Ukraine's war children hoping for return to normality

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

0:47I'm Janet Jalil and at 16 hours GMT on Thursday the 20th of November, these are our main stories. As the US is reported to have drafted a deal with Russia on Ukraine, we look at the impact the war has had on Ukrainian children. A high-profile former mayor in the Philippines is given a lengthy prison sentence for human trafficking linked to a scam centre. Facebook and Instagram are kicking Australian teenagers off their platforms. We hear what some students make of the ban. Also in this podcast... I remember with the first film I made, as soon as I saw it, I was completely surprised and it seemed nothing like what I expected.

1:28I was completely caught off guard. We hear from the director Wes Anderson, who's renowned for his eccentric, quirky and stylish movies.

1:42Since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia is thought to have abducted at least 20 ,000 Ukrainian children in the past three and a half years. President Zelensky's office has told the BBC that only a tiny fraction of those children, less than a tenth, that's fewer than 2 ,000, have been reunited with their families, almost all of them without the involvement or knowledge of the Kremlin. Children who haven't been taken abroad continue to die as Russian missiles and drones repeatedly hit residential areas. Our Ukraine correspondent James Waterhouse looks at the wider impact of Russia's invasion on Ukraine's next generation.

2:24Severiya and her mum Mariana prepare to face the cold bite of an autumnal Ukrainian morning. Their house is in Kiev, but their home is Mariupol, a southern city which succumbed to Russia's advance in 2022. Severiya ventures out with the enthusiasm you'd expect from a seven-year-old. Their destination is a children's support group, hosted in this cafe by Oksana, who's a therapist. The impact on mental health. Of course, children are deeply affected. Many parents are now at war. Some children have already lost parents. Some parents returned from captivity. It's extremely difficult for them. These sessions are much needed moments of calm for a generation that has only known war.

3:14It's scary because you don't know what will happen at night, whether you'll have to go to the hallway or if you can sleep peacefully. Sometimes we miss lessons because we sit in the basement when the air raid siren starts.

3:33In cities like Kiev, wartime interruptions are as regular as they are familiar. Here's Severia's mum, Mariana. I try to distract them. We play, talk, I come up with activities, audiobooks, reading. anything. And I explain honestly, it's not our fault someone wants to kill us. It's not our fault we were born Ukrainian. Back to Oksana, the therapist.

4:01They react to sounds, anything sudden, like something falling, closing or banging. And the air raid siren sound from our phones is also an additional source of stress for them. Regardless of whether a child stayed in Ukraine or was forced to escape with their family, the impact of Russia's invasion on them has been profound. Maxim Maximov is from Ukraine's presidential office and heads up a scheme designed to bring children home who've been abducted by Russia. That's definitely a very difficult process. And the reason why that process is very difficult is because what we're seeing from the Russian Federation is not compliance with international obligations like Geneva Conventions on the Conventions on the Rights of the Child but the obstruction of the return process.

4:51He claims Moscow complicates the process by moving the children, by changing their identities and by cutting contact with their families. Maxim Maximov acknowledges that most children won't be rescued and that DNA tracking might be the only answer once they are adults. It's not easy to spot Ukrainian children at this assembly in Hammersmith Academy in West London. Three years after fleeing the full-scale invasion, they now speak perfect English. As they clutch teddy bears and other belongings they snatched in those haunting early hours, they articulate their own hopes for the future. I really hope that the war will end soon.

5:32But I really hope to go back home, to see my house, to lay in my bed and remember all these memories I had with my friends. I just wanted to say a quick message to all of the Ukrainian children that you are guys very, very strong. I'm a Ukrainian girl myself who moved to UK three years ago. And you're very strong and hope that we all one day will come to peaceful Ukraine. Just know that you're not alone. The war is entering a fourth year. The geopolitics surrounding it are yet to bring peace closer. And yet children still hope to see some kind of normality, although you'd forgive them for not knowing what that feels like.

6:16James Waterhouse reporting. Well, as Russian attacks and missile strikes continue to target Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, particularly energy plants, now winter is setting in, what are the prospects of an end to the war? US media is reporting that Washington and Moscow have worked out a potential peace plan. It's not been confirmed by either country, but from what's been floated in the press, the new plan seems to be very similar to President Putin's long-stated maximalist demands that Ukraine seeds large chunks of its territory and slashes its army. Demands that Ukrainians have long dismissed as completely unacceptable.

