Inspecting the Troops

From Our Own Correspondent

BBC

News, News Commentary

4.4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 28 January 2016

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Insight, storytelling, colour, detail. In this edition, the Russians in Syria show off their fighter jets and warships, a message from Moscow that Russia once again sees itself as a major player on the world stage. A million incomers to Germany in a year -- can they give the economy a useful bounce as well as defuse a demographic timebomb? The old men of the Vietnamese communist party leadership have their say at the big five-yearly meeting in Hanoi, but is their tightly-controlled socialist state beginning to unravel and is there anything they can do to stop it? We visit the world's largest refugee camp in the Kenyan desert. It has a population the size of New Orleans'. Many were born there and will never leave it. Some wonder if similarly huge camps will soon spring up on the fringes of Europe. Pensioners have been among the hardest hit by the Greek government's tough austerity measures. Their income's been cut a dozen times as the government tries to hit economic targets set by the EU and the IMF. It's left some on the island of Crete foraging in the mountains for food to eat

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a download from the BBC. It's from our own correspondent.
0:05.0	We make one version of the programme for the BBC World Service,
0:09.0	but this is the latest edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
0:14.4	It's introduced by Kate A.D.
0:17.1	Hello.
0:18.0	Today, how times change.
0:20.3	Moscow invites our correspondent
0:22.3	to inspect Russia's military operation in Syria.
0:26.2	In Vietnam the old men of the party cling on to power, but the challenges they face are piling
0:31.6	up. An African refugee camp the size of Coventry.
0:36.0	Could facilities like this soon be springing up on the edges of Europe?
0:40.0	And as austerity anger gathers pace in Greece, we head off into the mountains of Crete looking for lunch.
0:47.0	Talks aimed at finding a way of ending the war in Syria are due to get underway in Geneva tomorrow. The nearly five-year
0:54.8	conflict has killed a quarter of a million people and displaced millions of others.
0:59.1	Russia, which has denied a report that it's offered a safe haven for the Syrian President,
1:04.7	Basha al-Assad, has been lobbying hard ahead of the gathering in Switzerland,
1:09.4	suggesting which parties should be allowed to attend and which shouldn't.
1:13.7	It's now four months since Russia stepped up its military intervention in Syria, with airstrikes
1:18.9	and a buildup of troops.
1:20.9	Steve Rosenberg spent last week alongside Russian forces operating there and learned something of Moscow's intentions.
1:28.0	If there is one thing that working in Russia teaches you, it is patience.
1:34.3	Four years ago I tried to arrange a meeting with officials from the Russian Defence Ministry's
	...

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