US envoys meet Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin

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0:41Hello, welcome to the programme. This is NewsHour from the BBC World Service. I'm Paul Henley. We're coming to you live from London. Still to come, we have a rare report from a specialist weight loss clinic in the east of England targeting childhood obesity. For an adult, a healthy body mass index would be less than 25. Many of the children who attend our clinic have body mass index ranging 30, 40, 50, sometimes well above that. They are at a very extreme level of weight. More on that towards the end of the programme. First, it is fair to say that there are not high hopes, other than perhaps in the Trump White House, for peace talks on Ukraine, which are still going on between the US president's envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, and Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin.

1:33Moscow has agreed not to attack Kiev while the talks happen, partly because those two envoys are widely expected to travel on to the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, tomorrow. But President Zelensky and his colleagues in government there are playing down the chances of any sort of breakthrough, as they contemn the most recent fatal drone and missile assaults on Ukrainian civilians. At the start of his meeting with the US envoys, President Putin said in comments broadcast on Russian TV that the talks would raise difficult questions. The situation that we will try to handle today is not so easy anyway. Mr Putin said Russia would use the talks to set out its stance on the conflict.

2:22We will discuss all the aspects thereof today, and we are ready to provide our vision of how things stand. Mr. Witkoff acknowledged Mr. Putin's role in the temporary agreement by Russia and Ukraine not to attack each other's capitals. I want to thank you for endorsing the no-shoot policy in Kiev and in Moscow out for these three days that allowed us to be able to come here in a safe manner. But Mr Putin said Russia had not accepted calls for a broader agreement.

3:01The Ukrainian authorities published their call for a broader ceasefire for three days, but this was something we did not agree upon with them. Well, our Russia editor Steve Rosenberg has been following events in Moscow, and I asked him what else was known about these talks. What they're actually discussing in there isn't clear. Donald Trump, just before he dispatched his two envoys to President Putin, said we have an idea for peace. But he didn't make it clear what that idea was and whether this was an old idea or a new idea, whether there's some kind of new proposal on the table, what the details are, we simply don't know.

3:45So we wait to hear the results. The US envoys are guests in Moscow, so they don't set the agenda. But they've been there for quite a few hours. Have they gone to dinner with Russian officials? How does this work? We've seen this happen before. Normally, when the US envoys fly in, they have to wait a little bit. And so today, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner flew in. They ended up in a restaurant in Moscow. and they were there, I think, for a few hours, not just eating. I think they were having various meetings. We don't know the details of those meetings, but they weren't just sitting around. And then eventually, in the evening, the message came that President Putin was ready to receive them and off they went in their convoy to the Kremlin.

4:32We don't know what pre-negotiations have happened, but it does sound, doesn't it, as if Russia is quite unshakable on this. They've described their conditions as unshakable, in fact, for peace. Yeah, that's the precise word that President Putin's spokesman used this week. He made it clear that Russia's conditions for peace hadn't changed from those that President Putin had voiced two years ago. He made a big speech in the Russian foreign ministry where he laid out his conditions for peace, for peace basically on Russia's terms. And the key point of that was that Russia continues to demand that Ukraine cede all territory in the four Ukrainian regions that Russia claims to have annexed, but hasn't managed to conquer in full militarily.

5:22So Russia still demands that Ukraine hand over the rest of the territory in these regions that is under Ukrainian control. And that is unacceptable to Kiev. Kiev gets a brief break in Russian attacks, albeit only from midnight. How significant is that? Is that a meaningful gesture? I don't know if we should read too much into that. I think it's probably a necessary gesture, right? If Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are preparing to visit Kiev, it would be hard to imagine Russia continuing to attack the Ukrainian capital with Donald Trump's two envoys making their way there. So I think that's to be expected.

6:02It doesn't mean that we're on the verge of a long term peace. I think we'll have to wait and see what results of this meeting are and whether this idea for peace that Donald Trump was talking about comes to anything. We're a long way, aren't we, from face to face talks between Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin. That would be the most logical way of forming a peace agreement, wouldn't it? It's something that the Ukrainian president is certainly up for, but not the Russian president. He's made it clear that the only circumstances in which he would be prepared to sit down at the table with Ukraine's president is once all the details of a peace deal have been worked out and then to sign it.

