European leaders meet ahead of Trump's summit with Putin

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• 00:00

  You're listening to the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

• 00:29

  People expressing their irritation,

• 00:31

  some saying that people are using one seat for hours after only buying a very cheap drink,

• 00:36

  freeloading on the electricity, commenting about people's bad manners,

• 00:40

  certainly generating a lot of online debate.

• 00:42

  How Starbucks in South Korea is dealing with laptop squatters.

• 00:51

  When Donald Trump met Vladimir Putin in 2018,

• 00:54

  he sided with the former KGB agent instead of his own intelligence agencies on the question of Russian election interference.

• 01:02

  Ukraine and its allies fear a similar outcome at the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska on Friday.

• 01:08

  So European nations have spent the past few days trying to persuade the US president to take Ukraine's views into account in any discussion of the war on its territory.

• 01:18

  There are a series of virtual meetings today hosted by Germany with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in attendance.

• 01:25

  But the British defence analyst Paul Moorcraft is not optimistic European leaders will be able to influence President Trump's thinking.

• 01:32

  President Trump is very keen to get out and concentrate on the Far East.

• 01:37

  So really what the Europeans are saying carries very little weight.

• 01:41

  There won't be a coalition of the willing peacekeepers.

• 01:45

  The Russians won't allow that.

• 01:46

  So there's very little role for the Europeans.

• 01:50

  I asked our diplomatic correspondent, Paul Adams,

• 01:53

  what the Europeans can realistically hope to achieve.

• 01:56

  They know that they have got a difficult job here.

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