Latest / Pollar Sounds / Students on the ballot, a seat for Europe and Starlink back on

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Students on the ballot, a seat for Europe and Starlink back on · Pollar Sounds

• 0:00
  Hi there, this is Pollar, and welcome to 3x3.
• 0:04
  Three stories, three angles. What happened.
• 0:08
  How it's being told.
• 0:09
  And what we don't know yet.
• 0:11
  And after each story, we want to hear what you think.
• 0:15
  So, let's begin.
• 0:23
  First up, Serbia, which votes this Sunday in an election the students could win.
• 0:28
  It goes back to November 2024,
• 0:31
  when a concrete canopy collapsed at the railway station in Novi Sad and killed 16 people.
• 0:37
  Students blamed corruption, and they've been protesting ever since, for almost two years.
• 0:43
  And now they're on the ballot, as the Student List.
• 0:46
  250 candidates, professors, farmers, actors, even a rapper.
• 0:52
  And on the other side, Aleksandar Vučić.
• 0:55
  Right. He stepped down as president in September to lead his party's campaign himself.
• 1:01
  If his Serbian Progressive Party wins, he's expected to come back as prime minister.
• 1:06
  So how close is it?
• 1:08
  Close. One poll this week, by NSPM,
• 1:12
  has the Student List on 44.5 per cent and Vučić's party on 42.7.
• 1:18
  Other polls are all over the place, and the betting markets still favour Vučić.
• 1:23
  And on Wednesday, students who'd walked across the country for days arrived in Belgrade,
• 1:28
  while Vučić held his own rally in Niš, in the south.
• 1:32
  On Thursday night, about 150,000 people joined the students' final rally.
• 1:40
  How it's being told.
• 1:44
  Vučić says the students and their professors are taking instructions from abroad.
• 1:49
  He told his supporters in Niš
• 1:51
  there would be "no more politics in schools and at faculties".
• 1:55
  The students and the opposition tell it the other way round:
• 1:58
  that the state is making it harder to vote.
• 2:01
  Serbia has moved some polling stations abroad.
• 2:04
  One voter in Vancouver told AP her station is now in Toronto,
• 2:08
  about 3,500 kilometres away, and it opens at two in the morning, to match Serbian time.
• 2:14
  Two in the morning?
• 2:16
  Two in the morning.
• 2:17
  About 100,000 Serbs have registered to vote abroad this time, against 39,000 in 2023.
• 2:25
  The foreign minister says the changes are about logistics and security.
• 2:29
  And in Brussels, it's told as a test.
• 2:32
  The EU and international observers have said
• 2:35
  they're concerned about whether the vote will be safe and fair.
• 2:41
  What we don't know yet.
• 2:45
  The result.
• 2:46
  And analysts' biggest worry is a close count
• 2:49
  where both sides claim victory on Sunday night.
• 2:52
  Whether turnout is as high as expected. That's thought to help the students.
• 2:57
  And what happens to the protest movement if it loses at the ballot box.
• 3:02
  Over to you. Serbia's students went from marching in the street
• 3:05
  to standing for parliament.
• 3:07
  If you'd protested for two years, would you run for office, or stay on the street?
• 3:16
  Second, Ukraine. New peace talks are on the table,
• 3:20
  and Europe is trying to work out who would speak for it. What happened?
• 3:24
  So, on Wednesday, Donald Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff,
• 3:28
  spent almost three hours with Vladimir Putin in Saint Petersburg.
• 3:32
  Afterwards the Kremlin said Putin had agreed, in principle,
• 3:36
  to new three-way talks between Russia,
• 3:38
  the United States and Ukraine, after the 10th of November.
• 3:42
  After the US midterms.
• 3:44
  A week after, yes. Trump said the two sides may never have been closer to ending the war.
• 3:51
  And that same night, Russia fired 21 missiles and more than 200 drones across Ukraine,
• 3:57
  with three waves of ballistic missiles at Kyiv.
• 4:00
  President Zelensky put the provisional toll at two dead and 34 injured,
• 4:05
  five of them children.
• 4:07
  Then on Thursday, Putin went on television.
• 4:10
  Zelensky had said he was open to freezing the current front line.
• 4:14
  Putin said he wants a final peace deal,
• 4:17
  not a short pause in the fighting, and talks on security for after it.
• 4:21
  Vladimir Putin: …to agreements, and in their final form,
• 4:24
  Vladimir Putin: not… not as a result of a pause in fighting for some short period of time. We are ready…
• 4:32
  And while Washington and Moscow talk,
• 4:35
  Europe is looking for one person to sit across the table from Putin.
• 4:41
  How it's being told.
• 4:45
  In Moscow, it's about land. Putin says the regions Russia claims aren't Ukraine's to lose,
• 4:51
  they're "historical Russia", so talk of territorial losses is "inappropriate".
