Zelensky proposes face-to-face meeting with Putin

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1:44Ukraine's President Zelensky has written to Vladimir Putin, inviting him to a face-to-face meeting to negotiate an end to their war. President Trump says he's spoken directly to the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah, officially designated in the US as a foreign terrorist organisation, about a possible end to fighting in Lebanon. A year on, from one of the world's deadliest air disasters, grieving families tell the BBC their compensation is not being handled fairly by Air India. Also in this podcast. How he would have crossed the Kungu Icefall with no ladders, beggars belief, that takes it from a sort of utterly brutal ninja feat of endurance to just something else just incredible.

2:33An amazing story. The Napoli climbing guide, thought to have died on Everest last week, reaches base camp alive after six days exposed on the mountain.

2:49So we start with an open letter to President Putin. It's over 1 ,800 words long, and in it, President Zelensky invites the Russian leader to a face-to-face meeting in a renewed bid to try and end the war. It's been translated into English and posted on his social media platforms. And in it, the Ukrainian president says Russians have grown tired of Ukrainian drone and missile attacks, petrol shortages, rising prices, as well as the war in general. He calls for a full ceasefire for the duration of the proposed negotiations, but that's something that Putin ruled out earlier on Thursday. If you read the statement, it's got a defiant and at times even mocking tone.

3:29Here is part of it read by one of our producers. The world has not grown tired of Ukraine, as you long hoped it would, but there is growing fatigue with Russia, even among those in the wider world, who help you bypass sanctions and keep your economy afloat. You cannot fail to notice it. After 26 years in power, age is beginning to take its toll. And with time, the fatigue with you will only grow. Now, President Zelensky goes on to say that with America so focused on what's happening in Iran, it would be wrong to wait until Washington could give the conflict in Europe its full attention. And that's something journalists put to President Trump at the White House.

4:07Well, I don't know. I'm glad that they're maybe talking about media. I think we had a lot to do with it. But I think it would be great if they met. They should get it done. So why has President Zelensky chosen to do this now? I got more from Vitaly Shevchenko, who is the chief analyst at BBC Monitoring and is in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. He suggests that Vladimir Putin should be interested in sitting down and talking to him because he says that Russia is losing too many people on the battlefield and that Russians are tired of Ukrainian airstrikes. Also, notably, he says that it would be wrong for the United States to come back to trying to end the war in Ukraine because, the Ukrainian president says, Washington is focused on Iran.

5:02So in itself, these offers are not new. Wladimir Zelensky previously also invited to talk. He also suggested a ceasefire. And that's why I think that this letter is more about messaging. And it would be very unlikely that it will lead to peace in Ukraine or even talks to presence. But that being said, the tone of the letter, it's not pleading or kind of meek. It's almost mocking Russia in a way. So do you think then, given that, that the offers at the heart of it are still genuine offers? I think it's the last thing you should say when you are genuinely inviting Vladimir Putin to a meeting. When you say that, well, after so many years in power, age is beginning to take a toll on you.

5:58That is going to sound insulting to the Russian president. and that's why I think that Woldymyr Zelensky himself isn't really hopeful that this meeting is going to take place and the Kremlin's initial response to this letter in which they said well if he wants to talk to us so much let him come to Moscow it also suggests that they're not really thinking that this is going to happen because Woldymyr Zelensky is extremely unlikely to come to Moscow, that would look so close to a surrender visiting the capital of the state that is waging war on you. And also, this idea that Vladimir Zelensky should come to Moscow, it has been voiced before by Vladimir Putin himself back in September last year, when he said that, well, he was told to come to Moscow.

6:57But what is the point? And I do think that that attitude in the Kremlin, what's the point of talking to Zelensky, I do think that it hasn't changed. Is there a sense then, given that this has been published in English as well on Zelensky's Instagram, that actually the intended audience for this isn't Vladimir Putin, it's the rest of the world and it's Zelensky doing everything he can to get eyes back on the situation in Ukraine? Get eyes back on Ukraine and also possibly signal to allies in Europe. And Donald Trump himself, that this war could be ended without America's direct involvement, especially given that it's been so much focused on Iran.

