The Ukraine War: Your Questions Answered

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed?

0:45In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to a special Ukraine edition of the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, we're recording this at 13.30 GMT on Friday the 4th of April. And we're joined by three BBC correspondents from Ukrainecast to answer your questions about the war in Ukraine.

1:34Will the US be able to push Vladimir Putin into signing up to a ceasefire? Could the Orthodox Church in both countries get involved? Does Russia have a point when it blames the West for the conflict? And what does the future hold for European and global security?

1:53Hello, I'm Oliver Conway from the Global News Podcast. And I'm Vitaly Shevchenko, one of the hosts of the Ukrainecast. And I'm Olga Robinson, a Russia expert at BBC Verify. And this is Frank Gardner, the BBC's security correspondent. Thanks all for joining us. Let's kick off with the question many people are asking. Will the fighting stop any time soon? Hello, BBC team. With regard to the battlefield, is not it in Putin's interest to delay a complete ceasefire? Plus, could you explain what the positions of Orthodox churches are, both in Ukraine and Russia, in regard to the efforts to achieve a ceasefire?

2:34Hi, I'm Julie from Preston. A recent announcement from Russia of their largest mobilization in years and the planned military exercises in Kalinograd have further increased my concerns that Russia has no plans of ending this war. do you think this is an escalation and do you think Russia will ever agree to peace? Thanks Julie and also to Frederick in Paris and before you guys answer we also had an email from Sue asking about Kirill Dmitriev's visit to Washington. He's head of the Russian Sovereign Wealth Fund and is actually under US sanctions. So what's going on? Well to start answering all those questions, I'll say that there's absolutely nothing in what Russia has said or done recently to suggest that it's remotely interested in peace in Ukraine.

3:28Just this morning, authorities in Ukraine said that six civilians were killed and 46 injured in the latest wave wave of Russian strikes. And when it comes to Russia's rhetoric, Sergei Rabkov, a deputy foreign minister, he said on Tuesday, I believe that, OK, we will like all these peace initiatives coming from the United States. But what about the underlying causes of this conflict? And by that, I think Russia means the very existence of Ukraine as a sovereign state. So all that tells me that we are nowhere near a lasting peace or even a ceasefire in Ukraine. And the visit by this senior Russian official?

4:20Dmitriev is the head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund. So he's all about money. And it's telling that Russia chose to dispatch him to the United States, knowing that Donald Trump is largely about money and deal making as well. So after holding all those meetings in Washington, Kirill Dmitriev, he said that they discussed various initiatives like Russian Earths, cooperation in the Arctic between Russia and the United States, the return of American companies to Russia, and himself, he is sanctioned by the United States. So this means, I think, that Russia is trying to offer America a better deal than Ukraine would ever be able to offer.

5:08And it's all about money. And Frank, do you think that is so that Russia can keep advancing on the battlefield? So there are several different aspects to this war. There is, you know, land, sea and air domains and cyber. And in the maritime domain, Russia is having a hard time. Ukraine is essentially winning that. They've driven the Russian Black Sea fleet right out of Crimea, Russian-occupied Crimea. They've driven them back to the Caucasus effectively, even though Ukraine doesn't have a navy. They've developed some incredible ingenuity in long-range drone strikes. They're able to hit with extraordinary accuracy.

5:47ammunition dumps, air bases, oil refineries, hundreds of kilometers beyond the border, deep in Russia. Russia is very interested in having a ceasefire in those two areas, because that's where Ukraine is hurting it. What it is not interested in having a ceasefire or any kind of pause is the land battle, because through sheer force of numbers of artillery rounds of drones and of human, frankly, cannon fodder that they are hurling at the front lines, they're able to slowly, incrementally push the Ukrainians back. We're talking about tiny gains. If you look at that map that we've all looked at for the last three years, and the pink shaded bit is the stuff that Russia has occupied, it's hardly changed in three years or two and a half years.

6:34But nevertheless, they are winning slowly on the land. So Putin is in no hurry to sign a ceasefire on the land. And in terms of the church, the Orthodox Church, both in Russia and Ukraine, any hopeful signs there that they might be pushing their leaders towards peace? Not an expert on Ukrainian church, but on the Russian Orthodox Church. I think what you need to understand about it is that it's effectively in its current state, an extension of the Russian state. So they're fully on board with the invasion and supported. In fact, the Russian Orthodox Church literally has a daily compulsory prayer for the victory of the Russian soldiers against their enemies.

