Ukraine says it has received the bodies of 1,000 soldiers from Russia in the latest exchange of those killed in the war as the nearly four-year-old conflict continues to exact a heavy toll on both sides.
Russia and Ukraine confirmed the exchange on Thursday, describing it as part of ongoing agreements reached earlier in the war to allow families to bury those killed on the battlefield.
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Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky said that “within the framework of the Istanbul agreements, the bodies of 1,000 dead Ukrainian soldiers have been transferred to Ukraine”, adding that “bodies of 38 dead Russian soldiers have been transferred to Russia”.
Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War confirmed the handover, saying in a statement that “repatriation events took place today, as part of which one thousand bodies were returned to Ukraine”.
Deep freeze follows Russian strikes on energy infrastructure
The exchange comes as the war, launched by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, shows little sign of abating, even as winter deepens and conditions worsen for civilians.
Ukraine’s state weather agency warned on Thursday that temperatures could plunge to as low as -30C (-22F) in the coming days, compounding the impact of Russian attacks on energy infrastructure.
The Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Centre said the coldest nights are expected between February 1 and 3, raising concerns about heating and electricity supplies already strained by repeated missile and drone strikes.
Russian attacks on power facilities have previously left millions of Ukrainians facing disruptions to heating, electricity and water, pushing parts of the country closer to a humanitarian crisis.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned on Wednesday evening that Russia was preparing fresh large-scale strikes on energy targets. Kyiv city officials said 613 buildings in the capital were without heating following recent aerial attacks.
Kremlin insists Moscow the only venue for Putin-Zelenskyy meeting
Against this backdrop, diplomatic manoeuvring continues, though prospects for a breakthrough remain uncertain.
The Kremlin said on Thursday that Moscow is the only venue under consideration for a possible face-to-face meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelenskyy, dismissing discussions of alternative locations.
The comments follow remarks by Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov, who said that Zelenskyy had expressed interest in meeting the Russian leader in person and that Moscow had never ruled out such contact.
Ushakov said the idea of a meeting has been raised several times, including during phone conversations between Putin and US President Donald Trump.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Zelenskyy is ready to meet Putin to discuss what he described as the most sensitive issues in Kyiv’s 20-point peace plan, including territorial questions and the future of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
White House “Border Czar” Tom Homan said federal immigration agents will conduct “targeted” rather than sweeping operations in Minnesota going forward. Homan is replacing controversial “commander at large” Gregory Bovino as head of operations in the state.
Germany midfielder Leon Goretzka says United States President Donald Trump “has managed to make us feel not only German, but also European”.
Goretzka, who plays club football for Bayern Munich, in an interview with Die Zeit newspaper published on Wednesday, spoke about the World Cup being hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico, and he suggested Germany and other European teams will be the favourites.
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“Others have caught up, but in the most important game in the world, we’re still ahead of every continent,” Goretzka said.
“Far from being left behind, Europe will show everyone what’s what on the field.”
The countdown to the June 11-July 19 football tournament has drawn calls for a boycott. Oke Gottlich, the president of Bundesliga club St Pauli and one of the German federation’s 10 vice presidents, last week said the time had come to “ seriously consider and discuss this”.
Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter also weighed in on Monday.
In his X post, Blatter quoted Mark Pieth – a Swiss lawyer specialising in white-collar crime and an anti-corruption expert, who called on fans to boycott the World Cup – and added, “I think Mark Pieth is right to question this World Cup.”
Pieth, who also chaired the Independent Governance Committee’s oversight of FIFA reform a decade ago, had initially been quoted in an interview last week with the Swiss newspaper Der Bund.
“I’m aware of the political debates,” Goretzka added. “Still, I expect it to be a great tournament. It will advance football there and convince many people that it’s a fantastic game.”
UpScrolled, a social media application created by Palestinian-Jordanian-Australian entrepreneur Issam Hijazi, has surged in popularity across several countries, including the United States, as many users looked for an alternative to TikTok, which was formally taken over by US-backed investors and companies last week.
With Larry Ellison, the owner of Oracle, who is a staunch supporter of Israel and a friend of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, acquiring a stake in TikTok’s US-based entity, social media users have expressed concerns about censorship of pro-Palestine posts on the popular app. TikTok’s global operation will still be run by its Chinese owner, ByteDance.
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On Wednesday, TikTok permanently banned Emmy Award-winning journalist and Al Jazeera contributor from Gaza, Bisan Owda, sparking outrage and boycott calls from her supporters. The app has also been accused of content censorship around unprecedented ICE violence in the US.