7:44That is something that Woldeber Zelensky has suggested before. and I think it's an invitation or a prod, if you like, at European allies of Ukraine to do more to help Ukraine. Vitaly Shevchenko there. Now, Donald Trump made a number of claims to reporters at the White House on Thursday that talks to end the war in Iran are in their final phase, suggesting there's a deal coming soon. We have, of course, heard all that before, though. Perhaps more surprisingly, he claimed that he had spoken directly with the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah after the group rejected a ceasefire deal in Lebanon. The president insisted that Hezbollah had called him about it and hadn't rejected the US proposals for peace.

8:32I asked our North America correspondent Tom Simons in Washington what to make of all this, especially since Hezbollah is prescribed a terror group by the US. It was a surprise and as always one has to slightly read between the lines of what Donald Trump said to reporters in the White House earlier, but this is what he said. I spoke to Bibi Netanyahu, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli leader, about that, and I spoke to Hezbollah about it, and I think progress is made. So it does seem that Donald Trump is telling reporters there that he has put himself between the Israelis and Hezbollah in an attempt to get this ceasefire to work.

9:12And just to remind you, the ceasefire involves Hezbollah pulling out of parts of southern Lebanon, currently Israeli occupied, the Lebanese army moving in to replace the group. And the leader of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, has said that that is not something it accepts as a group, that the negotiations around that were futile, humiliating and widely opposed in Lebanon. And that effectively there will be no ceasefire and there have been further airstrikes from the Israelis. So if Donald Trump is saying he's seeing all this going on and he's trying to get involved personally talking to Hezbollah, that is certainly a new development.

9:51He, of course, is saying progress is being made. But he's also said that the Iran deal will be signed this weekend. And I think we'll have to wait and see, of course. But he said something like that many times in the past. Yeah, a sign all of this maybe then that he is just trying more and more things, isn't he? to try and get out of this situation? Because it's all linked. I mean, Iran wants to see progress in Lebanon. It wants to see Israel to stop military action in Lebanon. Israel wants to see Hezbollah stop military action in Lebanon so that Israel can feel safer. And Hezbollah says it hasn't got a deal.

10:29It doesn't see that there's any progress and it's not necessarily going to surrender, in its own words, and fulfil Israel's objectives. so it gets more and more difficult for Donald Trump and of course every time we get to another weekend where he says there's going to be progress and there isn't progress we're getting a little bit closer to the midterm elections there are primaries going on and have been for some weeks now reminding everyone that Americans will get a vote on effectively on Congress but of course with his activities and actions and successes or failures in mind so it all ramps up to a lot of political pressure on him I'll take you back to last June, when just seconds after it had taken off, Air India flight 171 from Ahmedabad to London crashed, killing all but one of the 242 people on board and another 19 on the ground.

11:21An investigation into the crash is still going on, but as grieving families wait for those answers, many have already been given final settlement offers from Air India. Some have told the BBC the amounts being offered to relatives differ wildly, and they say the settlement includes a clause to give up their legal rights forever. Archana Shukla reports from Ahmedabad. May I have your attention, please? As we settle in, we request you. That announcement is from Air India 171. That crashed seconds after take-off in what was one of the world's deadliest air disasters. Maryam Padriya had shot the video on her phone and sent minutes before take-off.

12:09Now it's the last memory that her son Abbas holds on to. I met him in Vadodra town, in their one-room home, where life has stood still since the crash.

12:25A year on, the grief here is still very raw. It is made even harder by the final compensation offer they got from Air India. They have put a number on my mother's life and the compensation offered to us is a way lower than other families. Was her life less valuable? They are offering a few thousand dollars in addition to the interim amount and say we can't hold anyone responsible for the crash later. We give up all future claims. We haven't signed yet. Abbas showed me the letter on his phone. He hasn't signed yet.

13:04A hundred kilometres from Mariam's home is where her plane crashed, in Ahmedabad. While the probe still pieces together what happened, the BBC has seen these settlement documents asking families in India to waive all legal action. Not just against the airline, but manufacturers, suppliers, even the government, all of whom are potentially under investigation. But offers to families in the UK are different. Lawyers for 25 UK families say offers are significantly higher and has no sweeping ask to waive legal claims beyond Air India. We met several other families who received these offers. None wanted to be named, but all had the same concern.

13:50Some like Ajay Parmar regret signing it. He was on the scooter passing by, metres from where the plane crashed. He got severe burns, which are still healing.

