What really happened in the Trump-Zelensky meeting?
Ukrainecast
BBC
4.7 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 21 October 2025
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Despite suggestions of an agreement on the supply of long-range Tomahawk missiles, President Zelensky went back to Kyiv empty handed after his meeting with Donald Trump on Friday.
So what happened?
Victoria and Vitaly speak with Christopher Miller, the Ukraine correspondent for the Financial Times, which has been reporting details of swearing from Donald Trump in the room, and the ‘tossing’ of battlefield maps.
Vitaly also speaks with acclaimed historian Serhii Plokhy about the nuclear threat and lessons from the Cold War that he writes about in his new book The Nuclear Age: An Epic Race for Arms, Power, and Survival.
Today’s episode is presented by Victoria Derbyshire and Vitaly Shevchenko. The producers were Clare Williamson and Julia Webster. The technical producer was Jonny Hall. The series producer is Chris Flynn. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham. Email Ukrainecast@bbc.co.uk with your questions and comments. You can also send us a message or voice note via WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram to +44 330 1239480
You can join the Ukrainecast discussion on Newscast’s Discord server here: tinyurl.com/ukrainecastdiscord
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
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| 0:21.8 | BBC News, Moscow, Lecoo, in the West Bank. |
| 0:24.6 | So, no matter how quickly disinformation spreads, we'll be ready. |
| 0:30.0 | The fight for truth is on. |
| 0:32.6 | Trust is earned. This is our BBC. |
| 0:36.2 | Hello, it's 1,336 days since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. |
| 0:42.6 | And we are recording this episode just a few days after another meeting between President Trump and President Zelensky, which happened on Friday. |
| 0:50.4 | Before that meeting, there was speculation or even an expectation that Ukraine could get sophisticated, long-range tomahawk missiles. |
| 1:00.8 | And this is what President Trump told the world as he got together with President Zelensky, just before they went behind closed doors to have a private meeting. |
| 1:10.3 | I think that things are coming along pretty well. |
| 1:13.0 | It began with Alaska where I think certain guidelines were discussed, |
| 1:19.6 | and we want to see if we can get this done. |
| 1:21.7 | This was long ago into the Biden administration. |
| 1:25.2 | I came here and we inherited this, and we'd like to see if we could |
| 1:32.9 | finish it, end it. We wanted to end it. So many people have died in this war and we're going to |
| 1:39.7 | we're going to get it ended. So I just want to thank you all very much. In the end, Waldemar Zelensky did not get those Tomahawks, |
| 1:47.6 | and he went back to Kiev empty-handed. |
| 1:50.7 | And in this episode, we'll look at what happened in the White House |
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