Transcript of 📰 Sky News Press Preview | Friday 29 November

We arrive.

A secret hospital hidden in the Myanmar jungle, treating the victims of this bloody war. This is Myanmar today. It's military rulers that don't want the world to see, but we have.

I fight for my own future. I fight for my generation's future.

This is an actual crime.

They don't care for them.

Myanmar army is only a couple of kilometers away. So this is a major humanitarian disaster.

You are watching the press preview of first look at what's on the front pages as they arrive. It's time to see what's making the headlines with The Guardian columnist, Zoe Williams, and the political commentator, Benedict Spence. They'll be with us from now until just before midnight. Let's see what's on some of those front pages for you now. The Telegraph leads with the exclusive Sky News interview with Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky, saying that he could give up territory to Russia in the short term in exchange for the protection of NATO. After that historic Commons vote, the eye leads with news that assisted dying is set to become legal in the UK within three years. Same lead story in The Trade Story in the Guardian, which pictures pro-assisted dying campaigners outside Parliament, celebrating the vote. But the mirror points out that there are also sorrow amongst those opposed to the bill. The Express, which has been campaigning for the change in support of Dame Esther Ranson, says future generations will now be spared the ordeal of a painful death like many have suffered. The Mail says that by voting to move the bill forward to the next stage, they've taken what it calls a leap into the unknown.

The Times says the Prime Minister and Chancellor both voted for the bill, but that ministers have now been told to stay neutral while the exact details are worked out. The Financial Times leads with news that a flurry of takeover offers in the past week has boosted UK financial markets, underlining Britain's reputation as the place for mergers and acquisitions. And finally, in this star, Ulrika Johnson criticizes MasterChef host Greg Wallace over some of these sexually inappropriate comments he's alleged to have made. He's denied wrongdoing, but step back from the show pending investigation. And a reminder that by scanning the QR code you'll see on screen during the program, you can check out the front pages of tomorrow's newspapers while you watch us. And we are joined tonight by Zoe Williams and Benedict Spence. Welcome to you both. Let's start with the Daily Telegraph. And front page, our exclusive, the interview that Stuart Ramsey did with President Zelensky, and does seemingly have found a shift, or at least Zelensky is moving in terms of talking about peace and conceding land, even though perhaps temporarily, but for membership of NATO. And this is something we've not heard before.

It's absolutely extraordinary. And extraordinary, by the way, to get that as an exclusive in a TV interview when he's never said it before. But it is still quite complicated. So he's saying that he would agree to a piece with the land that he's currently got on the understanding that he could negotiate back the land that the Russians have taken. I think there are four areas plus Crimea in return for NATO umbrella. But it's confusing what NATO umbrella means. It doesn't mean membership of NATO. It means security the assurances from other NATO members. And he was asked, Stuart Ramsey asked him, If you could get full membership, would you agree to the territory as it stands at the moment? And he said, Well, that's not on the table. But that's not a no, is it? So it's possible that if a stronger NATO membership were offered, then the territorial concerns would themselves change. And that's pretty massive because certainly Russia would oppose violence currently oppose Ukraine's membership of NATO. But it throws all the cards up in the air.

It certainly does.

Yeah, I don't actually think it's so unexpected. I think this is something that's been pushed behind the scenes for some time as it's become more and more clear that Ukraine is not going to win the war. It is been- Who pushed by who? By the United States, ultimately. This is what it all boils down to, which is that there were going to have to be territorial concessions, partly because much of the rest of the world, outside of the West, already effectively recognizes Donetsk, Luhansk, Crimea, and Mariupol as part of Russia. They don't enforce sanctions on the politicians involved. They do trade with them. This is becoming very much accepted everywhere from Iran to China, that this is the way of the world, that this is how it's going to be going forward. Donald Trump winning the US presidential election, I think, has solidified that. A plan that has been circulating inside the White House, well, the future White House has been that actually it would effectively be where the current borders are would be the new lines that have been drawn. Under this proposal, what I interpret what Zelenskyy is saying, he would be able to save face by effectively saying, Okay, hypothetically, let's say Crimea is now Russian, but we refuse to concede territorial claims on Mariupol and the Donbas.