14:05I thought they were giving money for my scooter, which was burnt. I don't know how to read and there was no one at home. I want to return the money and get my rights back. It's a blazing summer afternoon and Ajay is playing with his two-year-old niece in this one-room house that doubles up as a bedroom at night. He's not able to find work because after the burns from the crash, his skin itches every time he goes out in the sun. And that's why the compensation meant a lot to him. He says he had no idea and it was not explained to him what the signature meant. In a statement, Air India told the BBC, the offers are fair and in accordance with the law, where requested, translations were provided and content explained to families.

14:50Full waivers are sought, including for other parties, to prevent direct or indirect claims in the future. It's extremely unconscionable, very, very unfair. U.S.-based lawyer Chuck Chiyunuma represents 110 families and has advised them not to sign. Money is their easy way out. And I think India is trying to do exactly that. Minimize their exposure and close the case while the families be at the brunt of the grief and losses. Back in Abbas's home in Vadodra, talks still circle back to the crash. For families like his, the hardest choice still lies ahead, to settle or keep fighting for accountability.

15:37Archana Shukla. Now, to a tale of one man's survival that is so extraordinary that his family, who believed he'd died, had started organising his funeral. The Nepali climbing guide, Hilary Dawesherpa, spent six days alone on Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain, before he was spotted crawling towards base camp by a rubbish management team doing their final checks. He is now, understandably, undergoing medical treatment, so the world's waiting to hear his account of what happened and how he survived. In the meantime, my colleague Sean Lay has been speaking to Chris Thrall, a mountaineer and former British soldier, and perhaps the last person to see Hilary Dower Sherpa on the mountain because they've been climbing down together.

16:24We were descending from the death zone after myself and another Sherpa had summited. Hilary Dower sat down on his backpack, as he had done hundreds of times before, to take a short rest. And as I descended the next 50, 100 metres alone, I came across the Polish primer with no oxygen, battling fairly severe frostbite. So immediately my attention obviously turned to the weakest member of the trio. And that was that. As I look back up the mountain, as I help this guy descend, which what should have taken two hours, the conditions were so bad. and with no oxygen, took about 11 hours. And in this time, Hilary Dower didn't appear to have moved and certainly wasn't descending because we would have seen his head torch.

17:18So by the time you reached base camp, I guess you'd assumed that he'd just died in the conditions. Yeah, you'd assume so. It took us 19 hours to get to Camp 2. That's how bad it was. And then it took us a further day, I think another 19 hours to cross the Khumbu Icefall and get into base camp. Complete whiteout. All the ropes were afoot under snow. We were just, you know, guessing which way to go. And that we didn't all end up in a crevice is quite a godsend. Can you tell me when you heard the news that Dawa Sherpa had actually survived and what your reaction was to that? I started to see on my social media, my Instagram and my YouTube channel, a couple of comments saying he's alive.

18:09Obviously, I thought they were spam initially because it really does defy the odds. I did a quick search, obviously, because, you know, I met the family yesterday to offer my, you know, utmost condolences and to offer my, you know, financial assistance if I'm able to raise any. So it's kind of crazy one minute to be fighting back tears with his daughter and then the next minute to see him doing a crocodile Dundee and crawling into town. It's absolutely amazing. Beyond words, I'm a bit, how can you say, my emotions aren't fluctuating because if they were fluctuating, I'd be all over the place. I've just taken this amazing bit of news kind of in my stride, very happy for Hillary, looking forward to speaking to him.

19:04But moreover, I'm absolutely fascinated to know what happened, how he would have crossed the Kungu Icefall with no ladders, beggars belief. That takes it from a sort of utterly brutal ninja feat of endurance to just something else again. I mean, you're talking serious, serious ice climbing. Just incredible. Amazing story, isn't it? That's Chris Thrall speaking to Sean Lay. Still to come in this podcast, a nature success story They're these kind of unsung superheroes They are protecting our shorelines, they're creating fisheries and they're taking up our carbon emissions and they're doing all of this for free

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22:00Intelligence agencies from the UK, US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, an alliance known as Five Eyes, are warning that Chinese agents are posing as online recruiters to try and trick government and military personnel into disclosing Western state secrets. Agents are said to be luring government employees into fake job interviews or setting them assessment-style tests to try and probe them for information. Our security correspondent, Frank Gardner, told my colleague Valerie Sanderson about how serious this warning is. It's not the first time that this warning has been issued, but it is the first time that all five countries that make up the so-called Five Eyes Alliance have joined forces to send out a coordinated, synchronised warning.

