be assassin flew to the UK as part of a revenge plot orchestrated by two men, Mohammed Aslam and his son Mohammad Nazir, wanted to attack a rival family.

The court heard they were involved in a feud with Sikanda Ali's father.

Aslat Mahoumad and wanted to kill him or a member of his family.

Aslam Aslam and Nazir were found guilty at a separate trial.

Betro's defense was that it was a coincidence that minutes after the attempted assassination, she happened to be near the area.

And the perpetrator was another American woman who sounded like her, used the same phone, and wore the same sort of trainers.

She said she had been in the UK to celebrate her birthday and attend a boat party.

The jury didn't believe her.

Joe Black.

Wildlife officials in southern India say they prevented dozens of elephant deaths after installing AI-powered early warning systems along railway tracks.

The surveillance towers were set up on known elephant migration routes in the border areas of Tamil Nadu and Kerala states.

This report from our South Asia Regional Editor Anbarasan Ethirajan.

Forest Department officials in two jeeps are trying to push a wild elephant away from a busy road in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

It's not only on the main roads.

Similar incidents happen along railway tracks as well.

When elephants cross the track, any speeding train can hit them.

In the past decade, 36 elephants were killed by trains in Tamil Nadu state alone.

Then came the AI-powered early warning system.

Dozens of AI camera towers were established along accident hotspots in November 2023.

When elephants are detected within 30 meters of the railway track, alerts are sent to forest and railway officials.

They then coordinate to slow down trains and guide the elephants away to prevent collisions.

Since their installation, no elephant deaths on rail tracks have been reported in that area.

The early warning system has been installed in other parts of India as well as in some African countries.

And Barasan, Ethirajan.

Every day around the world, tens of millions of gamers log on to Fortnite to fight huge battles in a virtual world.

But in the real world, its developers, Epic Games, have been fighting battles of their own, and they've just scored another victory in a court in Australia.

Will Chalk has the story.

Ladies and gentlemen, Fortnite fans from around the world, wherever you are watching from, welcome.

Since its launch in 2017, Fortnite has become less a game, more a huge ecosystem.

Merchandise, tournaments, streamers, it feels like it's everywhere.

We got fans up in the building.

We got the players on site.

But back in 2020, its dominance was put under threat.

Now bad news if you like playing Fortnite on your phone.

The game has been removed from Google and Apple's app stores.

In a row over money, both Google and Apple booted the app off their stores, meaning it could no longer be played on phones or iPads.

Why?

Well, Fortnite is free to download and play, but makes its money by selling different appearances for people's in-game avatars.

Usually, when you buy something on an app on your phone, that payment will go through Apple or Google, who take a commission.

Five years ago, Fortnite tried to bypass this and let people buy content cheaper direct from them.

Fortnite have said that they will sue the phone makers.

And sue they did.

For five years now, Epic Games has been fighting legal battles against Apple and Google around the world, arguing the phone companies were misusing their market power, which lessened competition in app development.

And they've been winning.

Last year, the game made it back onto the App Store in the EU.

Earlier this year, it was reinstated in the US.

And now it's won a partial court victory that looks set to pave the way for the same thing to happen in Australia.

To a cynical degree, anything

that isn't Apple or Google getting their way

is progress.

Joost van Drunen is a games business professor at NYU Stern School of Business in the US.

They are, in fact, in a David versus Goliath kind of battle, because even though Epic makes about $5 billion a year, that's a drop in the bucket for Apple, that's a drop in the bucket for Google.

These are trillion-dollar companies.

What they do is extract a rent, and it makes it very difficult for any company, including

the Robloxes and the Microsofts that sit in these ecosystems, to have any kind of leverage.

We've got no word yet on exactly when the game is likely to return to app stores in Australia, but it's unlikely to be soon.

The judgment, which hasn't been fully released yet, ran to 2,000 pages.

And on many of the charges, Epic games weren't successful.

In statements, Apple welcomed that some of the charges were rejected while disagreeing on the ones that were successful, while Google said it will assess its next steps once it's read the full decision.

Still, Epic Games has described the ruling as a win for developers and consumers in Australia.

And as any gamer knows, you've got to take the wins when you can get it.

Stephen Stop with Acorn will not survive.

They're saying Kenny take in the rules.

Will Chalk Reporting.

And that's that's it 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, 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 Newspod.

This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll.

The producers were Alison Davis and Peter Hyatt.

The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Valerie Sanderson.

Until next time, bye-bye.

This Labor Day, gear up, save big, and ride harder with Cycle Gear.

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RPM members get 50% off tire mount and balance with any new tire purchase.

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And here's the big one: August 29th through September 1st only.

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Supplies are limited.

Don't wait.

Cycle gear.

Get there.

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