6:49But when I talk about a peace deal, I mean a peace deal on Russia's terms. This is what Vladimir Putin is still pushing for. He wants to be seen as the winner of this war, a war which started out as a special military operation. Vladimir Putin did not imagine that this would go on so long. It has not gone at all according to plan for him. Huge losses on the battlefield, huge economic pain for his country. These long range Ukrainian drone strikes attacking oil refineries, causing a fuel crisis in the country, attacking commercial infrastructure. This is now causing a lot of pain. Russians can feel the effects of this war.

7:28And yet, despite all of that, Vladimir Putin believes that he has the initiative on the battlefield. He has the resources, he believes, and the time that he can carry on pushing. If he doesn't get the peace deal on his terms that he's looking for, he's prepared to continue this war, which he believes eventually he will win. That was our Russia editor, Steve Rosenberg. In Moscow, President Zelensky today agreed to refrained from all Ukrainian strikes on Moscow while the talks happened and the Russian moratorium on strikes was also in place. On X, the Ukrainian president wrote, the plan for tomorrow's diplomatic engagements in Kiev involving the US team has been approved.

8:08We're waiting for Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and are ready for a substantive conversation. Thank you to everyone who stands with Ukraine. We are hearing, by the way, that the Moscow talks have just ended. No more details yet Until there are, let's go to Kiev and speak to live Alexander Mareshko, who's a Ukrainian MP from President Zelensky's Servant of the People Party and chair of the Ukrainian Parliament's Foreign Policy Committee. Mr. Mareshko, welcome to NewsHour. These Trump envoys have visited Russia several times. They've never yet had talks in Ukraine, so their visit has to be a good sign, doesn't it?

8:48Well, thank you for having me. Yes, it's supposed to be a good sign. But, you know, I believe that it doesn't bode well for Ukraine because they prefer to come to Moscow first and then they will be coming to Kiev. And yes, they visited Moscow, if I'm not mistaken, 10 or 11 times already. And they have never been to Kiev. In itself, it means that they don't know what's going on in Ukraine. They don't have firsthand information. So if they come to Kiev, to Ukraine and see for themselves what's going on, yes, it's good news. But I strongly doubt that it will change the whole situation for only the same reason.

9:29Putin is not interested in any serious peace negotiations. Do you have any idea what President Trump's new proposals for peace are? I don't know. the previous experience with the Russian so-called 28-point plans, it was basically a Russian plan. It was a plan of surrender for Ukraine. And I hope that Mr. Trump will not repeat the same mistake again. But I doubt that there will be any. Putin has not rejected, has not renounced his previous absurd demands with regard to Ukraine. So I don't think it will be a serious plan which will be acceptable for Ukraine. So what are you hoping for from this US visit to Kiev tomorrow and what are you expecting maybe?

10:19The upside that the envoys of President Trump will see, will talk to people, will talk to President Zelensky, will see the Kiev and the results of Russian attacks against Kiev because every third building in Kyiv was damaged one way or another. And maybe they will start to understand better what's going on. And they will come from the spell of Russian propaganda. Well, do you think they're already biased against Ukraine then? It sounds like it. Judging by their statements, yes, they continue to be biased. And today's compliments addressed to Putin by Mr. Witkoff, it has already caused a prore in Ukraine because today Russians have killed a family, including one child.

11:09So Russia continues to kill us. And Mr. Witkoff is full of these compliments to Russian war criminals. For us, it's incomprehensible. We know that the director of the CIA went to Moscow recently. We know precious little about what he had to say in the Kremlin. But do you think that his visit paved the way for these talks? I would like to think so, but we know very little about this visit, and President Trump himself has downplayed this visit, its importance. I'm not sure that there was talk about Ukraine, maybe it was talk about Iran or some other issues, but there is no indication, no sign that they talked about Ukraine.

11:51Is Ukraine in any mood to make any compromise in the name of peace right now? Yes, we have already agreed to such a compromise, which is not in our interest, not in our best interest. What have you agreed to? Non-conditional ceasefire along the current front line. But no giving up a territory? Absolutely. It's impossible from an international legal perspective. It's not in the interest of the global security. But we also need guarantees that Putin will not attack us again. Right. Can you imagine any peace agreement signed by all sides that would not involve some handing over of territory to Russia?

12:37Well, it's impossible. It's impossible from the point of view of our constitution. Our people would never agree to cede an inch of our territory to Russia. And, you know, to reward the perpetrator, the aggressor, you know, I think it's not good for any country, including the United States. It's exactly the same stand that you've always taken, in other words. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, but it's fair. It's fair. It's based on international law. It's based on political realities. Many thanks for coming on the programme. Oleksandr Mareshko, Ukrainian MP from President Zelensky's party, also chair of the Ukrainian Parliament's Foreign Policy Committee.