7:14And those very, very few priests who have refused to say it, they have been ousted or have faced sanctions. So we're not looking at the Russian Orthodox Church as a peacemaking force. And in Ukraine? Before I speak about Ukraine, let me give you a quote from how the Russian Orthodox Church described this war. Last year, it called this war against Ukraine a holy war. defending the world against the satanic West. So it's difficult to expect that church to tell Putin, well, look, maybe enough fighting. In Ukraine, it's very much aligned with the government on the war, but for different reasons, because when you're attacked, you've got to defend yourself.

7:56But they're also praying for peace, whatever shape it might take. And just this morning, I've heard reports about a church being destroyed in Kostyantynevka in Donetsk region. So church itself in Ukraine is under attack too. Just returning to the battlefield, Julie was asking about the mobilisation and exercises in Kaliningrad. Is that anything unusual? No, it's not. This is an annual mobilisation. Sorry, it's not mobilisation. It's the conscription, which is different from mobilisation. I know it's kind of unsemantic, but there's a big difference in these words. Mobilization of reserves would be a crisis measure.

8:38That would really show he's in trouble. That's calling up the reserves to fight. Conscription, which is what this is, is the twice, you know, they do it in the spring. They do it in the autumn. And it goes up by about 10 ,000 each year. So in 2022, it was 134 ,000 roughly, 140 ,000 odd the next year, 150 ,000 last year. And this year, it's 160 ,000. Now, theoretically, none of those men being being conscripted will serve in Ukraine or in Russian occupied Donbass or indeed in Kursk. But in practice, this has been known to happen. Yes. Yeah, but it's more of an exception. I think conscripts in Ukraine have been more of an exception.

9:25But I just wanted to weigh in as somebody who was born and raised in Russia. You just get used to conscription. is just like part of your life. It's something that happens all the time. And in fact, when my child was, my son was born three years ago, I remember my friend called me and said, well, congratulations on having a child. And I bet you're very happy that now that you live in the UK, you don't have to worry whether you will actually have to like hide him from the army when he's 18. So it's absolutely like regular thing that does happen. But it's the current draft as being kind of the largest in years.

10:01It's kind of part of the wider drive and focus on the kind of military activities and the army. I think we should say it has a dreadful reputation. Conscription and life for conscripts in the Russian army is brutal. If you haven't got connections, I mean, in the British army, which I served, you know, the officer's first duty is to look after the men and women under their own command. You feed last. You know, when it's the queue for food, you go to the end of the queue. You wait for everybody to eat first. That is not the way in the Russian army. Equipment is poor. They're often having to buy their own stuff.

10:40They're having to send home for gloves, for socks that actually fit them. The bullying and the hazing is horrendous. I forget the numbers, but a large, I mean, a shockingly large number of people are killed during their time in conscript service. So people who've got connections, if you're a well-connected family in St. Petersburg or Moscow, you make sure you get out of it. Right. Let's turn to the diplomatic pressure on Russia. At the NATO meeting on Thursday, Poland's foreign minister told the BBC Vladimir Putin had weeks, not months, to show the Americans he is serious about ending the war.

11:18All the gloves could come off. But not all our listeners are convinced. Hi, Todd from the US. Can you really see a path that Trump stands up to Putin and demands he gives some territory back or agree to no further territorial expansion? or that Trump tells Putin we're going to put European or US troops in the Ukraine to ensure no further Russian advances, can you see any path where Putin actually stops and is content? Well, Ferdinand got in touch to ask, given what's happened so far in the Trump peace deal, am I the only one feeling Trump looks more and more like Alexander Lukashenko, a puppet of Putin, accepting all of the Russian conditions?

