welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. from donetsk to kharkiv, this promises to be a summer of desperate defence for the ukrainian forces battling russia's relentless front line assault. but maybe more dispiriting for kyiv is the potential deterioration of the diplomatic situation. yes, ukraine is getting significant new military and financial assistance from its allies, but from the us to europe, political forces opposed to continued support for kyiv are on the rise. my guest is ukraine's foreign minister, dmytro kuleba. could ukraine be bounced into a deal on putin's terms?

dmytro kuleba in kyiv, welcome to hardtalk. it's good to be with you again, stephen. it's great to have you back on the show. you have just arrived back in kyiv from a round of intensive diplomacy, including that so—called peace summit in switzerland. for all of the talking, what have you actually achieved in practical terms? well, with the utmost respect, there is nothing "so—called" in the summit that we held.

it was indeed a peace summit convened upon the initiative of ukraine, based on the peace formula put forward by president zelensky. this formula is based on the principles of international law and the un charter. we had 100 participants — countries and international organisations — and one of the most important deliverables is the following — putin keeps making the point that the whole war that he launched against ukraine is ukraine and the west fighting on the one side, and russia and the rest of the world fighting on the other side. and this is simply not true. and the summit was a clear evidence that this russian disinformation does not hold water, because countries from africa, asia, south america were represented at the summit. and they are part of the peace effort to make russia negotiate in good faith instead ofjust throwing new ultimatums on the table.

right, i mean, foreign minister, there is no doubt that you have significant support around the world, notjust in the united states and in europe. and you had 80 countries sign the final communique. but among those countries which signally failed to sign that communique were very significant diplomatic players like india, south africa, saudi arabia, brazil, and, of course, china didn't even show up to the summit. so if you're telling me you have the significant support across the world, how can you explain that so many very, very significant players in global diplomacy would not sign up? well, weeks and days ahead of the summit, there were rumours and public messages that these countries wouldn't even show up, that they wouldn't be at the summit. and still they were there, they were part of the discussion. and this must not be overlooked. some of them told us in advance

that they would come because they want to be part of the process but they will not sign thejoint communique. and this is the art of diplomacy. sometimes even having a country at the table is a message in itself. and i'm pretty sure that, with all the effort made by russia to, erm, not allow this summit to become a success, it was a success. not only because of the number of countries who signed thejoint communique, but also because of the number and quality of countries who were at the table. of course, vladimir putin chose deliberately, just a couple of days before that swiss meeting, to outline his own proposal for an immediate ceasefire. all, he said, all that needs to happen is ukraine withdraw from those four oblasts, or regions, which the russians now claim as their sovereign territory, as well as recognising russian

sovereignty over crimea. he said then, if that were to happen, and ukraine were to drop its ambition of nato membership, the fighting could stop immediately. i guess what was clear from what putin said was that there is no way that he is going to negotiate a withdrawal of russian forces from your territory. so the only way you're going to achieve that is on the battlefield, right? well, there are two important elements about this statement. first, it's the timing. the statement was made out of the blue one day before the summit in switzerland was to kick off. so it's a clear, clear indication that russia takes the peace effort undertaken by ukraine, switzerland and other countries seriously as a threat to their vision for the ending of the war. and therefore they had to deploy this kind of political nuclear weapon, vladimir putin to personally make...

..make another ultimatum to ukraine. it didn't really work. the summit went well. but the message is out. and the second is the content of the message. so, basically, the point he is making is that, "i invaded you. "i do not even control in full territories i claim, "but i still demand from you a surrender." if putin was as successful as he wishes to pretend, then probably he wouldn't have had to make such messages two years and almost a half since the large—scale invasion began. but my point is that putin is entirely focused on the control of territory. ukraine has a choice to make. either you can begin a dialogue based on the notion of some sort of compromise on some elements of territory, or you are going to have to convince your allies that you can win a total victory in terms of territory — i.e., you can push russian forces back from every inch of sovereign ukraine.

i would put it to you that allies don't believe you can achieve the latter. you are right that diplomacy and military effort walk hand in hand — but ourjob is to create diplomatic conditions where it will be russia who will be making concessions. because to demand from a country that was attacked, brutally attacked, by its neighbour — permanent member of the un security council and nuclear power — to demand from us to start with concessions, it's just a flawed and distorted logic. and this is why we will not allow it to happen. our goal... but, minister, sorry to interrupt, but isn't it ultimately the logic of war? putin made a point of saying, "we have taken 47 small towns, "villages and settlements from ukraine "in our most recent offensive," and, of course, that includes the offensive just north of kharkiv.