13:18You're with NewsHour. From the BBC World Service, we're live from London.

13:36I'm Paul Henley with NewsHour, live from the BBC. An investigation by the New York Times newspaper has presented evidence that the Sudanese army developed and used chemical weapons in its ongoing civil war against the country's rapid support forces. That conflict, now more than three years old, has been characterised by allegations of atrocities and human rights violations by both sides. Millions of people have been displaced. The New York Times' investigation suggests a new ruthlessness on the part of government troops in Sudan. I've been talking to a co-writer of the article in question, Ronan Bergman.

14:15He told me first about the dossier of evidence he'd obtained with his New York Times colleagues. Much of the correspondence that we have, thousands of text messages, taken from phones of the high-rank official of the Sudanese government, Much of it fits to other evidences, to attach pictures, attached documentation and reports about the use of chemical weapons in Sudan during six months at the second half of 2024. So usage by the Sudanese army on the rapid support forces, how did it work? I think that there are two generations. One was already reported by France 24 a year ago, and this is basically dropping cylinders of one ton of chlorine with some explosive on potential targets.

15:09The difficulty from the point of view of the entity attacking is that this leaves a clear mark of the weaponizing of chlorine. So then a person, a general who was appointed, according to the dossier of intelligence, was appointed to head the chemical warfare project in the Sudanese army. He's suggesting a different method. And this is a dual head bomb that will contain explosive RDT and TNT and chlorine and some ball bearing. and he says in his messages to the officials that in this way, this will have the impact of terrorizing, of creating the intimidation that is embedded to the use of chemical agents, but at the same time will not leave the same kind of traces like the big cylinders.

16:03And this is when June, July 24, they start planning and testing and then production of this dual warhead new bomb, which, according to the Throve, they are later used in the battlefield. And how did these weapons get into Sudan, or were they manufactured there? No, no, they are manufactured in Sudan. There's a very rich documentation, videos, video clips, pictures of the different stages of the production from the massive cylinders of chlorine that at least some were taken from water stations. Some of them were supplied by international humanitarian organizations because this is the same chlorine that is used in water stations for purification of water.

16:53So it's not just that they produce a weapon based on chlorine, but the chlorine was taken from water stations where it was supposed to be used for the purification of water for the civilians. And just to be clear, all this would be completely illegal. Sudan has signed the chemical weapons convention, hasn't it? Yes, the weapon based on chlorine is designated as a chemical weapon. And the U.S., based on intelligence, some of it we show and we use for this story, the CIA, the U.S. government, has designated the Sudanese army as an entity using chemical weapon and its leader in involvement in that already a year ago.

17:43The Sudanese government says the US is not a fair judge of that. How worried are you by a Sudanese military government spokesman saying your allegations are baseless and threatening to sue you? What we have published is based on corroborated research that was seen and spread by different experts. And we stand behind that publication. And I think that maybe the Sudanese army believe this is fabricated, but the same intelligence that they say is fabricated was presented to Congress as proof that led to the designation of the Sudanese army as an entity using chemical weapons. Ronan Bergman of the New York Times, and we've approached the Sudanese army for a response to those allegations.

18:32We have not yet received a reply.

18:40Now, critics have called it the appropriation of gaming by White House propaganda.

18:50Wrapped up in the nostalgia of early 90s pixel art and music, new video games have been released by the Trump administration. They're on the White House website. Build the Wall is a version of Tetris that involves fortifying the southern US border to keep out what it calls the coming horde. In Rio Run, the player collects brown people who follow them around in orange jumpsuits. And there's another game called Trump Savings Tycoon, in which you fill your kids' Trump accounts by catching notes and gold coins in a net. The music we played came from that. Keza MacDonald has been trying these games out in her role as games editor for the British newspaper The Guardian.

19:31She told me she had not been impressed. So quite apart from the ideology of the games, which is not something that I personally want to be associated with or play for pleasure. They're really lazy. They are straight up ripoffs of several different popular games. I couldn't glean even the tiniest little bit of enjoyment from them at all. Even if they've been good games, obviously, ideologically, I would have had an issue with them. Well, to people who agree with the ideology of the games, they might be described as fun. I guess, but then you're still playing a quite poor ripoff of a better game.

