Global News Podcast - Ukraine accuses Russia of torturing Ukrainian prisoners of war

Episode Date: May 24, 2025

Ukraine says almost all prisoners released by Russia in the latest exchange were beaten, isolated and brainwashed. Also: an Iranian film shot in secret wins the top prize in Cannes, and the Viagra of the Himalayas.

You're listening to the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. This edition is published in the early hours of Sunday, the 25th of May. Ukraine says almost all the prisoners released by Russia in the current swap were tortured and brainwashed. Nine children from one family are reported to have been killed by an Israeli strike in Gaza. And Hungary's main opposition leader has trekked 300 kilometres to Romania to rally support from ethnic Hungarians.

Also in this podcast. A film shot secretly in Iran wins the top prize in Cannes. And are Brazilian farmers turned TikTok stars planting disinformation? But first, amid the brutality of Russia's invasion, a small moment of hope in Ukraine on Saturday, as more than 300 prisoners of war were handed back by the Russian military. The families gathered to welcome the buses home, some holding portraits of soldiers missing or in captivity. Yana is hopeful she'll get news of her husband. I'm looking for my husband. He went missing six months ago. It happened on the Kursk frontline. There is no information whatsoever where he is, how he is. Maybe the released prisoners

will recognise his photo and share any information. No one recognised him yesterday. We're here for a second day, waiting. Maybe it will happen today. Well, it was the second stage of a three-day prisoner swap, the largest of the war so far, in which Russia and Ukraine are due to hand over a thousand detainees each. The exchange was the only successful outcome of the recent face-to-face talks between the two sides. The Kremlin says it will publish its conditions for peace once the swap is complete. But the Russians have been accused of brutal mistreatment of the Ukrainian prisoners. Ukraine says 95% of those released have been tortured.

Petro Yatsenko is from the Ukrainian headquarters for prisoners of war. He spoke to Lise Doucet. Our released former prisoners of war have no sufficient food, they have no medical care in Russian captivity and no one representative of international Red Cross can visit them to check their health condition and conditions for their life and before they experience in everyday tortures. They need a very long period of rehabilitation and reintegration in Ukrainian society because they were isolated from any outer information and they were brainwashed by Russian propaganda too.

I know you want to guard the privacy of the prisoners, but can you share with us any of the details about what it was like in captivity, where they were kept, how many to a cell, what kind of physical abuse, torture they endured? The Russian captivity is not a way to preserve their lives. It's a way of survival. And we have the information that more than 95% of released prisoners of war experienced the tortures. On those scenes where there's a prisoner exchange, what about the Russian prisoners? How do they

look in terms of their conditions? Because they've been in captivity too. In Ukraine, we have five pretty special prisoners camp for Russian prisoners of war. And they are open for visits of international Red Cross, open for journalists visits and we organize in every month visits of a small group of journalists there so they can talk with the Russian prisoners of war and journalists Red Cross organization can look how it looks like. They have three meals per day, they have special medical care, they have a very strictly organized day, and of course we are trying to provide every point

of the Geneva Convention for them. You mention how you see how some of the prisoners have been brainwashed during their time in captivity. Can you explain what you've heard? The brainwash tactics of Russian places of detention, first of all, is to isolate the Ukrainians from any outer information. They, after three years in Russian captivity, they even don't know what happens, what's the actual news. When I asked what they know about the war conditions, they say that they have the possibility

to watch the Russian TV just one week or two weeks before they were released. Every time they have information from Russian side, nobody cares from Ukraine about them. Even their families refuse to take care about them. So it's a very, very total tactics. And they are forcing Ukrainian prisoners of war to study Russian nationalistic patriotic songs, to study Russian nationalistic poetry. And in case they can't remember even one word or one

sentence they were beaten or tortured. Petro Yatsenko of the Ukrainian headquarters for prisoners of war. I asked our correspondent in Kiev James Waterhouse about those claims of torture and brainwashing and the prisoner exchange itself. This is an agreement that seems to be holding and one could argue that's unsurprising as despite Russia's ongoing full-scale invasion prisoner of war exchanges have been the sole area of cooperation. There's been pauses in the past, in patches, but overall both sides have agreed to engage in localised ceasefires on certain parts of the border or front lines and prisoners are exchanged. Usually it's in a couple of

hundred. So given that we are day two of three, where we are seeing up to a thousand swapped, it's holding so far. That is significant, But here we are once again, you have human rights groups routinely accuse Russia of systematic torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war. I mean, you have Kiev again accusing Russia of cutting Ukrainian soldiers off from the outside world, depriving them of essential food and medical care. It's always difficult to gauge how Ukraine treats Russian prisoners of war. We've been to camps. They put on, obviously put on a good show, but crucially the Red Cross are given access here and not across the border.