6:54This comes as senior US military officials are in Ukraine for talks. Our defence correspondent Jonathan Beale is in Kyiv for us. We know very little apart from what has been reported by other media outlets and we know there have been discussions between Steve Wyckoff who is essentially President Trump's right-hand man when it comes to peace negotiations not just here in Ukraine but in the Middle East too with his Russian counterpart and that there is a reportedly 28-point peace plan which they have discussed. Many of those points points, as you quite rightly say, which have been clearly rejected by Ukraine in the past, such as giving up more territory to Russia, cutting the size of its military, not allowing foreign troops into the country using Russia as an official language.

7:42So a lot of this is speculation as to whether it is a peace plan that is backed by the administration, although we know Steve Wyckoff is very close to President Trump, and the Kremlin is saying that it does not know about this plan, even though clearly they have an official involved in these discussions. But there are meetings taking place today with US officials, but they are military officials. So two generals, the US Army Secretary here in Ukraine, they say they've come to on a fact finding mission to discuss efforts to end the war, but they have not said they've come with a specific peace plan.

8:19And what we've heard from Ukrainian officials so far is that in their meetings with first of all the Prime Minister of Ukraine and then the Defence Minister is that they talked about the battlefield, the situation on the ground. They talked about military cooperation in terms of technology, drones, which is obviously of interest to the US military. But this team is not a diplomatic team. It's not a team that has been involved in peace negotiations in the past and I do not think can make a breakthrough about peace negotiations in the future. They can certainly report back the mood music. But I don't expect any breakthrough when President Zelensky meets them.

8:55And it'll be interesting to see whether even the issue or the subject of a peace plan is discussed at all. Because the European Union has spoken about this reported peace plan, even though it's not confirmed, warning that Ukraine cannot be left out of negotiations. Yeah, and this is a point that Europe's reiterated time and time again that Ukraine's future must involve Ukraine and it must involve Europe, with Europe now the biggest military backers for Ukraine. The US is allowing European countries to buy US military equipment and then send it to Ukraine. So there is cooperation there. They are careful not to criticise the Trump administration.

9:37They're saying they're supporting US efforts. But it is Europe that, for example, is talking about a coalition of the willing, about a military force that could come on the ground made up of potentially European troops if there is a ceasefire. So Europe really making clear that any talks about peace must involve both Europe itself and Ukraine. Jonathan Beale in Kyiv. Now to the story of a Chinese national who pretended to be a Filipina in order to become a mayor in the Philippines. Alice Guo once lived a life of luxury with expensive cars and even her own helicopter. But now she's been sentenced to life in prison along with seven others on human trafficking charges after being found guilty of overseeing a scam centre where hundreds of people were forced to work or risk torture.

10:26Our Southeast Asia correspondent Jonathan Head told me more about her. I mean, Alice Guo came out of nowhere, really, when she won the mayoral election back in 2022. She claimed to have been brought up on a local pig farm, said she was a Filipino, a good businesswoman. She said she had connections with lots of potential Chinese investors and she ran a very good campaign. And actually, her local constituents thought she was great. They love her and many of them still do. But she was in business and she gave land and clearly was an investor in a big complex right behind the mayoral office, which she painted a bright pink to make it friendly and put flowers on it.

11:04And behind it was this 36 building complex, which last year was raided by the police after a Vietnamese man escaped. He jumped from a second floor window and crawled through the grass to get away, telling harrowing stories of abuse, of torture, of being forced to work and hit targets. It was a big scam centre when the police raided it. There were hundreds of people from many different nationalities, all working in these high-pressure conditions, scamming people around the world. And Alice Guo has been charged with human trafficking. She's now been convicted of it. She faces other charges of money laundering.

11:37Clearly, she was able to become very, very rich. But her story became even more bizarre when it turned out that she wasn't Filipino. In fact, she'd migrated as a teenager. She had fake documents, a fake birth certificate. it. She shouldn't even have been mayor. And then allegations came from other corners suggesting that she might even be a Chinese spy, which was really incendiary considering the Philippines has been at daggers drawn with China over the disputed islands in the South China Sea. So you could just imagine how much attention this story has got. But it is also part of this whole Southeast Asian explosion of scam business.

