US 'cautiously optimistic' about Ukraine ceasefire deal
Newshour
BBC
4.4 • 984 Ratings
🗓️ 14 March 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said he is "cautiously optimistic" about a Ukraine ceasefire, but admitted a deal wouldn’t be easy or straightforward. Meanwhile, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused President Putin of deliberately setting conditions that drag out talks. We get the assessment of a former senior US intelligence officer.
Also on the programme: Canada's new prime minister dismisses Donald Trump's idea of annexing his country as "crazy"; and a joey-grabbing social media influencer sparks controversy in Australia.
(Photo: Ukrainian service members of the 65th Separate Mechanized Brigade prepare a fighting unmanned ground vehicle for a testing at a training ground, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine March 13, 2025. Credit: Andriy Andriyenko/Press Service of the 65th Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces/Handout)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service coming live from London. This is Owen Bennett Jones. |
| 0:09.3 | Now, in the US election campaign, President Trump said he could solve the Ukraine-Russia war in 24 hours. |
| 0:16.5 | It is proving more difficult than that. President Zelensky has said he's ready for a ceasefire, |
| 0:22.3 | but now President Putin has set conditions, |
| 0:25.8 | and all the time the fighting continues. |
| 0:28.6 | On Thursday, President Trump's special envoy, Steve Whitkoff, |
| 0:32.6 | held late-night talks in Moscow with President Putin, |
| 0:35.2 | and President Trump has said in the last hour that progress is being made towards the ceasefire. |
| 0:41.7 | We've had some very good calls today with Russia. |
| 0:46.6 | And with Ukraine, they've agreed for ceasefire if we can get it with Russia. |
| 0:51.5 | And it's not easy. |
| 0:53.4 | It's a tough one. But I think we're doing it. And as the |
| 0:58.0 | Secretary General said yesterday of NATO, a terrific guy, he said without Trump, wouldn't be |
| 1:04.1 | talking about it. It would just go on for years and millions more people. Millions of people |
| 1:08.6 | have been killed, but millions more people would be killed. |
| 1:11.6 | So what now? Andrea Kendall Taylor is a senior fellow and director of the Transatlantic |
| 1:17.1 | Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. How does she assess these latest |
| 1:23.4 | statements? Well, I unfortunately don't share quite the same optimism that were as close to a deal |
| 1:30.0 | as the U.S. officials have suggested, and that's in large part because Putin still believes that |
| 1:36.9 | he's winning on the battlefield. They've just had success in retaking large amounts of Kursk, |
| 1:42.4 | the Russian territory that the Ukrainians held. |
| 1:45.6 | And so he doesn't show any indication of backing away from his maximalist aims, which |
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