he's saying to you that he has the men, the materiel and the intent to continue this war and continue it in a way which, frankly, in the end, ukraine cannot combat, because you don't have the scale that he has. ukraine has proven over this two and a half years that, when our army has everything it needs, we know how to beat the russian army and how to make them retreat from the territory, from the occupied territories of ukraine. so, in principle, we can do it. there is a precedent for that. all the recent losses that we endured, there is one reason, one major reason, for that — it's the pause in the supply of weapons and ammunition from our partners caused by the indecisiveness of congress — the us congress.

now that this issue has been resolved, now that we hear new military packages being announced by major european powers, and every new package is stronger than the previous one, the situation on the battlefield improves. and this is why putin rushes with his proposal, because he understands that our army will be getting stronger and stronger in the coming weeks and months. well, i know you have to be an optimist in interviews with people like me, butjust look at some of the realities. it's notjust about new territory which russia has taken in recent weeks and months. it's also about the continued bombardment of your infrastructure with, i see, the head of your national grid operator, ukrenergo, saying that, over the next six weeks, the situation is going to get much tougher in terms of power blackouts across ukraine. it's also about things like, as we see right now, putin going to north korea and almost certainly getting the agreement — although it

may not be public — but the agreement of north korea to continue supplying russia with vast amounts of ammunition. given all of those different factors, ukraine still has a profound problem of scale, does it not? well, if you look at the map of the world, the problem of scale is inherited because russia is simply geographically bigger than ukraine. but if the war was only about mathematics and numbers, you and i wouldn't be talking today because we would have already lost this war. so the scale is important, but it's not the decisive factor in the war. what is decisive is the ability of the coalition standing on one of the sides to build up and sustainably provide the country at war with necessary support. and you are right — putin has been quite successful in ensuring deliveries of artillery ammunition

from north korea while ukraine was suffering with receiving sufficient amounts of artillery ammunition from its partners. so this is the question that goes far beyond ukraine and russia. because what is at stake in this war also goes beyond that. it's about the capacity and the will of partners to deliver. but what you outline with me there, wittingly or unwittingly, is the degree of ukrainian dependency on your allies. and that dependency, even now, even with the americans, for example, coming up with the $60 billion worth of financial and military assistance, that dependency leaves you very vulnerable. for example, we learn in recent days that the americans, despite promising you f—16 warplane capacity, have only started training a handful of your pilots. you're only going to have 20 trained f—16 pilots by the end of the year. we also know that one of your key european allies,

germany, is still not prepared to give you those taurus missiles that you want. so, on many different levels, your dependency on your allies still leaves you lacking. i believe that if russia fell into dependency on north korea, uh, we are in a much better shape if we have to depend on the united states, germany and other countries. that would be my short answer to that. we could go into details on what, on the issues that you mentioned. butjust in a nutshell, f—i6s will arrive, uh, in the coming months. well, you'll have the f—i6s, but you won't have the pilots to fly them. hold on. this is, uh... the programme of training our pilots to fly and operate f—i6s launched months ago. uh, in... was launched months ago in denmark, netherlands and other countries. and these countries will be

sending their f—i6s to ukraine. they will be the first one to send them. and pilots were trained. what the united states do is another wave of pilots who are being trained now. what do you make of, for example, germany's chancellor olaf scholz repeatedly saying that, quote, "russia must not win and ukraine must not lose," but never saying ukraine must win. that mindset simply hasn't taken root amongst your key allies. well, the chancellor is not the only leader who is speaking in terms of supporting ukraine as long as it takes or not letting russia win or not letting ukraine lose. um, you are right.

we've been, uh... we've been talking to all of them for months that the best way to put it would be to say we will be with ukraine until ukraine wins. that would set a clear objective for all of us. but, on the other hand, when i look at the new packages of assistance that are being adopted by, announced by these countries, and as i told you, they're getting stronger and stronger. germany, by the way, was the first country to respond to a call, to an urgent call by ukraine to deliver more patriot batteries, to defend our critical infrastructure and civilians from russian missiles, so we can allow continuing talking with them on the words they're using as long as we see as we are satisfied with the decisions they're taking. i call you diplomat in chief for ukraine. part of yourjob is to hasten the accession of ukraine to two key multilateral institutions, that is nato and the european union. how frustrated are you that both processes are going so very slowly?