But it's not to be dismissed, you know, the size of the soldiers being swapped. But I think any suggestion or hope that this could lead to further cooperation to bring a ceasefire at this moment in time feels like a bit of a reach. Yeah although it did continue this second stage despite that big Russian attack on Kiev overnight after the first stage Donald Trump said this could lead to something big but by the sound of it you don't think so? Well you can't rule that out but this war is full of strange parallels you know and ultimately it'll be a paradox that ends this war where you will have the day-to-day fighting

where hundreds of soldiers are killed or injured on a daily basis but you will have the almost civility of delegates, representatives sitting across a table somewhere in the Middle East in all likelihood to pause this war. And it's the same with prisoner of war exchanges. You have the elation, the relief of soldiers hugging relatives, making long-awaited phone calls alongside, you know, the case of Kiev last night. I mean, this was a city on fire last night. Hundreds of drones were taunting those trying to sleep underneath them.

There were 14 ballistic missiles launched at Ukraine as well overnight. These things pretty much happened in parallel. This is a conflict full of contradictions. And I think it is certainly a Western hope that these prisoner exchanges will snowball into something that resembles a compromise. But Russia, it's saying we want these exchanges to be completed before we publish our terms. And those terms of peace still amount to these maximalist demands that equate to essentially the capitulation of Ukraine.

James Waterhouse in Kiev and as we record this podcast we're getting reports of more Russian drones flying over the Ukrainian capital. One official said we are in for a complicated night. Despite a power cut hitting Cannes and the surrounding area, which French authorities say was caused by sabotage, the last day of the International Film Festival there still went ahead. And a film shot in secret in Iran won the top prize. That's why we chose for the Golden Palm a simple accident of Jaffa Panahi. The president of the Cannes jury, Juliette Vinoosh, awarding the palm door to dissident Iranian

director Jafar Panahi for It Was Just an Accident, based partly on his experiences in Iranian prisons. In his acceptance speech he urged all Iranians to unite and work for freedom. Afterwards he was asked how he felt. At this particular moment I thought about many things. I thought of my friends I spent time in prison with, or the young girls who went onto the streets during the Women's Life Freedom Movement. In doing this film I thought about how I could participate in a small way in everything they've done. I heard more about his win from Mariam Zokhti of the BBC Persian

service in Cannes. The film is about a group of former political prisoners in Iran. Two of them are women and they are in this film without compulsory hijab. Due to a simple accident in the street, these people encounter their former interrogator. Each one of these people in their own way seeks revenge on this interrogator. The point is, oh, the women in this film are without the scarf and veil and Jafar Panahi, in his press conference, said he was not asking them to wear that or not to wear that.

Sounds politically sensitive. How easy has it been for him to work? Actually, it was not easy at all because he didn't ask for any permission, official permission from the government. Mr Panahi has been arrested several times in the past and he has spent some time in prison. He was given even a very heavy sentence including 20 years of ban on working, filmmaking, traveling abroad or giving interviews to foreign media. But recently the ban has been lifted. However, he made this film underground and without any permission. And he faced a lot of challenges, as he said. Through the process, he was always worried about the possibility of his work being stopped.

But he managed to send the film material out of Iran and the editing was done outside of the country. And how is the win likely to go down in Iran? You know, Iranians view him as a very brave and courageous artist who has stood up against the limitations and the pressure and censorship. Younger artists, when they see his style of work, they totally get inspired by him. Narges Mohammadi, the Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner, who is a political prisoner as well, she has recently congratulated Jafar Panahi and praised his resistance and courage.

And if you go to Saudi Iranian, Persian, actually, language, social media, you can see in all platforms, people are actually, they are really happy and they are congratulating. And you have actually interviewed him. What's he like as a person? Actually, he's really brave, he's calm, and he knows what he is doing.

And he said, I'm going back to Iran after the Cannes festival is finished. It was really surprising to me because we all know that if he goes back to Iran, he may encounter some kind of pressure or they may take him to prison again or they potentially may arrest him because what he has done without their permission and making a film without a compulsory hijab. As you know in the streets of Iran, there are young people trying to take off their scarves and they are getting arrested. So we don't know what happens but he was actually very sure that he was going back and he was relaxed. Maryam Zokhti of the BBC Persian Service in Cannes.