20:03Each one of these little games is based on a popular game such as Tetris or Flappy Bird is another one people might remember. But they're not, you know, they're not. I do wonder, and this is an opinion that is shared with several game developers I've talked to, if they were AI coded, they're ripoffs and they're not particularly fun to play. It sounds as if there might be copyright issues with some of them. Yeah, this is something I've been quite interested in. This is far from the first time that the Trump White House has used video game imagery in its messaging. Last year, the White House tweeted a picture of President Trump as Master Chief from Halo games.

20:36They've also used Call of Duty footage in posting about the war on Iran. Today, the Tetris company posted a message saying the Tetris company believes in acceptance and togetherness, which is obviously a reaction to one of these games, Build the Wall, being a riff on Tetris. But then also, if you look at the trailer for this little collection of White House arcade games, It riffs on the Sega branding of Sega. It goes MAGA in the same way that the Sega consoles used to. So I do think someone somewhere at some point is surely going to have an issue. In any case, the White House has clearly done some research.

21:12Have they spotted a market and is it a receptive one, do you think? The alt-right, as it used to be known, and video game culture have always actually been intertwined. A lot of the modern kind of far-right figures have arisen from toxic gamer culture. These are younger men, mostly. If anyone remembers Gamergate, which was a online harassment campaign against women and minorities in the games industry that happened in 2014. A lot of names that people will recognize as alt-right figures, including my Leonapolis, these people were active during Gamergate. Toxic video game culture and the alt-right have always been kind of meshed.

21:47And so this isn't to the Trump, the people who are doing Trump's messaging, the people who are working in Trump's comms, video game imagery isn't foreign. Video game memes are kind of home ground. and also obviously it speaks to people who grew up with video games, which at this point is everyone under about 40. So it's a large group of people who will find this stuff instantly recognisable. That was Keza MacDonald, who is video games editor for The Guardian. Don't forget, if you want to listen to this programme but miss the live broadcast, there's an online version updated twice a day. BBC NewsHour podcast is what you need to search for and you can subscribe to the feed if you want to get it on a regular basis.

22:24Live from London, I'm Paul Henley with NewsHour.

22:54music subscription.

23:24Why does it have such appeal in this part of eastern Germany? And could the vote be a stepping stone to national power for the AFD? I've been talking to the BBC's Germany correspondent, Jessica Parker. The AFD is leading by a substantial margin in the polls, so 40 plus percent. The big question is whether some smaller parties get over a 5 % threshold and the fewer parties that manage to do that, the more chance the AFD actually could take a parliamentary majority, which is what it wants to do and kind of what it needs to do because mainstream parties won't go into coalition with them. It's known as the firewall, the Brandenmauer.

24:08So I think there's a huge sense of anticipation in terms of what could happen. We don't know, obviously. It depends how the votes shake down over the coming 24 hours. But I think this is being seen as an election that isn't just about what happens in Saxony-Anhalt, important though that may be for the two million plus people that live here. But it is about the far right potentially having a significant level of power for the first time in post-war Germany. The AFD continuing to feel like it is on the march. It is polling top nationwide as well, although its strongholds remain in the east. And there's an implication as well for the embattled Chancellor, Conservative Chancellor, Friedrich Mertz, who once upon a time talked about slashing support for the AFD, whereas actually the opposite has happened.

25:02So it's a big election, I think, in terms of what happens locally, nationally, and also that wider picture as well of the popularity of the far right in Europe. How obvious is AFD support where you are and how obvious is public opposition to them? You can find both pretty quickly. I was at a demonstration earlier where people had gathered who are against Alternativa for Deutschland. Something I sort of noticed was there was a lot of rainbow flags being flown because one of the things that the AFD has talked about is wanting to ban rainbow flags from being flown at schools. Instead, they want to see the German flag raised every school day as part of their patriotism agenda.

25:38They talk about wanting to champion what they call a normal family of a husband, a wife, children, man, woman, children. And speaking to people today, that was one of the things they were talking about, that they feel that it's creating an atmosphere of intolerance. And then yesterday I was at a rally for Alternative for Deutschland, one of their closing rallies, where you had people really speaking quite passionately about seeing the party and particularly the lead candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, He's really been the poster boy of the campaign. He's just been a huge talking point, particularly after the Spiegel magazine labeled him Germany's most dangerous man.