European powers say Ukraine must have say in peace talks
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 10 August 2025
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The leaders of Europe's largest military and economic powers have issued a statement, saying that Ukraine must play a role in peace talks, ahead of a summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska. Sergie Marvov, former member of parliament for Vladimir Putin's United Russia party tells our programme that Russia will demand that European troops cannot be stationed in Ukraine following any ceasefire deal.
Also in the programme: Mo Salah criticizes UEFA after the killing of Palestinian footballer Suleiman Obeid during an Israeli strike in Gaza. We get the reaction of the Palestinian national football team manager Ehab Abu Jazar; and amid a deadlock over global negotiations to end single use plastics, we hear from John Chweya, President of the Kenya National Waste Pickers Welfare Association.
Picture: Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz, France's President Emmanuel Macron, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk walk to attend a joint press conference following a meeting of the 'Coalition of the willing' at the Mariinskyi Palace, the official residence of the president of Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine, 10 May 2025, amid the ongoing Russian invasion. Credit: SERGEY DOLZHENKO/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service Studios in central London. |
| 0:09.2 | I'm Tim Franks. |
| 0:10.8 | If you consume your news on TV these days, well, it won't be long before you see archive footage from 2019. |
| 0:18.3 | Donald Trump doing one of his high-energy handshakes of Vladimir Putin the last time the two |
| 0:24.1 | men met during his first term in office. Those six-year-old pictures are doing the rounds ahead of |
| 0:29.5 | next Friday when the two men are due to meet again in Alaska. They'll be talking, of course, |
| 0:34.2 | about the war in Ukraine, the conflict that Russia began in 2014 and then |
| 0:38.9 | heightened hugely with the full invasion of its neighbour three and a half years ago. |
| 0:43.4 | Overnight, a joint statement by Britain, France, Germany, Poland and other countries said that |
| 0:47.9 | Ukraine must be part of the discussions and decisions about how to end the war and arrive |
| 0:53.7 | at a stable peace. |
| 0:55.7 | From the streets of the capital Kiev, these voices expressed deep concern about the possibility |
| 1:00.8 | of negotiations between President Trump and Putin that excluded Ukraine. |
| 1:08.2 | I'm against it. Otherwise, our struggle will have all been for nothing. And we're just supposed |
| 1:13.4 | to accept that Putin can take our territory? He won't stop there. That's for sure. |
| 1:19.0 | I don't consider Putin to be someone worth negotiating with. No negotiations with him are worth |
| 1:24.4 | the time. They won't lead to anything. |
| 1:33.6 | Ukraine should be present at the negotiations between Trump and Putin, as well as Europe. |
| 1:39.4 | Only then, and under certain conditions, might we finally expect to see some kind of lasting peace. |
| 1:50.5 | I mentioned that Poland was one of the countries that had added itself to this joint call for Ukraine's interests to be front and center of any discussions on an end to the war. It was a point made today to the BBC World Services weekend program by the Polish Foreign Minister Radik Sikorsky. |
| 1:58.5 | Well, that it has to be a fair peace. And Ukraine's security interests and sovereignty has to be respected. |
| 2:06.3 | And remember, Ukraine is not passive in this. |
... |
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