we had joe biden earlier this month saying, quote, "i am not prepared to support the nato—isation of ukraine." and we also see that the european union, which may be formally considering launching — opening the accession talks with you, the council, that is the sort of formal head of the european union, is about to be... the presidency is about to be taken by hungary, which is almost certain to go slow on any progress on your membership application. well, perhaps it's not a good manner to praise the european union to british viewers, but i have to commend the european union for really speeding up the process of ukraine's accession and actually being able of making some very ambitious and complicated decisions.

in fact, when the us congress was still discussing, let me put it politely, the issue of assistance to ukraine, the european union adopted an ambitious 50 billion euro programme called ukraine facility. this was one of the first cases when the eu was not waiting for the united states, but actually gave a leadership, an example of leadership to the united states. and now we are a half step away from launching, physically launching accession talks between ukraine and the european union. hungary's concerns, the reservations were accommodated and the negotiating framework has been adopted. so i think we are more or less confident about the pace of our accession to the eu. the thing is... well, you know it's going to take many, many years. you also know that the diplomatic weather and the political weather in europe is changing, with more populist, nationalist parties doing very well in the recent

european elections. we've got a french assembly election coming up which could see them in power. they almost universally are much more sceptical about maintaining assistance levels to ukraine. that's another deeply worrying sign for you. thatjust means that ukrainian diplomats will have more exciting tasks to accomplish. exciting orjust plain depressing? no, no, no, we will... we will find the solutions. listen, two years ago, ukraine was not even a candidate for the membership in the european union — and up until the very last moment, when this decision was made, we were advised not to push too hard. but we did. we found solutions together with partners. and the time gap between granting ukraine candidacy status and opening accession talks with ukraine, i think it's the shortest. it's arguably the shortest for any country, uh, that has applied for membership in the european union in recent decades.

that's your positive take on europe. what about the united states? did you see donald trump's speech just the other day where he called your president zelensky the "greatest salesman ever"? and he said, "this money keeps being given to ukraine. "they keep asking for more." and at the end of it, he said, trump said, "this has got to stop." donald trump may win the presidency in november. the polls suggest that is a real possibility. what are you going to do then? we are going to respect the choice that the people of america will make. we're going to work with the trump administration, if mrtrump wins in elections... he says you've got to stop begging for money. and, of course, he means money and weapons. well, i heard him saying he was against the supplemental that the us house of representatives was about. . .was

to vote. but, in the end, the solution was months later. i accept that, that was an acceptable delay. but months later, a solution was found and he did not oppose it. the thing is, vladimir putin sees what is happening. he has conversations like the one we've had in which you've been very candid about the degree of dependency you have on allies, foremost of whom, the united states. putin surely is simply waiting for november, hoping trump wins. and then the dynamic in this entire diplomatic and military conflict will be very different. allies depend on ukraine as much as ukraine depends on allies, because if we lose and putin wins, the scale of problems our allies will be facing across the globe will be unmeasurably higher, bigger than the problems they are facing today. and i assure you that partners, ourallies,

they understand that. have you reached out to marine le pen, to the afd in germany? are you talking to trump's people, trying to build bridges and establish a relationship? we work with current governments and political forces, but we also respect the opposition parties, um, with one reservation — that they are not openly and unquestionably — i mean, that they are not speaking putin's speaking points, let me put it this way, so we can, we have bridges. we have contacts at various levels. our embassies work. they know the political landscape of every country. look at the netherlands. everyone was complaining that with the victory in parliamentary elections, the netherlands would turn their back to ukraine. but it didn't happen. the new coalition has been

formed and the support to ukraine is reaffirmed in the coalition agreement. so there are always solutions. and you are right, you mentioned it a couple of times about optimism. yes. pessimism is an irresponsible thing for a minister whose country is at... 0k. well, if you are feeling optimistic, let me turn your attention to internal matters in ukraine before we end. many outsiders, allies, governments were worried when they saw mustafa nayyem resigning from his post as the sort of boss of the restoration and infrastructure agency inside ukraine, a very respected figure who was, it seems, doing his best to make ukraine more resilient. it seems zelensky wanted him out, and there's a feeling that zelensky and his chief aide, andriy yermak, are more and more controlling everything that happens inside the ukrainian government. you're foreign minister. do you feel that control coming from the presidency? president zelensky is the supreme commander in chief

of a country at war who is fighting for its survival against a much stronger enemy. according to our legislation, president is the main responsible figure in the political system in times of war. i cannot by any terms describe his actions as overcontrolling, because he is in charge of the country and we work as a team with the government, the parliament. there will be always voices who disagree with this or that decision, because we are a democracy, and these voices are not silent. they can speak out of what they like or don't like. but president is running a country at war. he is — but, of course, his democratic mandate has run out. and because of the war and the emergency situation, it seems unlikely there's going to be an election any time soon in ukraine.

