Inside Trump’s meeting with Putin… Americast is in Alaska!

Americast

BBC

Politics, Government, News

4.2 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 14 August 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ahead of his meeting with Vladimir Putin on Friday, Donald Trump has said that “in the first two minutes, I’ll know exactly whether or not a deal can be made”. Trump will be the first US president to have a face to face meeting with the Russian president since the war in Ukraine started. Alaska is a state which is already home to a historic deal between both countries - in 1867 the United States purchased it from Russia for around $7 million, making it one of the most successful business deals in history. Sarah and Anthony are in Anchorage, covering all you need to know about the meeting…what will and won’t be on the table, what’s likely to be Trump’s approach with Putin, and what he might use as leverage. Or is this part of a big delaying tactic by Putin to string along the US president? And what kind of input does President Zelensky from Ukraine get?

HOSTS: • Sarah Smith, North America Editor • Anthony Zurcher, North America Correspondent

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This episode was made by Purvee Pattni, Alix Pickles and Grace Reeve. The technical producer was Mike Regaard. The series producer is Purvee Pattni. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham.

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Americast is part of the BBC News Podcasts family of podcasts. The team that makes Americast also makes lots of other podcasts, including Newscast and Ukrainecast. If you enjoy Americast (and if you're reading this then you hopefully do), then we think that you will enjoy some of our other pods too. See links below.

Newscast: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/p05299nl Ukrainecast: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p0bqztzm Radical: BBC Sounds - Radical with Amol Rajan - Available Episodes

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:04.8	I'm going in to speak to Vladimir Putin, and I'm going to be telling him, you've got to end this war, you've got to end it.
0:12.2	And he wasn't going to mess with me.
0:14.1	This war would have never happened.
0:15.9	You know, we had a discussion about a one.
0:17.9	Russia's occupied a big portion of Ukraine.
0:22.4	They've occupied some very prime territory. We're going to try and get some of that territory back for Ukraine.
0:26.6	But they've taken some very prime territory. They've taken largely ocean. You know, in real estate,
0:32.5	we call it ocean front property. That's always the most valuable property. If you're in a lake,
0:37.3	a river, or an ocean, it's always the best property. Well's always the most valuable property. If you're in a lake, a river or an ocean,
0:38.3	it's always the best property. Well, Ukraine, a lot of people don't know that Ukraine was largely
0:44.0	a thousand miles of ocean. That's gone. America has come to Alaska, because here we're
0:52.2	expecting a big moment. Donald Trump meeting face to face in person
0:57.0	with Vladimir Putin to talk about the war in Ukraine. This could have huge consequences. All of you
1:03.6	remember, of course, Donald Trump boasting about being able to end this war within 24 hours,
1:08.1	and we all know that that hasn't happened. This is his first really big
1:11.9	attempt at stopping the fighting. So what can we expect from this meeting? What do you need to know
1:16.9	about it? Welcome to AmeriCast. Americaast from BBC News. You're gambling with the lives
1:26.1	of millions of people. You're gambling with World War III.
1:29.3	President Trump's message is very simple.
1:31.3	We are done being taken advantage of.
1:33.3	Mr. President, in the name of our God, have mercy upon the people.
	...

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