South Korea says it's voiced concern to China about Beijing's attempt to establish a no sail zone in a shared section of the Yellow Sea. Here's Celia Hatton. South Korea's foreign ministry has confirmed Beijing is trying to bar its vessels from sailing inside a western part of the Yellow Sea, which lies between mainland China and the Korean Peninsula. The foreign ministry in Seoul said Beijing was attempting to bar ships from sailing near three metal structures it's built in the sea. China has said two of the structures are deep sea fish

farms, though some in South Korea believe Beijing is using them to expand its territory. Celia Hassen. Still to come on the Global News Podcast. It is possible to roll this board, but you shouldn't bet on it. Your odds of rolling this board are something like one in the number of stars in the universe." The software engineer who worked out the highest scoring combination in the word game, Boggle. I arrived here on foot, not in a bulletproof Mercedes. The words of Hungary's opposition leader, Péter Mogyar, after he reached the Romanian city of Aradia on Saturday at

the end of a 300-kilometre trek from the Hungarian capital Budapest. Hungary holds elections next year and opinion polls suggest he poses a serious threat to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's long hold on power. Romania has a significant Hungarian minority, but Peter Magyar said he was not there to campaign. We have not come here to get votes or for politics. We have come to visit our brothers and sisters outside of Hungary, to support them now and anytime and anywhere, because they are Hungarians too.

So why is he in Romania? A question for Nick Thorpe in the Hungarian capital. Peter Modya has been very successful really at basically touring the Hungarian countryside and now he's extended that, because obviously to get to this city, Oradea, just across the border he had to pass through about 280 kilometers of Hungary first. So he was visiting on the way different towns and villages, big crowds turning out to see him wherever he went, and those were followed on Facebook by tens of thousands of Hungarians. Now crossing the border into Romania it's a pretty bold thing to do because Hungarians in Romania, mostly in Transylvania, 1.2 million of them, they can vote in Hungarian elections and

traditionally something like 90% of them do back Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party. So he's basically reaching out to Hungarians in neighbouring countries, especially to this largest community in Romania, and saying, look, I'm also a conservative, I'm also someone who stands up for Hungarian interests, and if you vote for me next year, I'll stand up for your interests as well. Yeah, I've been reading that his campaign is the most serious challenge to Viktor Orban since he came to power in, what, 2010. Could he really unseat him?

He could and so far he's leading in opinion polls, pro-government opinion polls put him behind but all the other more independent or critical opposition opinion polls tend to put him in front. One of the weaknesses for Victor Orban has always been that while he can turn criticism from the left or from the liberal side, he can turn criticism from Brussels or from the EU or in the old days from the United States under Biden to his own advantage. His Achilles heel, Victor Orbán's Achilles heel in a way, is criticism from the right, from a fellow conservative and Peter Modjo came, he's really came out of the Fidesz party and is now accusing the Prime Minister in this 14 year, well nearly 16 years, in power of failing on education, of failing

to deal with inflation, failing the health service and failing ordinary Hungarians. It's a sort of a very cleverly placed message from Peter Modja saying that he's more patriotic than Viktor Orban. And if he wins next year, just tell us what that would mean for the direction of Europe. Well, Peter Madja and the TISA party, they are strong members, allies of the centre-right European People's Party, which of course Victor Orbán's party used to belong to until they were forced out for being too radical. So it would be another voice for Europe, a sort of centre-right, moderate conservative, a liberal conservative, if you like, kind

of Europe, rather than the Europe of nations, this alliance of more far-right or nationalist parties which Viktor Orbán now belongs to and represents. Nick Thorpe talking to me from Hungary. Now to Gaza where nearly an entire family is reported to have been killed in a single attack. An Israeli air strike on Friday night hit the home of married doctors, the Al-Najars, according to the hospital where they work. Nine of their ten children were killed. Only 11-year-old Adam survived. The father Hamdi was critically injured. Lise Doucet spoke to Dr Milena Angelova-Chi,

a Bulgarian doctor who treated the father, and spoke to the mother, Dr Ala Al-Najjar. This really, really tiny woman said to me, you know, you know what happened? We were bombed and my husband is a doctor and I have 10 children and nine of them are dead. Her only child that survived is 11 years old, is in a hospital. And you can't imagine with what incredible stoicism she was behaving. It's really difficult to explain, but she was incredibly calm through all that. LARISA And your husband, what is his condition now? So, it is life-threatening. And remember, in Gaza, there are no things to really treat, even survivable conditions. So, his condition is life-threatening. He has a severe traumatic

brain injury. He has a ruptured lung, which was operated on with a chest tube. He also has a broken arm. A lot of things are not available here to monitor the treatment of those conditions. I can't say it's hopeless, but it will be challenging and difficult, of course, for him to fall through. We do everything possible and we hope for the best for his sake and her sake and the one surviving child, but we don't know exactly what will happen. She kept saying like, you need to help him, help him, please, he's my family, he's all

I've got. And the 11-year-old boy, do you have reports on his condition? So this is something I heard from colleagues, so I can't say for sure these are the right details. But I was told he has a brain injury with a broken bone in his skull. The base of the skull is broken. And one of the arms is significant, a very important nerve is damaged. And the patients you see, the hunger they're going through. I can see their clothes are hanging. When they have a minute of free time, they serve pictures of chocolates and ice cream and fresh fruits.