12:15I mean, hers is one. There are so many others in so many different countries. So it's actually part of a much bigger story. And people have been gripped by this. Totally. I mean, the Chinese angle really sort of shocked people. I don't believe the allegations of her being a Chinese spy are likely to be true. She's not in a very good position for that. But the fact that you fused together Philippines fears of China, the sort of mystery about her story with the fact that they're trying to crack down on this massive scam business in the Philippines and making some progress. But obviously, in other places like Myanmar and Cambodia, it still thrives.

12:50Jonathan Head. Now to Australia, where a social media ban for young people under the age of 16 is due to come into force in the second week of December. Hundreds of thousands of teenagers who use Instagram, Facebook and threads have been warned that their accounts will start being deactivated from now until then. While the ban is popular with many parents, some under 16s are perhaps unsurprisingly not impressed. A teacher at a school in the southern city of Adelaide, Richard Graham, asked his students how they feel about it. I think it's pointless. I think there's so many better things that they could do to keep children safe.

13:29And because they've just like banned it, everyone's going to like find ways around it. Social media is like a main resource of communication between people, like especially young people. It's basically like where everyone talks and like how teams communicate. And I also think that not all social media is negative like there has been some negative effects but also you can still learn things from social media like it's not all bad instead of the ban they could make under 16 like have private accounts with just friends or like they must be parent managed or something yeah add limits not bands because like that could mean limiting the um comments or even the algorithms that you can see just changing the way that you see your social media so do you Do you think that you and your friends will find ways around the law?

14:18Definitely. I think some people definitely will, yeah. I know someone who's asked her older brother to get her a burner phone that she can set up with her 18-year-old brother's face ID so that she can have those social medias because people are just that addicted. I think no matter how hard they try, people are always going to find a way around it. The views of some students there. Well, our correspondent in Sydney, Katie Watson, has more. The ban comes into force on the 10th of December, but Meta, who owns Instagram, Facebook and Threads, they're already letting users know between 13 and 15 years old by text, email.

14:59Their accounts are going to start being deactivated from the 4th of December. So, yeah, teens today realising they're going to be chucked off these platforms earlier than they had expected. Of course, this is a world leading ban, according to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, because he wants to get kids off screens and back on the footy fields, as he said, trying to get kids to be kids and try and be on the side of the parents, as he said. There's nine platforms involved. Gaming's not included, and that's been a bit contentious. the idea for the government is that it's about trying to stop kind of social interaction and so that's I guess kind of a lot of doom scrolling and algorithms as well messaging is also not part of the ban but there's a lot of criticism that kids are going to find a way around that they are much better on technology than the people trying to implement this legislation and really is this going to be enforceable but if you speak to a lot of parents here they would say anything helps to protect them from going online.

15:57Katie Watson Still to come on the Global News Podcast.

16:15Facing your own family history 80 years after the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals.

16:27If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

17:06As global concerns mount over war, cyber attacks and natural disasters, more countries are trying to prepare their citizens for possible emergencies. The Netherlands is planning to issue a government booklet to all its households, and so is Taiwan. Both booklets are orange with cover illustrations of the supplies people will need, like bottled water or torches. And in Taiwan's case, given the tensions with China, it also includes instructions on how to deal with a military invasion. Fei-Fan Lin is the Deputy Secretary General of Taiwan's National Security Council. He told us more about the booklet and why it's being distributed.

17:45We use comic-style illustrations and try to get it more accessible to the general public, So even children see the style of the booklet and also want to read it. We try to portray that different type of scenarios as comprehensive as we can. So we actually lay out the situation like cyber attacks, what type of hidden risk of using Chinese-made apps, including like a DeepSeek or a T-Talk or a so-called Little Red Book. And we are also giving people about a full guidance of what should be included in their go-backs. So for any kind of emergency, no matter if it's an earthquake, natural disaster, or even the wartime situations, that they can bring their own stuff and go.

18:26And so we are also laying down the new air raid defense instructions to people to understand that if there is a really enemy attack, how we can better protect ourselves. So we are doing everything we can to better prepare ourselves. But I want to highlight one key important message. What China is doing is really striking. And also, I think it's really intimidating a lot of different countries. Currently, at this moment, China is launching an eight-day live fire shooting exercise to intimidate Japan. And in August, they also have a marine time operation on the sea and their own vessels chasing the Philippine vessels.

