A government building struck in Kyiv and a new threat from Trump
Ukrainecast
BBC
4.7 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 9 September 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After a Ukrainian government building was damaged in a Russian strike for the first time, Donald Trump told reporters outside the White House that he was ready to implement new sanctions against Moscow. So, what might ‘phase two’ of a US sanctions package look like, and could it impact the Kremlin’s ability to finance its ongoing invasion?
To discuss Washington’s options, we’re joined by Stephanie Baker, a senior writer in Bloomberg’s investigations team and author of ‘Punishing Putin: Inside the Global Economic War to Bring Down Russia’. Plus, Mikey Kay from the Security Brief on BBC News gives his take on how this latest strike could have happened.
Today’s episode is presented by Lucy Hockings and Vitaly Shevchenko.
The producers were Laurie Kalus and Julia Webster. The technical producer was Mike Regaard. The social producer was Joe Wilkinson. The series producer is Chris Flynn. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham.
Email Ukrainecast@bbc.co.uk with your questions and comments. You can also send us a message or voice note via WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram to +44 330 1239480
You can join the Ukrainecast discussion on Newscast’s Discord server here: tinyurl.com/ukrainecastdiscord
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. It's 1,294 days since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. |
| 0:10.7 | And over the weekend, there was another huge attack, a record number of drones and missiles |
| 0:16.0 | launched by Russia. And Vatali, when I first got the news alert about the attack, I did a double-take |
| 0:22.8 | because I was like a government building. This is the first time we've seen such a heavily |
| 0:27.5 | defended area of the capital struck like this. I mean, it was quite, it was shocking. |
| 0:32.2 | You were absolutely right, Lucy, to do a double-take, because that area hardly ever gets targeted, definitely not the actual government buildings. |
| 0:42.9 | The district called Pichersk is where President Zelensky's offices are, the parliament building and the main government building, the cabinet of ministers building, which was hit on the morning of Sunday. |
| 0:57.0 | We understand that a missile hit the top floors of the 10th floor building, causing a massive fire. |
| 1:07.0 | Thankfully nobody got killed, but it's very unusual as though one of the last few remaining |
| 1:15.7 | rules of war has been broken the rule that said that you don't target the most important |
| 1:22.5 | government buildings even though you might remember that back in 2023, a couple of Ukrainian drones hit |
| 1:30.4 | the actual Kremlin, but back then, the damage was much smaller than what happened at the |
| 1:38.2 | Ukrainian government building on Sunday. And the damage, the windows blown out, the floor was caved in, the fire that you mentioned? |
| 1:46.5 | Yes, the actual Prime Minister of Ukraine, Julius Verdenko, went into the damaged floors |
| 1:53.2 | after the fire had been put out and recorded a, I thought, a moving video where she made this point that Western allies should take action. |
| 2:05.6 | Finally, you need to take action. |
| 2:07.7 | She said, it's all real, you've got your levers in your hands, it's time to act. |
| 2:14.3 | And the number of drones, 810. That's... |
| 2:17.6 | Another record. That's insane. Another record. And this record keeps going up and up and up every week almost. |
| 2:22.9 | We're going to be talking more about this attack, which does feel so significant, |
| 2:27.0 | and whether it will prompt Donald Trump to escalate economic pressure on Russia. |
| 2:31.8 | This is Ukraine cast. |
... |
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