12:01And we also had this. Hello, I'm Bob from Glasgow. Since the US-led talks have commenced, there's been no mention of North Korea's involvement in the war. Why is that? Many thanks. Interesting question, Bob. Of course, Donald Trump tried to arrange a deal of his own with North Korea when he was president last time, but it didn't quite work out. Let's deal with that first. Does the North Korean involvement complicate things? It does to an extent because nobody in the West wanted this conflict to expand beyond what's going on between Russia and Ukraine. And this isn't a concern shared by Russia.

12:43They were totally happy to involve Iran with its drones and artillery, North Korea with its soldiers and artillery as well. And a key objective pursued by the West for years was containment of this conflict, which didn't quite work. Now, when it comes to North Koreans in this war, apparently thousands, 4 ,000 of them were lost in fighting in Russia's Korsk region. And then they sort of disappeared. Then they apparently, according to South Korea, more deployments were sent to Korsk region. But I can't say that they've played a major role in this. When it comes to Donald Trump, I honestly have seen nothing to suggest that he is willing or even able to put effective pressure on Vladimir Putin to force him to stop this war.

13:44This might change. You never know. But so far, his rhetoric has been so aligned with the Kremlin's talking points and his actions. They've benefited the Kremlin in terms of, well, a pause in weapons supplies to Ukraine and the general damage his administration has done to the Western alliance that's emerged after the Second World War. I think when it comes to North Koreans that they if you just look at verified footage that we've been getting from the Korsak region in the past weeks, we haven't really seen much evidence of them being actually present on the ground. and I think they used to be a bigger factor like particularly last autumn when they were just brought in and we just kept seeing footage and suggestions.

14:35There was a lot of talk about them but it's just like it feels like it has diminished the talk and the visual evidence of them being present on the ground. But also yeah, according to some of the latest assessments from the UK Defence Ministry they had 5 ,000 casualties of March and a third of them dead. Now, Vitaly, you were saying you don't think there's any sign that Donald Trump will put pressure on Vladimir Putin, but we're recording this on Friday and the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says we'll find out within weeks whether Russia is serious. Could that be more pressure coming from the Americans?

15:14Well, Marco Rubio was the one who, after the Jeddah talks a couple of weeks ago, said the ball is now in Russia's court. And so the world thought, aha, finally, the US is actually being an honest broker in all of this. And suddenly nothing happened and no apparent pressure was put on Moscow whatsoever. You know, I went down to Riyadh. I covered the second lot of ceasefire negotiations and hopes were very high at the end of it because there seemed to be some kind of agreement. But then afterwards, Russia introduced a whole lot of more stipulations that they wanted. They wanted essentially the sanctions lifted on agricultural banks so they could export stuff.

15:52And that would be a way, a crack in the Western sanctions on Russia, which the EU was certainly very unhappy with. And so would NATO be. I think Putin has played quite a clever game. When Steve Witkoff, President Trump's special envoy, not just to the Middle East, but also to the Ukraine talks, when he visited Moscow and met Vladimir Putin, Putin, whoever advised him on this, or maybe it was his idea, brilliant. He said he told him that President Putin went to the cathedral to pray for Donald Trump after he got shot. He commissioned a painting which Witkoff took back with him. Donald Trump was very touched.

16:33Wow. That's the way to handle him. You know, and I'm sorry to say no disrespect to Ukraine's president, but in contrast to that appalling showdown in the Oval Office on the 20th of February where you had two presidents shouting across each other, that is not the way to do it. So Putin is playing Trump very cleverly right now. And there is clearly a very good personal relationship between those two. And Donald Trump is leaning over backwards as not to annoy Russia and to spare Russia from the tariffs. Ukraine's been slapped with a 10 percent tariff, which they've said we can cope with. It's not great, but it's not critical.

17:12How much has been slapped on Belarus and Russia? Nothing. In defense of Woldemir Zelensky, he did try. He brought an 06 boxing champion belt. Didn't work. I think it's really interesting about generally how Putin is playing Trump at the moment. Because I just keep, when I look at the reports and what we are seeing right now, I just keep thinking about some of the biographies of Putin that mentioned that, You know, he worked with assets in Western Germany when he was part of the Russian intelligence community there. And you can just, you know, he knows how to work with businessmen. And Trump is, after all, a businessman.

