Transcript of Ukraine defiant on the 4th anniversary of Russia's invasion

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This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Jeannot Jalil, and at 16h00 GMT on Tuesday, the 24th of February, these are our main stories. As Ukrainians mark the fourth anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion, President Zelenskyy delivers a defiant address. Western leaders visit Kyiv to show their support. Reports say senior figures in the US military are deeply concerned learned that President Trump may start another long, drawn-out conflict in the Middle East, and China imposes restrictions on dual-use exports to 20 major Japanese companies. Also in this podcast, the first baby born in Britain to a mother who received a womb transplant from a dead donor.

I received that phone call, and we ultimately then had to go to Oxford and have the transplant. Following that, then, of course, embryo transfer, and the little boy.

Ukrainians are marking the fourth anniversary of what has become Europe's bloodiest conflict since the Second World war in ceremonies in Kyiv and across the country. Fierce Ukrainian resistance and hundreds of billions of dollars in Western military aid have prevented Russia from achieving what it thought would be an easy victory.

This is how the start of the invasion was reported on the BBC.

Russia has launched a large-scale military assault on the country. Ukrainian politicians are describing it as an invasion.

The explosions have been heard across Ukraine in cities, including the capital Kyiv.

In the last hour- Ukraine can fight, and we will fight. Our parliament had extraordinary meeting. We provided a martial law in Ukraine, and we will fight for our land. That is our country, and we will definitely win.

In an address to mark the anniversary, the Ukrainian President, Vladimir Zelensky, vowed that his country would never yield to Russian aggression.

.

Today marks exactly four years since Putin took Kyiv in three days.

That really says a lot about our resistance resistance about how Ukraine has been fighting all this time. Behind these words are millions of our people. Behind these words are great courage, very hard work, endurance, and the long road that Ukraine has been traveling since 24th of February.

In those four years, hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions of Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homes. Our correspondent, Paul Adams, is in a place of great significance significance for Ukrainians.

This is Bucha. Listeners may recall in the immediate weeks after the full-scale invasion that this is where Russian troops came. They landed at an air base nearby four years ago today. They occupied this town for a few weeks before they were repulsed by the Ukrainian military. In the immediate aftermath of that, the world was horrified to see images of civilians who were shot and their bodies left in the street, and then the uncovering of a mass grave just a few weeks later. No one quite knows how many people were killed here, but it was probably many hundreds. I'm at a cemetery just on the edge of Butcher, where people have come this morning to commemorate the soldiers who died, both in those few weeks, but also in the four long years since. As I walk up and down the row of headstones here, each one with a face of a soldier, I see dates from 2022 onwards. There are many, many places like this. You are constantly struck by the sheer human cost of what has happened here over the last four years.

Paul, we heard President Zelensky say that this is the fourth anniversary of the Russian President taking Kyiv in three days. Those words are a reminder of how Ukraine, despite all its suffering, has defied the odds.

Yes, it has. I mean, who would have thought it? There was an assessment that the country would fall, that Kyiv would fall within a matter of days, the government of President Zelenskyy would be removed, and it would all be over. Of course, President Zelenskyy famously decided to stay. He said what he needed was ammunition, not a ride out of town. The country rallied around him and around their own sense of identity. They have continued to fight ever since. They have found it difficult, always believing that they were not getting quite enough support from their Western allies. But the fight continues. Russia's progress in the East is glacial. Of course, Ukrainians right across the country continue to experience the drones and missiles that Russia fires and has fired throughout the winter in an attempt to turn the lights off and plunge people into the darkness in the cold. We're emerging from that winter now, and once again, Ukrainians feel that they have weathered the storm.

But under President Trump, that ammunition is getting harder for Ukraine to obtain. How long can this war go on for, realistically, given the US pressure on President Zelenskyy to agree to a deal with Russia?

Well, yes, there is definitely American pressure, and it seems to be driven in part by a sense that the White House wants this to be dealt with before the run up to the midterm elections later this year. But despite that, the flow of weapons remains what it has been all along. The Ukrainians will tell you it's not enough and it doesn't arrive quickly enough, but it enables the Ukrainians to stay in the fight. But this obviously all lends urgency to the peace talks, which are continuing. But as one Ukrainian negotiator put it to me just a couple of days ago, what's missing is a political decision and a phone call from the Kremlin, from Vladimir Putin, saying, enough is enough.

Paul Adams in Bucha. Well, in a show of support, senior European leaders and officials have come to Kyiv, where they praise the Ukrainians' resistance. In a video call, the British Prime Minister, Kyrstamr, promised stand by the people of Ukraine for as long as it takes.

