Ukraine’s defiance, four years on

14:13Jeremy Bowen:I spoke to one soldier who'd spent more than 100 days in his position. Life in a dugout.

14:23Volodymyr Zelenskyy:Earth on all sides. The air is stagnant. You can't throw anything outside. because it would be noticeable in the landscape. Don't stick your head out unless necessary, never. Through a hole which serves as a kind of ventilation comes the stench of Russians, those who were burned the day before.

14:43Jeremy Bowen:And because it's really dangerous to relieve people, they often don't have rotations that they would want. So he was stuck basically, he said, with his squad in a six meter deep hole dug out on the front line for more than 100 days. The Russians just kept coming.

15:05Volodymyr Zelenskyy:They walked straight through our tree line, and when they saw signs of a dugout and tracks, they would stop and start searching. Everything around us was mined. We were exploding them manually. There was a perfect moment, not too early and not too late, when you detonate and the Russian soldier falls. If you do it too late, the dugout is exposed, and they throw everything they can into it.

15:29Jeremy Bowen:And he only got out because he volunteered to take out two wounded. Now, on the way out to the rear areas, their vehicle was struck. One of the wounded guys was killed along with the drivers. Another vehicle picked them up. They drove over a landmine. But he got out and one of the wounded guys got out. And then the news came back from his original position was that it had been overrun and his comrades left behind were either missing or dead. So he, you know, that's how he's alive today. But for those people who are in uniform and are fighting, there seems to be a kind of grim determination, I suppose you'd say, to keep on going.

16:13Jeremy Bowen:And of course they get tired, they've had enough, that's why they need new recruits and they're struggling to get as many as they need.

16:18Volodymyr Zelenskyy:It sounds like there's a determination on behalf of the soldiers, but what about the civilians? I mean, this war has taken a toll on many civilians as well. Is there this similar sense of need to continue? I mean, I just wonder what the morale is like for people who aren't necessarily at the front lines, who aren't soldiers. The opinion polls suggest that essentially people feel they don't have a choice.

16:45Jeremy Bowen:Yeah, they don't basically want to turn the clock back. And that's something that Putin wants to do, because he feels that if he wants to rebuild the global power that the Soviet Union had, and this appears to be his objective, he's written long articles coming out with all sorts of historical justifications for the things that they do, saying essentially that this, you know, these people are Russians, they should be Russian, they should be part of Russia. And that's something that Ukrainians don't agree with.

17:32Volodymyr Zelenskyy:Chicago Talks. A lot. Hold on, let me step over here. People are talking too much. We debate about food, deep dish, tavern style, who's got the best beef. We yell across rooms, across blocks, across generations. Yes, nice earrings, Grammy. And now we're doing it on our phones, too. Video calls from the L train, group chats that never shut up. Neighbors texting you the score before your TV catches up. Come on! Get a load of this guy. Catch up on a dog. Yeah, we've got thoughts. Too loud? In Chicago, you're gonna hear it. Because nothing here gets built without conversation. Nothing moves without connection.

18:09Volodymyr Zelenskyy:So if you think you know AT &T, it might be time to rethink that. Because their network has improved, like, a lot. So Chicago can keep speaking its mind with AT &T Wireless and AT &T Fiber. Chicago won't stop talking. Our improved network backs it up. AT &T, connecting changes everything. AT &T Fiber, limited availability in select areas. Hi there, I'm Asma Khalid. And I'm Tristan Redmond, and together we're the hosts of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. For those of you who might be new to our show, we here at the Global Story dive deep every weekday on one big story at the intersection of where the world and America meet.

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19:04Volodymyr Zelenskyy:As you know, Jeremy, our show is about where the world and America meet. And in the minds of many Americans, Ukraine's resistance to Russia has become somewhat synonymous with its wartime president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who I know you met on this trip there reporting in Ukraine. He has come to Washington multiple times over the course of this conflict, meeting first with President Biden and now more recently with President Trump, pleading with members of Congress and frankly, even at times with the American public to continue to support this war. You went to interview him at his government headquarters there in Kiev.

19:39Volodymyr Zelenskyy:Tell us about that.

19:40Jeremy Bowen:The governmental quarter in Kiev is in a residential district, quite well to do. And people still live inside the security quarter, if you like. You know, you go to interview any national leader, head of state, there's going to be security. And there's a war going on here. And he has been the subject of assassination attempts. So he lives behind a great deal of security. Zelensky himself, I interviewed him actually a year ago, just after his, you know, infamous shouting match with Messrs Trump and Vance in the Oval Office. And he was then and now, I think, remarkably resilient. Mr. President, thanks very much for talking to us.

