Putin skips peace talks with Zelensky
Newshour
BBC
4.4 • 984 Ratings
🗓️ 15 May 2025
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
President Zelensky has arrived in Turkey for peace talks with Russia but Vladimir Putin isn't there - and the Ukrainian leader has accused the Kremlin of sending “stand-in props” instead.
Also on the programme: how the expansion of renewable energy sources is now driving down China's emissions of greenhouse gases; and the surprise discovery of an original version of one of the earliest and most important bills of rights in history – the Magna Carta.
(Photo: Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a joint media statement with Malaysia's prime minister following their talks at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, 14 May 2025. Credit: EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:06.5 | We're coming to you live from London. |
| 0:08.3 | I'm James Menendez. |
| 0:09.8 | And we're going to begin today in Turkey, |
| 0:11.7 | where talks are meant to be taking place between Russia and Ukraine |
| 0:15.1 | about how to end the war there, |
| 0:17.0 | more than three years since Russia's full-scale invasion. |
| 0:23.1 | To say trust is low between the two sides is an understatement. And in fact, it seems as if the talks, due to begin this morning, |
| 0:28.4 | haven't got started. The two sides aren't even in the same city yet. President Putin isn't |
| 0:33.9 | part of the Russian delegation. And in the past few minutes, Donald Trump has said that |
| 0:38.8 | progress is unlikely until he and the Russian leader meet in person. Well, Ukraine's president |
| 0:45.0 | Volodymy Zelensky is in Turkey. He's in the capital Ankara. When he arrived, he cast doubt |
| 0:50.3 | on the Russian delegate's mandate to take decisions. |
| 1:01.9 | I don't yet know officially what the level of the Russian delegation is, but from what we see, |
| 1:08.6 | it looks more like a sham level. We will think about what we do next, what steps will take after talking to President Erdogan. I think we will have several hours |
| 1:13.6 | for an important conversation and very important decisions. We must establish what the |
| 1:19.6 | level of the Russian delegation is and what mandate they have and whether they are capable of taking |
| 1:25.6 | any decisions themselves, because we all know who makes decisions in Russia. |
| 1:30.8 | Well, the talks are meant to be taking place in Istanbul, |
| 1:33.3 | where our Russia editor, Steve Rosenberg, is. |
| 1:36.4 | So is Vladimir Putin definitely not coming? |
| 1:39.8 | There is nothing definite about this story. |
... |
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