Whatever Putin tells himself and his people, Russia is not winning, and we must shift the narrative into that place with greater force and determination. Just to underscore that point, in the last year, Russia has suffered half a million casualties to gain and occupy less than 1% extra Ukrainian territory. That is not a country that four years into a conflict is winning.

With more on the visits and pledges of support by Ukraine's Western allies, here's our correspondent in Kyiv, Abdul Jalil Abdulastulov.

In a number of European leaders have arrived. At the meeting of the Coalition of Willing, there were a number of speeches reiterating support for Ukraine and reiterating specific pledges that they made in the past. Kyrsha You mentioned about the importance of air defense systems for Ukraine because Ukrainian cities have been hammered by Russian airstrikes recently, and mostly they were targeting energy facilities and power plants and substations, and therefore, There's a massive energy crisis now in Ukraine because of these attacks. Earlier, President Zelensky just complained that their Patriot systems simply had no missiles to intercept those Russian ballistic weapons. Therefore, Ukraine says that they need more interceptors in order to stop those attacks.

Until President Trump came to power, it was the US that was the biggest backer in Ukraine's war against Russia. It's striking, but perhaps not surprising that no senior official from the Trump administration is there in Kyiv today.

Yes, it has been already raised by journalists asking President's press office whether anybody from the US will be attending and what it means, the fact that they are not in Kyiv. They haven't given any specific response to this question. However, Kyiv maintains the position that US is crucial to achieve a peace deal, and the US is involved directly in the peace talks. Therefore, Kyiv says that without the US support, without the pressure that the US can apply, it will be incredibly hard to achieve a peace deal.

But there have also been complaints in Ukraine that the US is applying more pressure on Kyiv than it is on Moscow.

Kyiv is now trying to be very diplomatic. They don't directly criticize President Trump or his administration because they already had a very negative experience back in the US when there was a span between President Zelensky and President Trump. Therefore, they learned the lesson that in order to win over, they cannot antagonize President Trump by criticizing his actions. Therefore, by choosing carefully the words, by saying praises to President Trump for all these actions, Ukraine hopes that President Trump can be convinced to provide greater support for Ukraine.

Abdul Jaleil Abdul-Rassulow in Kyiv. Well, on this fourth anniversary, the Kremlin spokesman, Dimitri Pescov, admitted that the war in Ukraine had changed Russia and that President Putin had not not reached all his goals in what he's still calling a special military operation.

Yes, it is true. All the goals of the special military operation have not yet been achieved. Many goals have already been reached, but the main one to ensure security for people who lived and continue to live in Eastern and Southern Ukraine and who were in fatal danger has not been achieved. So yes, not all the goals have been reached yet, which is why the Special Military operation continues.

Western officials say that over the past three months, Russia has lost more troops than it's been able to recruit. Over the past four years, it's estimated that well over a million Russian troops have been killed or wounded. St staggering losses, even for a country as big as Russia. Few people there have dared to speak out publicly against the conflict after the initial protests were crushed. But over the past year, four Russian Some soldiers have worked in secret with the BBC for a documentary called The Zero Line: Inside Russia's War. Here's an interview with one of them, a former Russian Army Medical Officer called Dima. Anna Foster asked him how he ended up serving in the Russian Army.

They tell me, If I don't go to the army, I will go to the jail. It's very simple in Russia. It's very simple.

When you joined the fighting, what about the other soldiers? Did they feel the same way as you?

Sometimes yes, sometimes, no. But too many people, too many people like me, nobody really understands we are fighting for what, with who, just for Putin, not for motherland.

You didn't want to be involved in what's known as a meat storm. It's a word that some people might not have heard before. What did it mean to you?

It's assault. Without artillery, without support from commanders, it's a one-way assault. But 5% people can stay on the enemy territory, and it's begin again, again, again. This is how a rational me, take territory.

You didn't want to do that, and you wouldn't tell your men to do that either.

I have a medals for a medicine. I have a medicine experience, and I will be an officer. That's why I can't say them, I don't do this. I can do something different. But it's about me because just a regular soldier can't, because if he's declined the order, he will die in the next few minutes. He will be shot. He will be dead. The commander just kill him.

You saw, in some cases, when people said no, they were shot or they had their cash cards taken away from them. You thought that was just happening where you were, but it was happening more widely to other soldiers in the Russian army. How does that make you feel about the country that you were fighting for?

What I feel about my country now, I think Russia is not Russia anymore.

Dima, a former Russian Army Medical Officer. For the first time here in the UK, a baby has been born to a mother who received a womb transplant from a dead donor. The boy is called Hugo. His mother, Grace Bell, says that after years of believing that she would never have a baby, Hugo was simply a miracle.