20:21Jeremy Bowen:Much appreciated. Some people, I think, including President Trump, say Ukraine cannot win this war. Are they correct?

20:30Volodymyr Zelenskyy:Where are you now? Today you're in Kiev. You're in the capital of our homeland. You are in Ukraine. I'm grateful for this.

20:41Jeremy Bowen:Will we lose? Of course not. I actually said to him, look, how much longer can you continue doing this? He said, I've got energy. I still have energy with all of this. If you think back to the very beginning, four years ago when the full-scale invasion was launched, he did a very famous, massively viral video where he stood out in front of the official presidential buildings here in the city with his leading advisors behind him. And he basically said, it was a selfie video, he said, look, we're all here. And at the time, the Russians were saying that they were all trying to get out of the country.

21:15Jeremy Bowen:He said, the generals are here, everyone's here, and we're going to resist. What does victory look like? Today we speak about stopping this war.

21:25Volodymyr Zelenskyy:I believe that stopping Putin today and preventing him from occupying Ukraine is a victory for the whole world. because Putin will not stop at Ukraine. Well, a key sticking point is whether Ukraine will give up any land to Russia to make any territorial concessions. You mentioned this earlier, but President Putin very desperately wants the Donbass, the area you were describing traveling to earlier. There have been reports that the Trump administration is pressuring Zelensky to make some territorial concessions. Does Zelensky, does he seem at all willing to do that? And relatedly, does he feel supported by this Trump administration?

22:04Jeremy Bowen:He said he's not going to give up land. You're not saying that victory means getting all the land back, are you?

22:12Volodymyr Zelenskyy:In any case, we will achieve that. That is absolutely clear. It's only a matter of time. To do it today would mean losing a huge number of people, millions of people, because the Russian army is large. And we understand the cost of such steps. We would not have enough people. We would be losing them. And what is land without people? Honestly, nothing.

22:36Jeremy Bowen:Does he feel supported? Well, I tried to ask him about that, and he wasn't exactly direct in his answers. Donald Trump says different things at different times. But among the things he said is that you are a dictator and that you started the war. It's not helpful, is it, for you? I'm not a dictator, and I didn't start the war. That's it. Can you trust President Trump, say on security guarantees, because he is a man who changes his mind.

23:03Volodymyr Zelenskyy:It's not only President Trump. We are talking about America. As presidents, we have fixed terms. We want guarantees for 30 years, for example. Congress is needed. Presidents change, but institutions stay.

23:18Jeremy Bowen:Zelensky's got, I think, some steel inside him. You know, he tries to say all the right things. At the same time, he's not bending over. and budging on his red lines, despite the fact that Jared Kushner, the other envoy, and Trump himself have told him he needs to do that. Steve Witkoff, Trump's negotiator, goes to Moscow, talks to Putin, he comes back, the messages are then relayed to you. It seems to be, a lot of people would say, that he is absorbing Putin's talking points, Russia's narrative, and they are putting it to you and getting you to agree that they're putting you under a lot of pressure.

23:58Volodymyr Zelenskyy:Today I cannot say that for certain. Do you know why? Because Witkow says the opposite. I met with your group more often than with the Russians. That is what he says. Indeed, I have had many meetings with President Trump, while President Trump has only one meeting with Putin. My opinion, they should stop the Russians, not try to please them, because they will lie anyway. They care only about themselves and their own interests.

24:27Jeremy Bowen:So, look, I think just tangibly looking at the evidence, the level of support that Ukraine gets from the United States compared to how it got at the height of the help it was getting from Joe Biden, it gets way, way less. There have been credible sounding reports, not least in the New York Times, about deals in the Wall Street Journal, deals that are waiting to be done, we're told, between American businessmen and Russian businesses, when and if they can get to a ceasefire and somehow bring Russia back in from the cold. So the evidence is that the U.S. is now a highly conditional ally.