But the United States might not say that. It might say, Okay, we will recognize that as territory. Ukraine doesn't have to, but this is where we'll go from here. The question would be, actually, at this moment, is why would Russia accept that? Because this being floated by Ukraine is Zelensky effectively saying, I've lost this war. The Russians will say, Well, this is where the border is now anyway. Why should we have to concede on this? Actually, through the process of attrition, we are gaining ground. We are grinding you down. Actually, what have you got to offer us that the rest of the world doesn't already deal with us on? This is difficult because I want Ukraine to win this war. I think most people in the West would quite like Ukraine to be a sovereign and an independent nation and get its territory back. But also, why would Russia accept, given the current circumstances, a NATO umbrella? Why would it accept NATO troops going into Ukraine? Because at that point, it would say, Well, then they're never coming out again. They're not currently there, and you're not prepared to put them in there because you're scared.

Why would we agree effectively to allow NATO in via the back door? What they might be prepared to accept would be membership of the European Union. But I don't think the European Union would accept that. I think Ukraine finds itself in a very difficult position where it would love to be under the NATO umbrella. Absolutely. But I'm really not sure that's what most NATO countries want, and I don't think Russia would accept it, even if Ukraine said, You can keep Crimea and we'll talk about these other places later.

But then we're at an impasse again, though, aren't we? Because Ukraine is saying that they want this NATO umbrella before they even talk about CISFA.

I don't understand what you think Russia would be objecting to there, Because it's ultimately not up to... Nato umbrella is not the same as NATO membership, and it certainly isn't the same as having NATO forces anywhere in any of those regions.

Russia would say that it is a gateway to that. And I suspect-It might well Well, this is the thing. Well, yes, it would say that. We can say, Well, it might well do. But we're already not prepared to talk about putting NATO troops on the ground right now because of what that would potentially mean. So if Russia is just going to say flat out no, what are we going to do? We're going to put NATO troops in there to go, okay, we're going to try and call you bluff. We've not been prepared to do that up to now.

I just think you're... Too cynical? It's not shutting the stable door after the horse is bolted, but there's something about shutting the door at an inappropriate time in the sense that Just saying that they want a NATO umbrella is not the same as saying we want NATO troops in there. Putin saying, I think it's a gateway to that. Vladimir Putin is not an honest broker. He could say anything. He often does say. No, he's not. He's still claiming that Ukraine is overrun with Nazis, and that's why they had to go in in the first place. I don't think we need to really look at Putin as a rational, honest agent who will rationally and honestly object.

Okay, Okay, so what would a NATO umbrella be in that situation? A no-fly zone?

Exactly that. That's exactly the point.

That means if Russian troops go in, that means NATO has to respond. It is the same thing.

A NATO umbrella would be against further incursion, right? It wouldn't be just NATO needs to police these borders as they stand at the moment, because that would never be the deal.

To which the Russians would say, We're not going to accept that because by definition, if we step foot over the line, NATO would have to be drawn into that conflict. That's what I'm trying to get at.

They wouldn't accept it. But if you're He's saying Putin won't accept anything that doesn't leave him open to invade again, then of course, he's never going to accept anything because any peace treaty is going to necessitate Putin undertaking not to invade again.

Of course, he wants to invade. That's the point.

That's what he wants. Then you're just saying there is no possibility of peace until Russia has invaded all of Ukraine?

Unless you defeat the military, but we have to move on.

Well, we've just got a few more seconds. We might as well finish off on this. I was just going to ask about the possibility of how this could all end and whether you see what Zelenski has now told us as a positive, as a step towards peace?

I think that some responsibility has to be taken towards Ukraine, which is more than just they're the good guys. I want them to win. They are, without question, standing between Russia and any aggression towards other European countries. We see this in the public service announcements in Germany, in Norway, in Finland, in Sweden. They're telling their citizens to get ready for war. It's Especially in the Northern States and across Europe. People are really, really worried about Putin's intentions, and Ukraine has been single-handedly holding them off since 2022. So I think the idea that we just say, Oh, well, nice try, Liz Zalinski, but it didn't work out for you this time. We're just waiting for it to come to somebody else's doorstep.

What would be required would be a reaugmentation of how Europe views its own defense of autonomy. It would mean moving away from the current model, which is to be very much reliant on the US military and also US companies to procure equipment and weapons from. It would mean a massive uptick in the budgets allocated to send this equipment to the Ukrainians. That is what would be required, because right now Europe doesn't seem particularly keen on that. If he's waiting basically for sign offs from Congress, which it had real trouble with last time, and it's just not going to get under a Republican Congress. That is basically the only way I see Ukraine being able to keep the fight going is if Europe goes, Okay, this is our fight. We can't put troops on the ground, but we can send much more weapons, and we need to ramp up production of those.