so people are wondering just how effective and how much zelensky is adhering to democratic values in the way he's running the government today. just one quote from a senior ukrainian government source to the financial times. "right now," this source said, "there are many people losing trust in ukraine's government "because of decisions at the top "that they do not understand." do you get that sense of apprehension? i spent the whole of last week travelling, speaking to, being present in the meetings of my president with g7 leaders, with world leaders, um, and the topics they discussed, the decisions they made, did not give me the slightest feeling that the trust is eroding, that the trust is vanishing. uh, i have a very simple, simple request, a very polite and kind request to everyone who is asking these kind of questions about ukraine,

guys, about elections, guys, help us to kick russia out, end the war. and i assure you that elections according to the law will be immediately held. dmytro kuleba, we do have to end there. i thank you very much forjoining me on hardtalk. thank you. hello. here in the uk, we're at long last starting to see the signs of some weather that feels much more like summer than it has done so far this month. other side of the atlantic, though, eastern canada, eastern side of the united states, summer has arrived

with a vengeance. a long lasting, intense and life—threatening heat wave, potentially record breaking, will affect many cities in the east. temperatures into the high 30s by day. but add on the humidity levels, it will feel like it's above a0 degrees for days on end. now, that sort of heat is not coming our way, but it will affect our weather in some form. we've got heat and humidity out towards the east, clashing with cooler conditions out in the west at the moment. and that is starting to fire up a jet stream which will send ripples across the atmosphere, and at long last, move ourjet stream from south of us, bringing cooler air to the north of us, drawing in something a little bit warmer and high pressure, which through the second half of the weekend and beyond, will mean drier and warmer weather more widely. just a few showers to get the weekend under way. but notice the temperatures back to where they should be for the time of year, if not a bit above across most parts of the uk. now to get there, still a few blips around, one such on wednesday morning in terms of temperature. chilly start, scotland, northern ireland, for some temperatures down into lowest single figures, but otherwise

a fine day for the vast majority on wednesday. most places will be dry, varying amounts of clouds, some good sunny spells. northern ireland, england and wales. a slim chance of a shower in the hills, most will be fine. more cloud, though, into the north and west of scotland could bring some patchy rain, a drizzle, particularly later in the day. and temperatures here, 11—14 celsius, but most climbing a bit, especially across scotland and northern ireland. warmer there than in recent days. another fresh start to thursday, most places dry. showers just close to the near continent, and more cloud to the north and west, which could bring the odd isolated shower. but for the vast majority, it should be a fine day again, if not more cloud than we see on wednesday. temperatures, though, similar to wednesday's values for most. now, thursday night into friday, we've got one area of low pressure near the continent, very close to the southeast, another one which will push weather fronts into the west as we go through thursday night and into friday morning. so western areas seeing a bit more of a change here. more breeze, more cloud, outbreaks of rain possible. central eastern areas, most should just stay dry through the day. best of the sunshine in the morning, more cloud

into the afternoon, warm in any strong sunshine, and the weather front will bring outbreaks of rain eastwards across most parts during friday night into saturday morning, and then that dry weather develops more widely. take care.

live from london, this is bbc news. a warm embrace for vladimir putin in north korea as kimjong—un rolls out the red carpet for the pair's second meeting in months. inflation in the uk looks set to hit its target, but will it be enough for a rate cut?

we'll bring you the latest figures as they come in. from tornadoes to tropical storms, wildfires and even rare june snow — the us braces for an onslaught of extreme weather. hello and welcome to bbc news. i'm lukwesa burak. we begin in pyongyang, where the official ceremony welcoming president vladimir putin to north korea has begun in the city's central square. we'll bring you pictures as they come in. russian flags and portraits of putin line the streets of pyongyang for the president's first visit to the country in 2a years. the red carpet was rolled out in the middle of the night,

followed by a brief meeting in which the state news agency