22:46And their warning is that China's Ministry of State Security is using front companies and front covers to try and lure professionals who are working in sensitive positions, particularly people who work, for example, in government, in parliament, in defence, security, tech, to lure them with tempting job offers through bogus recruiting ads to then eventually get them to try and steal secrets on their behalf. Look, spying is, I don't know, what is it, the second or third oldest profession in the world? Everybody does it. Britain and the US and the countries that are making this claim also do spying and they spy on China.

23:25Is it very different from what China did in the past? Well, I think it's the scale of it. And I'm tempted to say the sophistication of it, but it's not always that sophisticated because there was a case last year where a couple of people were identified by MI5 as being fronts for China's Ministry of State Security. One of them posted a very attractive photograph of herself online. It all looked very innocent, but it was very badly worded in broken English. It kind of reminded me of those scam letters that used to come out of West Africa saying, you know, I've just inherited millions of pounds.

23:59I'd like to give them to you. So I think there are varying degrees of sophistication here. But it's the fact that they're doing this in a very modern way, rather than the old-fashioned honey trap or the two-way mirror in your hotel room on the businessman's visit to Shanghai and Beijing. I mean, maybe that stuff still goes on, but it kind of belongs in the 1970s. This is very much a 21st century way of doing it. So what this bulletin is saying is that China is using platforms like LinkedIn to warn people who are on these professional networking sites, perfectly legitimately, to be wary, you know, and these reports get rewarded, they say, with hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.

24:42If we assume that it's true, and China, by the way, the Chinese embassy has responded in London, saying this is totally untrue, and it is malicious slander. I mean, they normally do react to any criticism of People's Republic of China as being malicious slander. It's a kind of stock phrase. And they pointed out, by the way, that collectively, The Five Eyes is the largest intelligence gathering organisation in the world. And they would be right because the biggest partner here is the NSA, the National Security Agency of the United States, which has enormous electronic eavesdropping and interception capabilities.

25:20That was Frank Gardner. Now, if you're a football fan, you already know that we are just a few days away from the start of the World Cup. And in an earlier edition of this podcast, we reported on a new rule imposed by FIFA ahead of the competition that fans won't be allowed to bring in reusable water bottles to the games. Instead, they'll have to pay for water in the stadium. FIFA promised not to charge above their usual venue prices, but the decision has been criticised by health experts who've warned that easy access to water will be a necessity because of how hot it's going to be. But the question of water access has already sparked controversy for the World Cup.

25:59In Mexico City, locals living near the Azteca Stadium have been fighting to secure a safe and consistent supply of water for the community. So, given this, do Mexican football fans care about this water bottle controversy? Andrew Peach asked Andralusa Solov, a freelance sports journalist based in the city. Already, it is a very elite event where only the people that have so much money to get the tickets, which are highly coveted and largely inaccessible to most of the Mexican population, it's probably not that much of a big deal for them to pay$5 or$10 extra for water. The issue is that all the working class people that live in the neighborhood around the stadium actually don't have access to water.

26:45There is a well that was re-diverted to have the water go largely to the stadium. They made a new fountain that has all this water. And many people, I've been reporting on the area, Santa Ursula, Guapa, which is by the stadium in Mexico City. And people showed us how they don't have any drinking water. They don't have any water to wash their dishes or prepare their food. And they have to pay for water tankers to come. and bring them water. So I actually think that here in Mexico, the more relevant issue is the lack of access to water. I mean, we're talking about that people don't actually have water to even cook food or flush the toilet.

27:21But I think it further goes into prioritising profits over accessibility. And will there be some economic benefit in the end to Mexican cities where World Cup games are being hosted? Yes, this is a very good question. And I could say as a resident, of the city. It's really just caused a lot of chaos in our lives. I live very close to where one of the main remodeling of the subway is happening. The World Cup is a few days away and the subway is closed. They have not finished remodeling it. They have actually increasingly spent more money on this like floating bridge that no one wanted. And it's considered one of the most expensive public works here in the city.