Global News Podcast - Ukraine's war children hoping for return to normality

Episode Date: November 20, 2025

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. Also: Facebook and Instagram start closing Australian teenager's accounts ahead of the social media ban next month. A court in the Philippines has found a former mayor, Alice Guo, guilty of human trafficking linked to a scam centre in her town. As fears mount of a Chinese invasion, Taiwan issues instructions to its citizens of what to do if war breaks out. We hear from the son of one of the Nazi war criminals sentenced to death in the Nuremberg trials, 80 years after they began. And a new exhibition explores the quirky, stylised world of the American film director, Wes Anderson.The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: [e-mail]

This is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Jalil and it's 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 thought I was completely surprised and it seemed nothing like what I expected. I was completely caught off guard. We hear from the director Wes Anderson, who's renowned for his eccentric, quirky and stylish movies. Since 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. Severia 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. Severilla 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. It'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. In cities like Kiev, wartime interruptions are as regular as they are familiar. Here's Severi's mum, Mariana. I try to distract them.

We play, talk, I come up with activities, audio books, 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. They react to sounds, anything sudden, like something. 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. Hello? 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. difficult process. And the reason why the process is very difficult is because what we're

seen from the Russian Federation is not compliance with these international obligations like Geneva Conventions on the Conventions on the Rights of the Child, but the obstruction of the return process. He 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. But I really hope to go back home, to see my house, to lay in my bed, and remember all these memories ahead 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. James 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 maximum-list demands that Ukraine cedes large chunks of its territory

and slashes its army. Demands that Ukrainians have long dismissed is completely unacceptable. This comes as senior US military officials are in Ukraine for talks. Our defence correspondent, Jonathan Beale, is in Kiev 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 Wickoff, who is essentially President Trump's white-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 are 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. So a lot of this is speculation as to whether it is a peace plan that is backed by the administration, although we know Steve Wickoff 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. And 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 break. 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, and 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 criticize the Trump administration. They'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 Filipino 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 center where hundreds of people were forced to work or risk torture. Our Southeast Asia correspondent, Jonathan Head, told me more about her. 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 and behind it was this 36 building complex which last year was raided by the police

after a Vietnamese man escaped he'd 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 being 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. Clearly, 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. 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. I 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 wasn't in a very good position for that. But the fact that you fuse 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. Jonathan 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. And 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, 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 bans, because, like, that could mean limiting the comments or even the algorithms that you can see, just changing the way that you see your social media. So do you all think that you and your friends will find ways around the law? Definitely. 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 what, how hard they try, people are always going to find a way around it. The views are 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.

Their accounts are going to start being deactivated from the 4th of December. So, yeah, teens today, realizing 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. Katie Watson. Still to come on the Global News Podcast. I'm completely against the death penalty. But for my father, it was correct, because he would have really rotten my brain with his ideology. Facing your own family history, 80 years after the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals.

As 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 of China, it also includes instructions on how to deal with a military invasion. Faye Fun 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. We use a comic style illustrations and try to get it more accessible to the journal public.

So even children see the style of the booklet that we also want to read it. We try to portray 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 deep seek or T-talk or so-called, Little Red Book. And we are also giving people about full guidance of what should be included in their gobacks. So for any kind of emergency, no matter, it's an earthquake, natural disaster, or even the wartime situations that they can bring their own staff and go. And 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 be better to protect ourselves. So we are doing everything we can to better prepare ourselves. But I want to highlight the 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 life-fire shooting exercise to intimidate Japan. And in August, they also have the Marine Thai operation on the sea and their own vessels chasing the Philippine vessels. And

last year, 2024, We got 5,000 Chinese PLA aircraft actually surrounding Taiwan. So we are hoping to get our citizens prepare for different kinds of scenarios. As soon as possible, the civil defense handbook is actually the key point of to bring the awareness and build out awareness. Taiwanese security official Fei Fan Lin. It's 80 years since the Nuremberg trials began, the trials of 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. Opening 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 civilization 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 Kumisami spoke to Hans Frank's son, Nicholas Frank, who is the author of The Father, A Revenge, a Son's Judgment on his Nazi War Criminal Father. Newspapers 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 this newspaper, he went. to our mother, saying to her, if these pictures are true, our father will have no chance

to survive. And he was right. And you were able to visit him, weren't you, briefly, at Nuremberg? Shortly before the verdict 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 sinking, 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. You 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.