25:13Volodymyr Zelenskyy:Because the Trump administration has essentially stopped a lot of military aid, most of it, right, to Ukraine, there was an assumption that this would in some ways changed the calculus of what was going on on the battlefield. I mean, I understand that the United States continues to sell military aid to the Europeans, to NATO. There are other mechanisms through which some of this aid is getting through. But you describe a situation on the ground of a very active war in which the Ukrainians are not really on the back foot. And that to me is a curiosity given the expectation that if the U.S. stopped this direct military aid, suddenly it was going to put Ukraine in a really, really dire situation.

25:51Volodymyr Zelenskyy:How do you make sense of that?

25:53Jeremy Bowen:The things the U.S. provides, which the Ukrainians really can't do without, are the things that the Europeans can't provide, which is mostly Patriot batteries, anti-missile batteries and interceptors, and some of the long-range artillery and strike equipment as well. But the other thing to remember about the Ukrainians is, you know, this is not like the US military supporting, if you like, the Iraqi army or, you know, pre-Taliban takeover the Afghan army. You know, this was a military that was organized, had a tradition of operating quite sophisticated Soviet-era weapons systems. You know, it's a technologically advanced country.

26:42Jeremy Bowen:They have a high-tech sector. They had an aerospace sector. They built the largest aircraft in the world, not very far from here. So, you know, this is a country which as well has, in the last four years, has done extraordinary things developing its own weapons, particularly drones, not just drones that fly through the air, naval drones, which have essentially, the Ukrainians didn't have a navy. So instead of trying to build ships, they built naval drones, which have sunk a lot of Russian ships and forced the Russians to move their navy away from the Ukrainian coast in the Black Sea. So I think the point is, is the point I'm trying to make, is that there was a military industrial complex here, in fact, in Soviet times in Ukraine.

27:25Jeremy Bowen:And they are trying to get that going again with some success.

27:29Volodymyr Zelenskyy:You've described what the situation is amongst the civilian population, amongst soldiers, amongst, you know, the political leadership with Zelensky. So as a whole, Jeremy, how would you say that four years of war have changed Ukraine?

27:45Jeremy Bowen:Massively. War changes countries. It changes the way they look at the world. It changes the way they assess their friends and their enemies. There's been a huge exodus of people. There are several million Ukrainians abroad as refugees. The longer this goes on and they establish their lives elsewhere, you know, principally in Europe, they might be reluctant to come back, particularly if there's uncertainty about the future. People here talk about a huge demographic crisis. The population is falling. I mean, Ukraine is physically a big country, but its population was in the low 40s million before the war.

28:23Jeremy Bowen:It's less than that now. and they've had a real bruising, more than that, in the last four years. And one thing I would say is that while I don't see any sign that Ukraine is about to collapse, some analysts say that, I don't buy that, I also see no sign that this war is going to end anytime soon. And that's pretty dismal for the people who are engaged in it, because war is exhausting, it takes over lives, it ends lives, and it causes immense destruction, with consequences actually certainly felt across the European continent, this war and beyond.

29:05Volodymyr Zelenskyy:Well, Jeremy, thank you for bringing your reporting and sharing it to us, particularly in the midst of being there on the road in Kyiv. We appreciate it.

29:15Jeremy Bowen:Not at all. Thank you.

29:24Volodymyr Zelenskyy:That was the BBC's international editor, Jeremy Bowen. The BBC is marking the four-year anniversary of the start of the war with a series of articles from inside Russia and Ukraine, talking to civilians and soldiers on both sides. You can read those accounts at bbc.com. That's it from us today. This episode was produced by Hannah Moore and mixed by Travis Evans. The executive producer was Bridget Harney. Our senior news editor is Chyna Collins. I'm Asma Khaled, and thanks as always for listening. We'll talk to you again tomorrow. We'll be right back.

30:28Volodymyr Zelenskyy:style who's got the best beef. We yell across rooms, across blocks, across generations. Yes, nice earrings, Grammy. And now we're doing it on our phones, too. Video calls from the L train, group chats that never shut up. Neighbors texting you the score before your TV catches up. Come on! Get a load of this guy. Catch up. On a dog. Yeah, we've got thoughts. Too loud? In Chicago, you're gonna hear it. Because nothing here gets built without conversation. Nothing moves without connection. So, If you think you know AT &T, it might be time to rethink that because their network has improved, like, a lot.

31:04Volodymyr Zelenskyy:So Chicago can keep speaking its mind with AT &T Wireless and AT &T Fiber. Chicago won't stop talking. Our improved network backs it up. AT &T, connecting changes everything. AT &T Fiber, limited availability in select areas.