They have not eaten fresh fruit or vegetables for months. You can see in their faces how their temples are all gone and their cheekbones are all, you know, sharp and their the skin is gray and you know despite all that the girls come with night's clothes and put an effort to put a makeup and put an effort to put a nail polish and you know it is incredibly humbling and inspiring to be around them. Dr. Milena Angelova, Chief of the NASA Hospital in Gaza. The Israeli Defense Forces said its aircraft struck a number of suspects who were identified operating from a structure adjacent to IDF troops in the area of Hanunis and that it evacuated civilians from this area before beginning operations there.

It is reviewing reports of civilian deaths. So will this incident affect Israeli public opinion compared to views at the start of the war? Our correspondent in Jerusalem is Wirah Davis. At the start of the war probably not as much because the overriding concern for most Israelis and probably still is is the return of their hostages, you know 20 of whom are thought to be or maybe slightly more living still alive in Gaza but I think the plight of the Palestinians, Israel's increasing isolation internationally and even the impact of the war on the Israeli economy, all of these things make a difference.

And recent opinion polls in Israel do suggest that the majority of Israelis now do favor an end to the war, a ceasefire agreement, even if that means negotiating with Hamas, because perhaps all of Israel's war aims have been achieved. And that is the opinion not just of people in the street and some politicians, but many former Israeli military leaders, former chiefs of staff of the IDF feel the same. The issue is that the Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu is quite adamant. I mean he's said many, many times the war will not end until Hamas is destroyed, is completely defeated. And you know Mr Netanyahu hasn't commented specifically on this incident, but there is no sign at all that he is prepared to buckle and give in to public demand and

call an end to the war. Bura Davis in Jerusalem. The COP30 climate summit in Brazil is less than six months away and social media there is awash with content celebrating rural pride and questioning the green agenda. On platforms like Instagram and TikTok, some farmers turned influencers have been gaining new followers by celebrating the might of Brazilian agriculture while dismissing questions over the toll it's taking on the planet. Critics say they are spreading disinformation. Do they have a point? Here's the BBC's climate disinformation reporter Marco Silva.

I was practically born on the farm. I am the third generation here on our rural property. That is Camila Tellis, a self-described rural producer with a background in public relations. My farm is my little corner of the world. When she's not tending to her farm, Camila posts videos on social media. She's part of a new wave of farming influencers in Brazil who post about rural pride. But Camila has carved a niche for herself with videos supposedly debunking fake news, what she describes as disinformation about the agricultural industry. When I talk about disinformation I mean a lot of

guesswork. It's people not really knowing what they are talking about. These could be celebrities or politicians who, for example, criticised the tall Brazilian agriculture is taking on the planet. In one TikTok I watched, Camila says people who oppose soybean production are actually opposing the development of Brazil. While soybeans remain one of the country's top exports, evidence shows hundreds of thousands of hectares of forests have been cleared to release land to grow them. She has become this emblematic case of effective use of social media for agribusiness support. Deborah Salles is the head of research at Netlab from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

She has been a guest in several podcasts that are related to agribusiness. So she has been like an expert. In a 2022 report, Netlab listed Camila as one of Brazil's leading influencers spreading disinformation about environmental topics. Netlab cited the TikTok you heard as evidence, along with other clips from her podcast appearances and media interviews. Camila rejects this accusation. I don't distort the facts.

If people analyse my videos, I don't present agriculture as something without mistakes. My point of view is as a rural producer. Critics say Camila cherry picks data to present a one-sided view of the agricultural industry. And I struggle to find a single post where she criticised the industry's environmental record. Instead, Camila suggests farmers have become a scapegoat for climate change. So we have an example of COP30. Several private jets will come to defend the environment. And then the blame always ends up falling on livestock farming.

