US envoy to meet Russian officials for Ukraine talks
Newshour
BBC
4.4 • 984 Ratings
🗓️ 16 February 2025
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio plans to meet Russian officials in Saudi Arabia in the coming days for talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine. European states concerned about being sidelined are to hold an emergency summit on Monday. Also on the programme: the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group is continuing its offensive in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo; and we look at what to expect at Britain’s biggest night of the year in film, the BAFTAs. (Photo: Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar welcomes US Secretary of State Marco Rubio as he arrives in Israel, on the first leg of his Middle East trip, in Tel Aviv, Israel, February 15, 2025. Credit: Reuters)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Newsar from the BBC World Service, coming to you live from our studios |
| 0:08.4 | in central London. At the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio is in Jerusalem where he's been |
| 0:14.6 | given a very warm welcome, unlike the reception given to his colleague, Defence Secretary Pete Heesgeth, by European leaders in Munich on Friday, |
| 0:24.5 | where they sat in stunned silence as he doubled down on President Trump's peace plan for Ukraine, |
| 0:30.1 | which involves direct negotiations between the US and Russia to the exclusion of Europe and indeed Ukraine. |
| 0:37.4 | But in Jerusalem, Mr. Rubio got an |
| 0:39.2 | endorsement of Mr. Trump's widely condemned plan to take control of Gaza and relocate |
| 0:45.1 | its more than 2 million residents. Then there's a resumption of supplies of heavy weaponry |
| 0:50.1 | to Israel, suspended by the Biden administration, and Mr. Trump's dire threat of opening |
| 0:55.6 | the gates of hell for Hamas, and this all the hostages are released. |
| 0:59.9 | Here's the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. |
| 1:03.5 | President Trump and I are working in full cooperation and coordination between us. |
| 1:09.4 | We have a common strategy, and we can't always share the |
| 1:13.2 | details of this strategy with the public, including when the gates of hell will be opened, as they |
| 1:20.8 | surely will if all our hostages are not released until the last one of them. |
| 1:27.2 | Well, Mr. Robio on on his first Middle East trip, |
| 1:30.1 | is then expected to travel on to Saudi Arabia |
| 1:33.2 | for talks with Russian officials, |
| 1:35.3 | possibly laying the ground for a Trump-Putin summit. |
| 1:39.1 | The BBC's Tom Bateman is traveling with Marco Rubio |
| 1:43.5 | and joins us now from Jerusalem. |
| 1:46.9 | Has anyone in his party, Tom, spoken about what the agenda might be in Saudi Arabia? |
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