• 4:57
  In Washington, it's about momentum. Trump calls this the closest they've been.
• 5:03
  In Kyiv, the missiles are the story.
• 5:06
  Zelensky says Russia answered a round of talks with ballistic missiles,
• 5:10
  and that only real pressure will change Moscow's mind.
• 5:13
  And in Europe, it's told as a fear of being left out.
• 5:17
  Politico reports governments worry
• 5:19
  that a deal between Washington and Moscow could ignore Europe's interests.
• 5:23
  The names being floated are Finland's president, Alexander Stubb,
• 5:27
  who gets on with Trump, and the president of the European Council, António Costa.
• 5:32
  Which is a turnaround. In May, EU foreign ministers decided against a single envoy,
• 5:39
  and the EU's foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas,
• 5:42
  warned it could be a Russian trap, Moscow choosing who speaks for Europe.
• 5:50
  What we don't know yet.
• 5:54
  Whether the November talks happen at all,
• 5:56
  and whether they're about a ceasefire or only about guarantees.
• 6:00
  Who Europe picks, if anyone. Nothing has been decided.
• 6:05
  And whether Europe's own proposals count.
• 6:07
  They were set out in Oslo by Ukraine and its European partners,
• 6:11
  and Putin's adviser, Yuri Ushakov, says they contain little of use.
• 6:17
  Over to you. If Europe sends one person to face Putin, who should it be:
• 6:22
  a national leader like Stubb, or someone from Brussels, like Costa?
• 6:29
  Third, a story we brought you last Friday.
• 6:32
  Starlink, Ukraine's drones, and a speed limit. What happened?
• 6:37
  Quick reminder. From the 14th of October, Starshield,
• 6:41
  the military version of Starlink, was capped at 160 kilometres an hour.
• 6:46
  Ukraine's interceptor drones fly much faster, so they lost their guidance.
• 6:50
  And nobody would say who ordered it.
• 6:53
  Exactly. Last week,
• 6:55
  a senior US official told Pollar News that no such request was ever made by the President.
• 7:01
  Now, according to the Wall Street Journal,
• 7:03
  the President did make a request, to lift it.
• 7:07
  Trump phoned Elon Musk and told him he was frustrated the speeds were still limited,
• 7:11
  although Trump won't confirm the call.
• 7:14
  And did it work?
• 7:15
  Partly. Drone commanders at the front said speeds improved on Thursday evening,
• 7:21
  and the Economist's Oliver Carroll reported the limits were fully lifted,
• 7:25
  with final tests still going on. But Ukrainian officials say it isn't fully back yet.
• 7:33
  How it's being told.
• 7:37
  As a blame game. The Wall Street Journal first reported that Musk ordered the slowdown.
• 7:43
  Reuters, citing US officials,
• 7:45
  says it came from the White House, which denies it.
• 7:49
  Musk says limits are decided by the US military, "and ultimately" the President.
• 7:54
  And the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, says it's a private contract with SpaceX,
• 7:59
  and the administration didn't order anything.
• 8:03
  Marco Rubio: The important point is we cannot direct a private company
• 8:06
  Marco Rubio: as to the decisions they make or not make.
• 8:08
  Marco Rubio: What I can tell you with certainty is the President of the United States,
• 8:11
  Marco Rubio: nor anyone in our system ever requested that any changes to that system be made.
• 8:17
  The Vice President, JD Vance, says it's understandable
• 8:21
  Musk doesn't want to be pulled into a war without clear direction.
• 8:24
  And he called it ironic that Europe fought SpaceX over regulation,
• 8:29
  and now asks Musk to keep Starlink running for Ukraine.
• 8:32
  In Europe, it's told as a dependence problem.
• 8:35
  Der Spiegel points to NATO's AI system from Palantir, another US company.
• 8:41
  Palantir told Reuters it has no off switch.
• 8:44
  And Germany and France haven't adopted it for their own forces.
• 8:51
  What we don't know yet.
• 8:55
  Who ordered the limit in the first place.
• 8:57
  We asked the White House last week. That part is still unanswered.
• 9:01
  Whether it's fully back, and whether it stays that way,
• 9:05
  now that it seems to take a phone call from the President.
• 9:07
  And when Europe has its own option. The EU's satellite network, IRIS², is years away,
• 9:14
  and the existing European network, OneWeb, can't yet steer drones in real time.
• 9:20
  Over to you. A single phone call helped turn Ukraine's drones back on.
• 9:25
  Would you want your own country's defence to run on a service someone else can switch off?
• 9:33
  Those were three stories, in three angles. The sources for each are at pollar.news.
• 9:40
  Tell us what you think, in the comments or on Pollar's socials.
• 9:44
  Thanks for listening to this episode of Pollar.
• 9:55
  A quick word about Pollar.
• 9:57
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• 10:00
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• 10:03
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