17:56But I found the comparison with Alexander Lukashenko really fascinating because it's purely, it's not scientific, but purely anecdotally, I can remember some cases of Alexander Lukashenko actually be more critical of Russia than Trump has ever been. Because like a few years ago, he's accused Russia literally of lying about some mercenaries that they arrested on the border with Belarus. But also like saying, oh, we won't allow Russia to annex us because otherwise that means war. That's pretty much like a harsher rhetoric, arguably, than whatever we've heard from Trump so far. Well, as the three of you have reflected, the Trump administration has certainly faced criticism that it's been too sympathetic to the Kremlin viewpoint.

18:39But some listeners wonder if we should actually look more at Russia's grievances. I'm Tony from Ottawa in Canada. One of Putin's root causes for his invasion is the claimed maltreatment of Russians living in Ukraine. For example, the Russian language and the Russian Orthodox Church are not accepted officially and banned respectfully. Has Zelensky proposed any measures to change this? And David emailed to ask, why does the BBC not report other narratives on the cause of the Ukraine conflict? For example, NATO ignoring Russia's security concerns and the 2014 ousting of the pro-Russia president in Kiev.

19:19Is the West not 50 % to blame? OK. As a Russian speaker who spent most of his life living in eastern Ukraine. I think I can tackle this. When Tony mentions Russians in Ukraine, I suspect he means Russian speakers because the notion of ethnicity is kind of hazy in Ukraine. I certainly never felt threatened or oppressed, nor were my friends in Zaporizhia. We could speak Russian freely. It's not banned. And in official communication in schools, for example, yes, you're supposed to speak Ukrainian, but it's Ukraine. And this comes after decades and decades of Soviet communist Russian efforts to eradicate the Ukrainian language.

20:13So we sort of accepted it and found it natural. and after Russia started its war against Ukraine, so many Russian speakers in Ukraine speak in Ukrainian now because it feels wrong to continue speaking Russian. Now, Russia's security concerns, I don't think any of them were legitimate. I keep using this phrase because I try to stick to the facts and nothing in Ukraine's, NATO's, the West's actions or rhetoric in the run-up to the initial secret invasion of 2014 or full-scale invasion 2022 suggested that there was a threat forming against Russia. It's an excuse to attack Ukraine because no aggressor wants to be seen as an aggressor.

21:10Russia, Vladimir Putin, repeatedly presents this attack on Ukraine as something preemptive. And I think it's really important to get the language right here, because when we're talking about the supposed maltreatment of Russian speakers or threat of NATO to Russia, these are not rude causes of the conflict. These are excuses, as Vitaly rightly put it, that Russia used to invade. And in reality, you know, when it comes to maltreatment of supposed maltreatment of Russian speakers, you know, that whole narrative that Russia was pushing that was baseless, it was accompanied by massive years long propaganda effort from Russian state media with multiple examples of completely fabricated evidence of maltreatment of Russian speakers in Ukraine.

22:03And the most famous story was the crucified boy in Slymansk in 2014. And that just simply never happened. So the idea that NATO is somehow gobbling up countries across Europe against their will and threatening Russia is a very tired and false narrative. NATO doesn't ask countries to join it. It's when countries feel threatened, they ask to join NATO. So all those countries that used to belong to the Warsaw Pact, which was the Soviet run defense organization that comprised countries like Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary and so on, they've all joined NATO, including the Baltic states, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, because they feel threatened by Russia.

22:48Finland, which has jealously guarded its neutrality, as has Sweden, for decades. And Finland, remember, has fought two wars with Russia during the Second World War, just before it, and has been neutral all this time and has got an 800-mile-plus border with Russia. And yet it felt so threatened by Russia post the full-scale invasion of 2022 that it has joined NATO. So Moscow has brought this on itself. But none of these countries are threatening to attack, invade, or in any way threaten Russia. It is, as Olga says, a false narrative. And of course, I was just going to say, of course, we do often on the BBC hear Russia's viewpoint from the BBC Russia editor Steve Rosenberg and other colleagues in Moscow.