It's been a long journey, if I'm honest. Now, 16 years ago, I was told that I could never carry my own baby, and that was final. There was nothing in the world that could have solved that. I was diagnosed with something called MLKH syndrome, which meant my uterus was two paths. So all this time, it was always surrogacy or adoption. Me and Steve actually decided to go down, initially down the route of them, surrogacy. We created our own embryos. And then I got the phone call from WintransFunk UK. And that was just such an unbelievable moment for me to get that phone call. I got on the waiting list because, of course, I have a deceased donor. We were waiting for a donor, a match with myself. And then one June day, I received that phone call, and we ultimately then had to go to Oxford and have the transplant. Following that, then, of course, embryo transfer, and that's the little boy.

Room transplants normally come from close relatives who've already had their own families or from deceased donors. More than 100 have been performed around the world, with more than 70 healthy babies born as a result. Isabel Kiaroga is a consultant surgeon, and she carried out Grace Bell's womb. Anna Foster asked her why when heart and kidney transplants are so common, there are still relatively few womb transplants.

With uterus transplant, it's not a life saving operation, but it is a life-creating operation. It was in 2014 when the first uterus transplant was done successfully in Sweden. It has to take a very, very long time for everything to fall into place, for the research to be done safely and to translate it onto the human setting. And how complex is it as a procedure? Unfortunately, I remember some years I was talking to the Swedish surgeons and they said, Oh, it's like a kidney transplant, a living donor kidney transplant. Well, there's nothing like it. The vessels are extremely small, very, very small, and it's It's very delicate and sensitive operation. It's just about connecting the vessel so the organ gets the blood supply from the recipient. Then my colleague, Professor Smith, does the gynecological bed, that joining the vagina. Yeah. And obviously, the pregnancy, when it happens, has to be monitored very carefully. What are some of the complications of a pregnancy in a donated womb? Well, yes, this is a high risk pregnancy. Of course, they are immunosuppressed. We manage the immune system, and they could develop any infections. This is the same for any other transplant.

But of course, especially with this transplant, we don't want to let the baby be born naturally, so they have to be born by cesarean section. So the pregnancy has to be very, very closely managed.

Surgeon Isabel Keir Still to come in this podcast, Florence prepares to restore one of its most famous landmarks, Giotto's Bell Tower.

A specially-designed scaffolding system will be installed and lowered section by section as work progresses, so restored areas can be revealed while the tower remains open to visitors.

What happens when a mandate becomes a breakthrough? I'm Nesita Henry, special host of Resilient Edge, a business vitality podcast paid and presented by Deloitte. I sat down with two leaders who are redefining what enterprise transformation looks like. Jerry Hoberman from Deloitte and Sarah Oligood from AWS took me behind the scenes on how manufacturing, government, and global enterprises are evolving through major systems What excites me is when we have these breakthrough moments.

This stuff doesn't happen by accident. The triad of AWS, of Deloitte, of SAP, being able to understand the value proposition that people seek, being able to architect that, and then actually to define a roadmap to progressively achieve the goal really is what makes these successful.

Getting your humans to change the way they're interacting with their technology, the way that they're following the processes, or just that they're reinventing altogether and we're going to completely throw something out is very challenging. Here's what stood out. The 2027 SAP deadline isn't a compliance problem. It's a strategic reset, a chance to rethink how value is created. If your vision is across a 10-year horizon, your ROI is going to be different than if your vision is across a one or two year horizon. How do you move decades of systems and data without slowing the business down? How do you simplify operations while preparing for what comes next? From legacy systems to AI-ready infrastructure, The full conversation reveals how Deloitte, AWS, and SAP help organizations reduce risk and unlock continuous innovation. All of that and more on this special episode of Resilient Edge. Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

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America is changing, and so is the world.

But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.

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President Trump called it an armada, whose might would bring Iran to the negotiating table. The US military build up in recent weeks in the Middle East is the largest since the one that preceded the war in Iraq more than 20 years ago. But given the disastrous outcome of that war and Iran's refusal to make any real concessions to the Trump administration, senior figures in the US military are reported to be deeply concerned that Mr. Trump might start another long, drawn-out conflict in the Middle East. Our North America correspondent, Anthony Zerker, explained to nick Robinson what's been going on.

