Zelensky open to wartime election
Global News Podcast
BBC
4.2 • 7.8K Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After pressure from Washington, President Zelensky has said he will seek to change Ukrainian law so an election could take place within three months. He said this could only happen if the US and Europe guarantee security. Also: Russia's Vladimir Putin hosts "Heroes of the Fatherland Day"; Donald Trump lashes out at European allies; controversy over the UN's environment report; fighting between the Congolese army and M23 rebels continues in the DRC; the zoologist, Ian Douglas-Hamilton, dies; and a milestone moment for the Turner Prize.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.7 | This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:12.6 | I'm Charlotte Gallagher, and in the early hours of Wednesday, the 10th of December, these are our main stories. |
| 0:19.3 | President Zelensky says he's ready to change Ukrainian law |
| 0:22.8 | to allow elections to be held under martial law. Donald Trump lashes out at European allies, |
| 0:28.8 | calling them decaying nations led by weak people who failed to control immigration. And M23 rebels |
| 0:36.2 | reportedly enter a strategic town in eastern Congo, despite a recent |
| 0:40.8 | ceasefire with the army. Also in this podcast, the BBC visits Sierra Leone, where children |
| 0:49.3 | are going from classrooms to gold mines. And they must be inhaling terabytes of information because their sense of smell is so cute. They're probably smelling emotions, smelling things that happen that we can only dimly understand. We look back on the life of the so-called elephant whisperer. |
| 1:15.6 | After Donald Trump claimed that President Zelensky was using war not to hold an election, |
| 1:21.8 | the Ukrainian leader has said he's ready to do just that if security can be guaranteed during it. |
| 1:29.1 | Look, I am ready for the elections. Not only that, but I am now asking, and I am saying |
| 1:34.5 | this openly, for the United States to help me, possibly together with our European colleagues, |
| 1:39.5 | to ensure security for those elections. Then in the next 60 to 90 days, Ukraine will be ready to hold |
| 1:46.2 | elections. I personally have the will and readiness to do so. Mr Zelensky was elected in 2019, |
| 1:54.0 | but has remained in post because martial law was declared, suspending the need for elections |
| 1:59.0 | in a democracy during a time of war. |
| 2:01.9 | Hannah Schellest is a foreign policy analyst with a think tank Ukrainian prism. |
| 2:07.0 | Even a year ago, President Zelensky said that he's ready for elections as soon as the |
| 2:11.4 | conditions allow, because they were statements originally from the European Union calling for |
| 2:15.5 | the elections. Then the U.S. President |
| 2:17.5 | already spoke about this. And he said that he doesn't have any problems with this. The question |
... |
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