Okay, Bendikt and Zoe, thank you very much for the moment. We are going to take a break. Coming up much more from the papers. We'll be starting with The Guardian. Their headline, Historic vote, paves the way for assisted dying. We'll be discussing today's events when we come back.

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Welcome back. You are watching the press preview still with me, Zoe Williams and Vendic Spence. Let's start with The Guardian and the historic assisted dying vote today. I don't know if you managed to watch much of the debate.

I did see the debates, and I did think it was... A lot of people have said it was the House of Commons at its best, and people did seem to be speaking passionately and respectfully to one another. I mean, The notion that you have these votes of conscience where you don't get whipped by your leader because the matter is life and death, and therefore, you can't be told. It would be against morality for you to defer to your party line. I still don't really understand why in a matter of such a consequence and such gravity, the country as a whole and where it is, it doesn't get a look in. That's the point of representative democracy is that you represent your constituents at the level of the legislature. And 70% of people have been in favor of assisted dying since absolutely forever. I mean, that's been true for a really long time. So that seems to have fed its way into the House of Commons, but it looked really, really squey for a long time. I mean, just as a colleague was putting together a spreadsheet about eight days ago and didn't have, only had about a third of MPs, but she had 12 on yes and 106 on no.

So it looked much, much closer than it turned out to be. And this has been pretty resounding, although it will have a lot. It's got a lot more phases to go through.

It's interesting what Zoe is saying about not having to follow the party whip on this particular vote, a vote of conscience, because the Times is saying that ministers have now been told to stay neutral while the details are worked out.

I think that that's very tricky, given that perhaps the two government ministers who are going to be most affected by this both came out said, Guys, this is a really bad idea. The legislation in its current form is going to be bad. Shibhana Mahmoud, the Justice Secretary, and Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, both said that they would be voting against it, and both said that basically the departments that they overrun are not currently fit to handle this, which was interesting because that's something that Jess Phillips said as well. She would be voting for it, even though the NHS couldn't do it, at which point you start there thinking, Well, what's the point in that? It doesn't sound like a particularly sensible thing to do. I think there have been a lot of interventions throughout this, as Lois says, from across the House. Whilst it is true that a majority of people are in favor of this, the main criticisms of this legislation is not that it is a moral bad or moral negative. It is that the legislation itself does not have the safeguards in place for them to feel comfortable about it. Actually, I think if you do go through this, and I think the fact that it was so narrow in the end reflects that, it was what?

A difference of 55? So you'd only need to sway, what, 22, 23 MPs for that to change at the second reading. I think when you have very experienced old hands, both the father and mother of the house, you had Diane Abbott opposed to this, Jeremy Corbin opposed to this, and you had people like Danny Kruger opposed to this. You have A real breadth of people's all saying, take the morality out of this situation. The safeguards are not in this legislation, and that's why it should be opposed.

We just got a few seconds to talk about Notre Dame, the restoration in Paris on the front page of the FT. Look at that crowd there. Many of them were...

So these are all the workers who worked on it and did so in record time. It is five years, but that's not very... Cologne Cathedral took 800 years to build the first time. I can hardly believe it's five years. I know. It's extremely, it's amazingly fast, and a lot of them didn't want to stop.

And, Benedict, thank you very much. Much more from you in the next hour. Let's take a look at the weather for you now. Well, the The end will be very mild, but wet at times. Luckily, the rain bands will be more showery in nature and move through fairly quickly. It'll be mostly cloudy, but mild start on Saturday, although Eastern areas will be a little bit cooler. Overnight, rain will have eased to leave a few spots of rain and dribble. Overall, it's set to be a cloudy and breezy day with occasional rain and dribble in the north and west. But there will be a few brighter breaks, and it's much milder for all. Coming up next on Sky News at 11:00. A Sky News exclusive, Ukraine's President, Vladimir Zelensky, speaks to our chief correspondence, Stuart Ramsey, and says he's prepared to give up parts of Ukraine.

We arrive. A secret hospital hidden in the Myanmar jungle, treating the victims of this bloody war. This is Myanmar today. It's military rulers that don't want the world to see, but we have.

I fight for my own future. I fight for my generation's future.

This is an actual crime. They don't care for death. My Mar Army is only a couple of kilometers away. This is a major humanitarian disaster.

We've got your Sunday mornings covered. From the front page and the sounds of the streets to the voices of the people who make the major calls. And big picture politics beyond Westminster. We'll put you at the heart of our story. And you start to Sunday. I'm ready. Are you? Join me, Trevor Phillips, Sunday Mornings on Sky News.