US and Russia agree to re-establish dialogue between armed forces
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2026
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The agreement would re-establish high level dialogue for the first time since President Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine. Also in the programme: cuts at the Washington Post; a rare Michelangelo is auctioned in New York; BBC Persian creates a 'face wall' of those who have died in the Iran protests; and the director of the multi-Oscar nominated Sentimental Value - Joachim Trier - talks to us about his new family drama.
(Photo: Members of the U.S. delegation attend the second round of trilateral talks between the U.S., Russia and Ukraine, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, February 4, 2026.UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs Handout via Reuters)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.4 | Hello and welcome to NewsAv from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:12.9 | We're coming to you live from London. |
| 0:14.8 | I'm James Menendez. |
| 0:16.3 | In just a moment, the US and Russia agreed to resume high-level military contact. That's our main story. |
| 0:24.0 | Also coming up this half hour, the moment of rare drawing by the Renaissance master Michelangelo |
| 0:29.7 | is sold for millions at an auction in New York. |
| 0:32.9 | Genuinely, that was in my 23 years in the business, my favourite auction moment that we've just had. |
| 0:38.4 | What did it take? 45 minutes, I think, which is kind of an exceptional length of time for a lot to |
| 0:43.6 | sell. But it started at a million. And 45 minutes later, the hammer went down at $23.1 million. |
| 0:48.8 | You could feel the tension deflate as soon as the hammer hit the roster. |
| 0:53.7 | More on that in just under 20 minutes. |
| 0:56.7 | But we are going to begin today with the story we touched on yesterday. The expiry of the last |
| 1:01.0 | nuclear treaty between Russia and the United States, known as New Start. That limited the number |
| 1:06.7 | of nuclear warheads that each country could deploy. It was still a huge number, but far fewer |
| 1:12.5 | than at the peak of the Cold War. The end of the treaty also seemed to signal the end of the last |
| 1:17.7 | formal military relationship between the two. In fact, active contacts between Washington and |
| 1:23.4 | Moscow were suspended in 2021, shortly before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. |
| 1:30.2 | Today, though, the US announced that it had agreed with Russia to re-establish those contacts. |
| 1:36.7 | Tom Bateman is our State Department correspondent, and he's been telling me, first of all, |
| 1:40.4 | about that now expired treaty. |
| 1:42.2 | The important thing here to say about Newstart is that this was a guardrail against |
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