By some estimates, Brazil ranks as the world's sixth largest emitter of greenhouse gases, which cause climate change. David Lapolla is a research scientist at the University of Campinas. If you look globally, most of the emissions come from burning of fossil fuels. In Brazil, most of the emissions come from land use change, deforestation and agriculture. From a global perspective, yes, agriculture is not the villain, but from the national perspective, yes, there is a lot of emissions to be cut. Ahead of COP30, a group of Amazonian farmers will be holding a parallel event, an agro-COP,

to, in their words, defend producers. But Camila says farmers should instead be at COP 30 as protagonists. For Deborah, the Netlab researcher, it's never been more important to understand how social media influencers like Camila are shaping this debate. All these influencers, they have been key for spreading the messages that we need to protect agriculture production at any cost. The problem is that when they downplay the impacts agribusiness have on environmental protection they are misleading users and followers.

Our climate disinformation reporter Marco Silva. It's more valuable than gold. It only grows above 3000 meters in the peaks of the Himalayas. And dozens of schools in a remote part of Nepal have been shut after hundreds of students and their parents left to gather this rare caterpillar fungus, which is prized as an aphrodisiac. Our South Asia regional editor Anbarasan Etirajan has the details. For families living in Nepal's Karnali province bordering Tibet, gathering the caterpillar fungus is a significant source of income. The annual gathering

season begins in mid-May. An official said although the schools were not officially closed, learning had stalled due to lack of students. Yarsagampa is the mummified body of the Himalayan batmoth caterpillar that has been invaded by a parasitic fungus. A kilogram can fetch thousands of dollars in China. Although there is no evidence, the small fungus is priced in traditional Chinese medicines as a tonic to increase vigor and called

the Himalayan Vyagra. The gathering of the highly priced Yartza Gampa also triggers turf wars between groups. Andrasan, Eti Raja. Finally, have you ever played the game Boggle? It's been around since the 1970s. The aim is to come up with the most words in a 4x4 grid of random letters. The randomisation means some layouts generate more possible answers than others. And now freelance software engineer Dan Van der Kam has worked out Boggle's highest possible scoring combination, harnessing some 23,000 hours of computing power.

His board has more than a thousand words, the longest being replastering. He told me how he solved this decades-old puzzle. His board has more than a thousand words, the longest being replastering. He told me how he solved this decades-old puzzle. People have written computer programs over the years to take a boggle board and a dictionary and find all the possible words on that boggle board. You can make computer programs like this run very quickly, and you can find out the score of all the words on the board. And so what I've done is I

found the highest scoring board for a particular dictionary and I proved actually that it is the highest scoring possible board. Any other board you would roll, it'll have fewer points on it, so this is the one. So it's a certain set of letters that land on the on the boggle board? That's right. It's 16 letters. It's a four by four grid and it is possible to roll this board but you shouldn't bet on it. You'd be much better off playing the lottery. Your odds of rolling this board are, you know, something like one in the number of stars in the universe. And how did you work it out? There's a technique called hill climbing that will produce high scoring boards, but you

don't necessarily know whether it produces the highest scoring board. And so what I've done this year is that I've proven that one of these particular boards that you find with hill climbing is in fact the very best board. The two things that really made this possible were coming up with some clever algorithms to avoid having to check every possible board. So that really sped it up and having cloud compute resources available made this a lot easier. Yeah, and you've been doing this a long time. Yeah, I've been thinking about this problem on and off for about 20 years. You know, I like to play boggle with some of my friends in college and

it just occurred to me one day, oh, I bet you could write a computer program to find the words on a boggle board. And that was kind of the friends in college. And it just occurred to me one day, oh, I bet you could write a computer program to find the words on a boggle board. And that was kind of the beginning of this. I certainly haven't been working on this constantly for 20 years. It's, you know, I haven't really touched this much in the past 15 years until it kind of came back

with a vengeance this year. It's been a really fun problem to work on and have in the back of my head. And I'm pretty excited that I've been able to make progress on it. Yeah, and tell us a little bit about this record-breaking board that you discovered. Yeah, it has, I want to say it's 1,045 words on it, at least using the dictionary that I've been working with, and it has it has 3625 points on it.

So you get one point for three and four letter words, two points for five letter words, up to 11 points for eight or more letters. So the longest word on this board is replastering, which is a pretty great word. It's got a lot of really fun words on it. It has integral, plate, replating, eating, eateries. There's a lot of great fun words on it. It has integral plate, replating, eating eateries. There's a lot of great words on this.

Software engineer and Bogle fan, Dan van der Kam. And that is all from us for now, but the Global News podcast will be back at the same time tomorrow. This edition was mixed by Nikki Bruff and produced by Marion Straughan and Siobhan Lihi. Our editors, Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye.