US officials claim progress in Ukraine peace talks
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 25 November 2025
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As American officials brief that they're making progress in peace negotiations over the Russia-Ukraine war, we get a view from Moscow on what kind of deal might be acceptable to Russia.
Also in the programme: why is femicide – the killing of women – especially by intimate partners or close relatives, still so common around the world? We hear from the UN about what needs to happen to bring the numbers down; and ash from a volcano in Ethiopia which has erupted after many dormant years forces flights out of India to re-route.
(IMAGE: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov speaks during a joint press conference with Belarusian Foreign Minister in Moscow, Russia, 25 November 2025 / CREDIT: Alexander Nemenov/AFP/POOL/EPA/Shutterstock)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.2 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service studios in central London. |
| 0:15.1 | I'm Tim Franks. Something good may just be happening, wrote Donald Trump, yesterday morning, Europe time, |
| 0:22.3 | about the possibility of an end to Russia's war in Ukraine. Later that night, there was a different soundtrack. |
| 0:31.6 | The Ukrainian capital, Kiev, came under another massive Russian aerial bombardment. At least seven people were killed as drones and missiles tore into apartment blocks and power and water supplies were disrupted. |
| 0:43.4 | Moscow said that the Ukrainian military had launched one of its largest-scale drone attacks on Western Russia and that three people there had been killed. |
| 0:51.4 | So what are the prospects of President Trump's initial optimism being vindicated? |
| 0:55.9 | What's been clear is that there is a renewed push from the White House for there to be an end to the |
| 1:00.4 | war and negotiated peace. The question remains, on what terms? A key figure in all this, the US |
| 1:07.6 | Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, a man seen as close to the Ukraine-skeptic Vice President |
| 1:12.6 | J.D. Vance is holding talks in Abu Dhabi today with Ukrainian and Russian officials, presumably |
| 1:18.6 | in separate rooms. And on the table will be the latest version of a peace proposal which |
| 1:23.6 | we're led to believe may have moved from the rather Russia-friendly outline |
| 1:28.0 | that was leaked just a few days ago. |
| 1:30.9 | The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was sounding skeptical today in Moscow. |
| 1:35.9 | Let's see, he said, how far the latest ideas diverge |
| 1:39.5 | from what Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin apparently agreed at their summit in Alaska in August. |
| 1:49.6 | We have channels of communication with our US counterparts and we're using them. |
| 1:54.5 | We expect to receive what they consider to be the interim version of the plan |
| 1:59.4 | after they've coordinated with the Europeans and the Ukrainians. |
| 2:03.2 | Then we'll review it. |
| 2:05.1 | Because if the spirit and letter of anchorage, the key understandings we reached, are stripped out, |
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