Freed Ukrainian POW tells his story
A recently swapped Ukrainian prisoner of war cries while calling his relatives after a prisoner exchange on the Ukrainian Russian border, on Jan. 31, 2024. Russia and Ukraine have exchanged about 200 prisoners of war each, the countries said Wednesday, despite tensions stemming from last week’s crash of a military transport plane that Moscow claimed was carrying Ukrainian POWs and was shot down by Kyiv’s forces.
Ukrainian Volodymyr Tsema-Bursov was captured a few months after Russia’s full-scale invasion and spent the next 20 months in Russian captivity. He is now back in Ukraine after being released in the biggest prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine since war began. And, Prabowo Subianto, a former army general with links to Indonesia’s days under dictatorship, is a favorite for Indonesia’s next president. But he will have to work overtime to convince skeptics that he has truly abandoned his autocratic ways. Also, Israel carried out a series of strikes in Lebanon on Wednesday after rockets launched from there killed and injured several people. As Israel and Hezbollah trade tit-for-tat strikes, a new French proposal aims to end the fighting. Plus, why do children struggle with long COVID-19?