General Dan Cain, it was reported in the Washington Post recently, had expressed behind closed doors concerns about the dangers that would be presented towards American forces if they engage in a long military operation directed towards Iran. He was particularly concerned, according to this report, about American munitions running low, the munitions, the kinds of munitions, Patriot missiles, DAD missiles, that are used to defend against Iranian ballistic missiles, and therefore it could become, if this takes time, if this is drawn out, it could lower the Americans' defenses against the missiles that Iran might launch in retaliation. Now, Donald Trump himself has come out and said this is false reporting, that Dan Cain is in favor, or at least not opposed to a war with Iran, that he's providing his counsel, but that both Dan Cain and the President don't want this to become a military operation, but they're prepared to do it if Iranians don't negotiate on their ballistic missile program and their nuclear program.

That council appears to be focused on the sheer scale of Iran and the power of its military to inflict damage not just on US forces in the region, but on allies in the region, too.

That was one of his concerns that he expressed, according to this report, that allies would not cooperate with the United States, that Arab nations, in particular, would not allow the bases in the region to be used by American forces to launch strikes, that they wouldn't have overflight rights to go over the territory of these Arab nations, making it more difficult to strike into Iran. You have to remember, Iran is three times the size of Iraq. It's a much bigger nation. The targets, if this is an extended campaign, are spread out across the country. They're more difficult to find. The Ballistic Missile program would be difficult to totally demolish in a short term operation similar to the one that the United States had during the Iran-Israel war last year, where it was a one and done strike on a nuclear facility. This, it appears, by all indications, would be a much larger, wide-ranging operation.

What does that mean for opinion within the MAKA movement, which we know divides between a of JD Vance view of not getting over entangled. Someone like HR McMaster, who we heard on the program the other day, saying there was a price to doing nothing in Iran. It was better that the President acted.

It's interesting. Last year before the operation that I mentioned, striking the nuclear facilities, there was a pretty significant opposition, or at least opposition, voiced by the MAGA Movement, by key members of Donald Trump's coalition, opposition to any military operation targeting Iran, to the point where there were stories and reports about divisions within the White House and within the movement writ large. This time around, there doesn't seem to be the same level of opposition. It may be because after those strikes last year, it was a one and done, a one-off operation. The concerns that they had at the time of the United States getting bogged down into another protracted military campaign in the Middle East were allayed. Now, whether this is going to be the same thing, it remains to be seen, but at least the voices within the mega movement don't seem to have those concerns.

Anthony Zerker. But the standoff with Iran is not Mr. Trump's only worry. His tariffs were ruled illegal by the US Supreme Court last week. To try to get round this, the Trump administration has brought in a new flat rate tariff of 10% on global imports. Mr. Trump has threatened to raise the new import tax even further to 15%, but has not yet done so amid concerns that US allies would be hit the hardest. Theo Leggett reports.

Uncertainty, confusion, even chaos. These are the terms being widely used to describe the impact of the latest trade decisions from the White House. Today, the United States introduced a new 10% tariff for tax on imports from around the world. That was lower than the 15% rate promised by President Trump on Saturday in response to a Supreme Court ruling that declared a significant part of his existing trade agenda illegal. Analysts said businesses would be relieved that the new rate wasn't higher, but warned that the situation could change at any time.

Theo Legget. For more on this story, you can go on to YouTube, search for BBC News, click on the logo, then choose Podcasts and Global News Podcast. There's a news story available every weekday. China has imposed restrictions on dual-use exports to major Japanese industrial companies, accusing them of helping to build up Japan's military capabilities. Components which have a civilian application but can also be used in military equipment will either be blocked from sale or require specific clearance for export. It's the latest escalation in a row that was triggered last year when the Japanese Prime Minister angered China by saying that Tokyo could use military to defend Taiwan against attack. More from Stephen McDonald in Beijing.

Japanese industrial giants, including Mitsubishi heavy industries, Subaru, and the country's space agency, have had restrictions imposed on what products they can import from China. Beijing has accused Japan of remilitarizing, and now the country's Commerce Ministry has released a list of 20 Japanese entities which are blocked from buying so-called dual-use technologies from China. Details of the specific products have not been released. A further 20 Japanese entities have been put on a watchlist, and exporting dual-use items to them requires clearance. The Chinese government said the measures would not hurt normal trade with Japan.

Stephen McDonald. Mexico, under pressure from the Trump administration to act against drug gangs, took decisive action over the weekend, arresting the leader of the powerful Jalisco New Generation cartel. In the shootout, the drug lord, known as El Mencho, was wounded and later died. In response, his gang unleashed a wave of violence across the country, especially in the city of Guadalajara, in Jalisco State. Guadalajara is also due to be a host city for the FIFA World Cup in four months time. Anne Soy asked a sports journalist, John Arnold, who covers football in Mexico and the US, how big a concern security is in Mexico.

I think it's a huge concern. For decades now, Mexico There has been waging war on organized crime, the cartels. But I think that day to day people feel that, but maybe it doesn't come into things like football that often. We've had some incidents where you have had these moments. There have been matches, not frequently, but there was an incident of a match where the shooting took place outside and the match was canceled because players ran off the field and people left the stadium in fear. So it does happen, but it rarely touches the football world. But yeah, I mean, insecurity in Mexico, it is a problem. It is real, and people are dealing with it every day.

The current outbreak is rather severe. Do you think this was a consideration, the security in Mexico? Was it a consideration before it was considered as a host nation?

Yeah, I definitely think that FIFA, when they were going through the host nation process, thought about the security situation in Mexico. I would say that all three of the host nations bring their own quirks and concerns. Canada, maybe less so, but obviously the recent immigration enforcement push in the United States and the violence that ICE has caused has been a concern for many people, especially for an event that's supposed to welcome the world. And in Mexico, I think that Security was always the big question mark. Infrastructure was up there, too. When I've been traveling in the Mexican host cities, a lot of people talk to me about the traffic that's going to be caused, a lack of public transportation systems, not completely, but lack of public transportation to the stadium or from the airport to the main part of the city, for example. But I definitely think that FIFA, probably, if you gave officials truth, Serum, their biggest concern about Mexico hosting a men's World Cup for the third time, a record, their biggest issue was the security and the concern. And I think that you see why with something like the incident that we're seeing now, although there's a very clear cause and effect, right?

The Mexican government kills El Mencho, captures and kills the leader of this very powerful, organized crime group, the cartel New Generation, Jalisco. And the effect is that cartel responds with a show of force. I think the Mexican government also knew that and considering the timing of all this around the World Cup, as silly and as frivolous as it might sound, I think it is a consideration.

How so?

Because these images over the last 48 hours have been broadcast across the world.

It just sends a strong message, and it's not a very positive message across the world, ahead of the World Cup.

No, not at all. And there are actually pretty credible reports from Mexican reporters who cover organized crime in the cartels in 2025 that Mexican officials actually had requested with their US partners that maybe El Mencho be left alone until after the 2026 World Cup to avoid a scene like this. These scenes really recall something that happened in 2019 in Culiacán, which is in where the Caracol carter operates. The Culiacanazo, it's called the battle for Culiacán, that city, when the Mexican authorities tried to capture El Chapo, the famous cartel leader's son. But the response was quite similar to what we're seeing now. And Mexican officials seem to want to avoid those scenes precisely for the reason you're mentioning. The reputation, the people's image of Mexico becomes cars on fire in the street and pharmacies and supermarkets being burned to the ground. We don't really know how long this will last. The reports today are that it is a tense calm, but you can't wait for a football match this to be carried out, especially one that's still months and months away.

Sports journalist, John Arnold. We end the podcast in Italy, where the city of Florence is preparing to restore one of its most famous landmarks, Giotto's Bell Tower, which sits beside the city's Cathedral, in what will be the first full restoration of the monument in more than six centuries. The tower will stay open to visitors while work is carried out. Carla Conti reports.

In the heart of Florence's historic center, beside the majestic Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiorre, stands Giotto's Bell Tower, a Gothic landmark faced in white, green, and red marble, with delicate sculpted panels and a panoramic terrace above the city's terracotta rooftops. It is one of Florence's most recognizable monuments. The construction of the tower in 1334 was the task Giotto, the Florentine painter and architect often credited as a pioneer of Italian Renaissance art. He died just a few years later with only the base completed. His successors, including Andrea Pisano and Francesco Talenti, finished the tower in 1359. Now, for the first time in its history, the Bell Tower is undergoing a full restoration. The project is expected to cost around €7 million or over €8 million, and we'll tackle cracks, fractures, and deteriorating marble across the exterior surface. From March, a specially-designed scaffolding system will be installed and lowered section by section as work progresses, so restored areas can be revealed while the tower remains open to visitors. The restoration is part of a wider plan to preserve the city's historical sites and build new housing in an effort to address the impact of over tourism.

Carla Conti. That's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can always email us at globalpodcast@bbc. Co. Uk. Don't forget our sister podcast, The Global Story, which goes in-depth and beyond the headlines on one big story, is also available wherever you get your podcasts. This edition of the Global News podcast was mixed by Chris Ablakwa. The producers were Ariane Cochi and Oliver Berlau. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jeannot Jalil. Until next time. Goodbye.

We focus on the part of the Internet that most people don't know about. It's called the Dark Web. Undercover in the furthest corners of the Dark Web, US Special Agents are on a mission to locate and rescue children from abuse.

Moving in now. Police.

From the BBC World Service, World of Secrets, the Darkest Web follows their shocking investigations.

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