19:05And last year, 2024, we got 5 ,000 Chinese PLA aircraft actually surrounding Taiwan. So we are hoping to get our citizens prepared for different kinds of scenarios as soon as possible. The Civil Defence Handbook is actually the key point of bringing the awareness and building awareness. Taiwanese security official Fei-Fan Lin. It's 80 years since the Nuremberg trials began. The trials were the most prominent Nazi leaders for their crimes during the Second World War. their systematic racist killings, including the mass murder of six million Jews. When the chief American prosecutor, Justice Jackson, opened the Allied case against the defendants, he reflected on the historical significance of the moment.

19:54Opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, that civilisation cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated. One of those on trial was Hans Frank, one of Hitler's most trusted men, who served as governor of Poland during the Nazi occupation. He was sentenced to death and hanged. Jamie Krumasamy spoke to Hans Frank's son, Niklas Frank, who is the author of The Father, A Revenge, A Son's Judgment on His Nazi War Criminal Father.

20:44Newspapers in the autumn of 1945, shortly before the trial began, and there were pictures showing a lot of corpses, naked children, women and men. And always was written under these pictures, Poland. And I thought Poland is our property, at least property of my father. And so it was very strange for me suddenly to have a connection between my powerful father in connection with those corpses. Something was strange suddenly with my father. And you were just six years old seeing these pictures. Yes, and this was really extraordinary. My eldest brother Norman, with his newspaper, he went to our mother saying to her, if these pictures are true, our father will have no chance to survive.

21:39And he was all right. And you were able to visit him, weren't you, briefly at Nuremberg? Shortly before the verdicts came out, we got the invitation to visit him. and we all drove to Nuremberg knowing that this will be our last visit and he will be hanged. I was sitting behind the window talking to him on my mother's lap and he was smiling and laughing and telling me, Nicky, we will soon celebrate Christmas and we will have much fun. And I was on my mother's lap thinking and I swear it's really true. Why is he lying? He knows that he will be hanged. And that was a big, big disappointment for me.

22:28He should have said, my dear Nicky, you are seven years old, and I was a criminal, and I will be hanged. And please don't repeat my life. Well, you certainly haven't repeated his life. I mean, you've gone on to talk about his legacy, and I'd like to come to that. But first, on the actual death penalty, was it the right punishment for your father? I'm completely against the death penalty. But for my father, it was correct. Because if he would have survived, he would have really rotten my brain with his ideology because he was a very charming guy. He was very well educated. And I would have needed many more years to come out of this trap of him.

23:18Your father died when you were young. There must be thousands of things you might have asked him if he'd survived. But I just wonder what the main question you would have put to him. The first question and the most important, why have you done this? He could have nourished his family as a normal lawyer. Why did he commit all those crimes? This I will never understand. But in the end, he wrote a letter to my mother and also to his lawyer, pretending I was never a criminal and the truth will come out once upon a time. And this was my task to bring out the truth about my father. Niklas Frank talking about his Nazi war criminal father.

24:12While AI is proving to be a boon to scientists and doctors, many in the creative industries are frankly terrified by what it means for their livelihoods. A report by the University of Cambridge has found that many published novelists here in the UK believe that AI could eventually replace them altogether. A researcher involved in the study, Dr Clementine Collette, herself a writer, told us more about the survey of more than 300 authors. They are already feeling the negative effects. So just over 50 % of novelists agree that it's likely that Genitive AI will displace their work entirely. And almost four in 10 have also said that they've already feeling the negative impacts because of competition with generated material online.

25:01sabotage they feel that AI bots are writing them kind of botched reviews or maybe publish it false material and because of the way that it's changing our attention spans and how we consume the kind of rise of personalization has moved us away from the long form and that is a real concern from literary creatives that we will have a two-tier market more so than we have already where human written work will be more expensive, a luxury item. Those who can afford it will read human written novels and AI generated content will be cheap or free and that will potentially have big societal implications as well.

25:40But we don't know what Genitive AI is going to be able to do in the future in terms of producing more original content. I think that it is a psychological impact as well as a financial one that authors are feeling. And this is a real cry from novelists and literary creatives to put guardrails around AI to protect this incredible, thriving industry that we have. Dr. Clementine Collette. An exhibition on the life and work of the American film director Wes Anderson opens in London this week. It will showcase hundreds of objects from his personal archive that will help attendees gain greater insight into eccentric, quirky and stylish movies like The Grand Budapest Hotel or Fantastic Mr Fox.

26:26Nicola Stanbridge went to meet the director at the exhibition.