23:35Well, next, let's turn to some questions about the war itself. Hello BBC, my name is Rajesh and I'm from India and my question is With Ukraine's continuous appeals for advanced air defence systems How have vaccinations responded and what impact has this had on the ground? Hello, I'm Roger from Auckland in New Zealand Why has Ukraine not yet destroyed the Kirsch Bridge? It seems to me like an obvious target I'm Roald from River Falls in Wisconsin How might Ukrainian forces better protect Kherson from shelling and drone attacks by Russian forces on the east bank of the Dnipro? Can little be done to protect the civilians remaining there?

24:17OK, who wants to pick up? Well, why don't you guys do talk about Kirch, the Kirch Bridge? Olga is... I'm just dying to start talking about Kirch. Go for it. Because it's such a verified story. Ukraine has twice successfully attacked the Kirch Bridge. Well, not completely successfully because it's still there. Well, it's still there, but causing damage, as in partially successfully. Good correction. So there have been two attacks, one using a truck that exploded, another one using sea drones. And we know from satellite imagery, if you look from space onto the area around the bridge, you can see that Russians have now built protections, like floating protections against the sea drones, but also there are literally era defences on the bridge protecting it.

25:10But also it's important to know that after the repeated attacks, partially successful, by Ukraine, that there's evidence that Russians have been, for logistical purposes, have been using ground routes through occupied territory rather than the main Korean bridge. And that means that it kind of diminishes the importance of it for Ukrainians as a target. So on air defence, Ukraine has advanced a long way since the dark days of 2022, when literally policemen were firing Kalashnikovs at Shaheed drones that Iran was shipping to Russia. But this is a numbers game. And Ukraine is slowly running out of effective air defence.

25:52It depends what you're, you know, if it's relatively low grade Shahid 136 drones that Russia has manufactured using an Iranian model, they're fairly easy to hit. But it's much harder to shoot down certain missiles. And the hardest one of all was the one fired at Dnipro, the Oreshnik, which I think, correct me if I'm wrong, is Russian for hazel bush. This is a hypersonic missile that travels at speeds in excess of five times the speed of sound. goes right up high up above the stratosphere or into the stratosphere and then comes down at such a speed that it's almost impossible to stop it. So they haven't got many of them, Russia, but that is a bit of a sort of it's not an end of days weapon, but it's pretty scary.

26:38And that's even with the conventional warhead. Now, the thing that Ukraine is crying out for more of and desperately needs is patriots. They are extremely expensive. if they cost millions of dollars. And they wanted more under the Biden administration. He released a few. They want more under the Trump administration. They're not releasing any. Some countries in Europe have got them, but some of them have been sent to Israel, for example, America's big ally in the Middle East, because there could possibly be some kind of conflict coming up with Iran. So they are in short supply. But the short answer is that the longer this war drags on, the more critical Ukraine's need for air defence is going to be to stop the civilian casualties and the attacks on its infrastructure.

27:22And in terms of protecting Kherson? It's also a numbers game. Because of the shortage of air defence systems that Ukraine has, it's a question of where do you deploy them? What do you consider more important? Which lives you choose to preserve? It's a very difficult choice, But the fact is, Ukraine can't build a dome, iron or any other sort of dome, over all of its territory, each and every settlement. That's why we've been hearing reports of this awful human safari. That's what it's been reported as in Kherson, where Russian drones hunt down civilians and bicycles on public transport. Old women at bus stops.

28:11Bus stops as well. It's terrible. But the fact is, it's happening because Ukraine is unable to stop it. Now, most of Europe has voiced strong support for Ukraine, of course. Some of that's down to self-interest, the fear that if Vladimir Putin wins, Poland or the Baltics could be next. But some listeners want to know what Europe is doing to protect itself. Hello, I'm Maurizio from London. Is Europe and the UK developing new weapon systems to tackle the Red Army? Thank you. Well, thank you for that, Mauricio. I'm not sure that they still call it the Red Army, but I presume by that you mean Russia's army.

28:50Europe has had a bit of a cold shower after the Munich Security Conference where they have woken up to the fact that this administration in Washington, the Trump presidency, is no longer going to provide the automatic security blanket that Europe has enjoyed, or some would say freeloaded off, for the last 80 years since the Second World War. it's going to have to provide more for its own defense. And this is a real political hot potato right now because the US is saying that NATO countries need to be spending up to 5 % of their GDP, their national wealth on defense. That is going to be really hard.