Your father died when you were young. There must be thousands of things you might have asked him if it survived. But I just wonder what the main question is. 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 in criminal and the truth will come out once upon a time. And this was my task to bring out the truth about my father. Nicholas Frank, talking about his Nazi war criminal father. While 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 Journal of AI

will displace their work entirely. And almost 4 in 10 have also said that they've already feeling the negative image. because of competition with generated material online, sabotage, 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 personalisation 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, you know, 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. But so we don't know what Genital 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. Nicholas Stambridge went to meet the director at the exhibition. We're entering the idiosyncratic world of director Wes Anderson. Over 700 objects at the Design Museum retrospective from his 30-year career showing his meticulous recurring visual style. A look, he says, that still astonishes him. I remember the first film I made, as soon as I thought, I was completely surprised and it seemed nothing like what I expected.

I was completely caught off guard because it was just as we had planned it. But the mixture, the chemistry of it was different. So when I see all of this stuff, it's that same experience but greatly enhanced. I never would have anticipated anything like this. And when we made Fantastic Mr. Fox, right now we're standing in front of these puppets from Fantastic Mr. Fox. While we started the film, we didn't know what even Mr. Fox was going to look like. And the result is nothing remotely like anything I would have envisioned. Produced by 20th Century Fox.

Are you scared of wolves? Scared? No, I have a phobia of them. Well, I have a thing about thunder. Why, it's stupid. I don't like needles myself. Where do you come from again? How'd you get in the sidecar?

I feel like I'm losing my mind. We're surrounded by the most beautiful puppets. A little sidecar and a motorbike. You've got Petey and his banjo, Mr. and Mrs. Fox, paintings from their den, and all the other characters, which I understand your daughter used to play with.

Yes, well, I, much of what is here in this exhibition, I kept in storage in our apartment in New York, and then also in England in our basement. Many of these things are objects that I've lived, with over the years, and my daughter played with them all the time. And in fact, there's quite a bit of damage that had to be repaired. That's just her work. But she was careful with them. They're fragile. Let's go through to the Grand Budapest Hotel. It's your most successful box office film winning BAFTAs and Oscars. And the design is really central to its success. So this is a three

meter wide candy pink model. This miniature hotel, I think the reason we made a miniature hotel is because the research that we did around the movie led us to a place that had all kinds of very specific qualities and that didn't actually exist. Produced by Fox Searchlight Pictures. Who are you? I'm zero, sir. The new lobby boy. Zero, you say? Yes, sir.

Well, I've never heard of you. Never laid eyes on you. Who hired you? Mr. Mosher, sir. Mr. Mosher? The costumes here, it brings me to what I feel is really the center of the movie, which is the cast. Rafe finds who holds the entire movie together in every way and others. So looking around here, people will see all your ideas.

Are you bound to always tell your stories in this distinctive style, do you think? When I start a film, for me, I'm starting something completely different from anything I've ever done before. I've got a new set of characters, a new setting. It's not necessarily my choice that it ends up being a recognizable style. It just sort of happens that way. And I think the next film I make, it may be less immediately recognizable as mine, but I always think that. Acclaimed film director, Wes Anderson, speaking to Nicola Stambridge.

And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast, you can send us an email. The address is Global Podcast at BBC.co.com. This edition was mixed by Rose Nguyen-Dorrell. The producers were Stephanie Zacherson and Rebecca Wood. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jeanette Dulele. Until next time. Goodbye.