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Today on State of the World, the wars Trump inherits.
You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. It's Monday, January 20th. I'm Greg Dixon. President Trump is now in office. And with that office, he inherits two international conflicts in which the U.S. is deeply involved.
On the campaign trail, Trump said he could end the war between Russia and Ukraine. He also said last month there'd be, quote, hell to pay if Hamas and Israel didn't reach a ceasefire and hostage release deal before he assumed office. A temporary and fragile ceasefire started on Sunday. We're going to hear from our correspondents in Israel, Russia, and Ukraine. They'll tell us about the expectations those countries have for the Trump presidency.
I'm Greg Myrie reporting from Tel Aviv. In the Mideast, Trump wanted an end to the Israel-Hamas fighting before taking office, and it seems he got his wish. By one day. After 15 months of war, a ceasefire took effect Sunday. Trump is claiming credit for the deal, but now he inherits a precarious truce. And he's shown no real interest in micromanaging Middle East conflict.
He's certainly not a president who could get into the nitty gritty. Chuck Freilich is a former deputy national security advisor in Israel who now splits his time between Israel and the U.S. He says Trump's big picture approach could have its advantages. Maybe we need a president who seems to have done what Trump did in the last week, which is just to come with a big stick and beat both sides over the head, so to speak.
and lead to the final breakthrough. In some sense, Trump faces a reversal from the presidential transition that took place four years ago. Trump made a deal with the Taliban near the end of his first term, which called for U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan. President Biden inherited that agreement. When he withdrew the troops, it turned into a fiasco.
Based on his public remarks, Trump is much more interested in trying to cut a deal that would normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia and open up economic opportunities. This would build on Trump's first term when he helped broker the so-called Abraham Accords that established relations between Israel and several Arab states.
But the war in Gaza has complicated those efforts, says Chuck Freilich. The Saudis are now demanding that Israel take concrete steps toward creating a Palestinian state. And that means Trump is likely to encounter the same challenges previous U.S. presidents have faced. To achieve a full breakthrough with the Saudis, you may need
a breakthrough on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. For years now, U.S. presidents have been trying to reduce American involvement in Middle East turmoil, yet they keep getting dragged back in. I'm Charles Maines. Here in Moscow, Russian officials have so far taken a cautious approach to Donald Trump's return to the White House and what it might mean for U.S.-Russian relations and the war in Ukraine. Yet
Yet as that conflict heads into its third year, it's increasingly common to hear ordinary Russians say they want an end to the fighting. The question, does the return of Donald Trump help with that? And if so, on whose terms? On the old Arbat Street, popular with Russian tourists, Count Alexander among those hoping for change.
Trump said he'd stop the war. I've heard Trump say he could end the war in a matter of days, but it'll take compromise from all sides, says the 24-year-old programmer, who tells me he's from a small town a few hundred miles away. Like everyone in this story, Alexander declined to provide his last name out of fear of wartime censorship laws. Of course, anything is possible.
Victor, a retired lighthouse keeper from Russia's south, tells me anything is possible once Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin sit down for talks. A supporter of the war, Victor insists Russians want peace, but on their terms. And Donald Trump, he thinks they might just get it. Democrats in Congress blocked Trump from pursuing better relations with us last time, he says.
But Republicans are now in control, so there won't be so much interference. I listen to my kids, and they're celebrating Trump's victory and hoping he'll end sanctions, says Natalia, an artist who moved her family to Russia from neighboring Belarus, which served as a staging ground for the Russian invasion. Natalia, who is a member of the Republican Party,
Natalia adds she's never gotten over the shock of the war, and neither has Maxim, an IT specialist from Moscow. Several of his friends went off to fight in Ukraine and never came home, he says. Now he's cautiously hoping a new Trump administration can bring an end to the killing. Yet three years of war have also taught him one thing. Fights are easy to start, he tells me. It's making up that's hard.
I'm Joanna Kakissis reporting from Lviv and Kyiv, Ukraine. Ukrainians want this war to end, even with concessions. But Yaroslav Bazalevich says he worries Donald Trump's administration could force Ukraine to concede too much. Unless the U.S. gives up on Ukraine, he says, I don't think Russia will agree to end this war.
Vazilevich cannot stomach a Russian victory. Five months ago, a hypersonic Russian missile killed his entire family in the western city of Lviv, hundreds of miles from the front line. As the only survivor, he became the face of Ukraine's grief. I feel emptiness, he says. They were everything to me.
His family's funeral was televised, and thousands of Ukrainians attended in person. Bazalevich hunched in agony over the coffins of his wife Yevhenia and their three daughters, Emilia, who was about to turn seven, 18-year-old Daria, and 21-year-old Yarina.
Tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers have been killed in this war, including Melania Podolyak's partner, a legendary fighter pilot. We meet in Kiev. At this point, you can pick anybody off of the Ukrainian street and ask them if they've lost somebody close to them, and they will tell you yes. And there's no indication that Russians want to leave Ukraine alone. So the thing we should do is to present the new administration with options,
from the point of strength, which is ridiculously difficult in these times. That's also clear to Bazalovich in Lviv. Russian troops are advancing on Ukrainian land. Russia will only agree to a ceasefire if they're on the brink of a financial or military crisis, he says. And even then, it will be temporary.
He is set to travel to Washington next month and ask Congress to support justice for Ukraine and his wife and daughters. I don't know how to live without them, he says, his eyes filling with tears. I am like a tree, cannot grow leaves. That's the state of the world from NPR. Thanks for listening.
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