UpScrolled, which was founded only a year ago, surprisingly climbed to the top spot of US app downloads this week, ranking number one in the “social networking” category of Apple’s App Store free apps by Wednesday. It was also among the top apps downloaded by Apple users in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.
The app, meanwhile, is gaining thousands of new downloads as disgruntled TikTok users flock to the platform, pulled by its promise of “transparent tech”. The flood of new users momentarily crashed the platform’s servers over the weekend, UpScrolled reported.
Here’s what we know about the new app that’s stirring up the social media space:
Issam Hijazi [X/@iHijazi]
UpScrolled enables the trio of photos, short-form video and text posts, making it feel like a combination of X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram. Its interface is similar to X, and users can similarly like a post, comment under it or repost.
So far, users on the app appear to be using it more for text and photo posts, rather than for the short-form videos TikTok is popular for.
UpScrolled also has a “Discover Page” similar to Snapchat’s. By far the most popular topic on the Discover Page is Palestine. Hundreds of posts depicting the continuing suffering in the Gaza Strip, or standing in solidarity with Palestinians, are flooding the app.
Some high-profile figures joined the new flock of UpScrolled users, including Chris Smalls, the American labour activist and former Amazon Union organiser who joined others on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in July 2025 to try to break the blockade on the strip.
Jacob Berger, the Jewish-American actor who starred in the popular American crime series Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and who was also on the Freedom Flotilla, is also on the app.
Some users on the app earlier this week complained that video uploads were crashing. UpScrolled, in an update on the app on Thursday, said that was a result of more user downloads, and added that the bugs have been fixed.
UpScrolled was founded in July 2025 by Issam Hijazi, a Palestinian-Jordanian-Australian developer who formerly worked with Big Tech companies like Oracle and IBM. It is backed by Tech for Palestine, an advocacy project that funds pro-Palestine tech initiatives.
Hijazi, in an interview with tech news site Rest of World, said he was inspired to leave his Big Tech career behind and build an alternative amid Israel’s obliteration of Gaza, which was declared a genocide by a United Nations Commission of Inquiry. The rate of content censorship across the popular apps, Hijazi said, was a major driver.
“I couldn’t take it any more,” Hijazi is quoted as saying. “I lost family members in Gaza, and I didn’t want to be complicit. So I was like, I’m done with this, I want to feel useful.
“I found this gap in the market, with a lot of people asking why there is no alternative to the Big Tech platforms for their content, which was getting censored. So I thought, why don’t we build our own? I just rolled up my sleeves and built it,” he added.
In a report last year, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese accused IBM and several other Big Tech companies of complicity in what she called “Israel’s genocide”. Social media apps like Instagram, X and TikTok have faced accusations of shadow bans by users posting pro-Palestine content.
UpScrolled claims to moderate only illegal content, such as hard drug sales, but nothing else. Hijazi said the app’s algorithm is not designed to keep people scrolling, unlike TikTok and others.
“It’s not because we don’t know how: it is very easy to design the algorithms to do that,” Hijazi said in the interview. “But I don’t want to do that because I know the effect it can have on people, mentally, especially the younger generation.”
UpScrolled says its feed remains entirely chronological, a feature that has long been removed from other popular apps despite complaints.
Posts on the Discover Page are currently ranked based on engagement, although the team is experimenting with using AI to reorganise the feed, according to user behaviour.
On its website, UpScrolled says it wants to give users a place to “freely express thoughts, share moments, and connect with others”. The app belongs to the people who use it and “not to hidden algorithms or outside agendas,” the company says.
By Tuesday, estimates from the marketing intelligence firm Sensor Tower noted that UpScrolled had been downloaded about 400,000 times in the US and 700,000 globally since launching in June 2025.
The app saw a surge in US downloads beginning on January 22 – the same day TikTok signed a deal to create an American-controlled US version of its app.
Sensor Tower estimated that, as of Tuesday, 85 percent of UpScrolled’s downloads in the US had occurred between January 21 and 27.
On Wednesday, UpScrolled was number one in the “social networking” category in Apple’s US App Store, surpassing Meta’s Threads, WhatsApp and TikTok. It was the number six free social app on Google Play for Android users, where TikTok (and TikTok Lite) reign.
The app has also seen a high number of downloads in Canada, the UK and Australia.
“Crazy load on our servers. So exciting!” founder Hijazi posted on the platform on Sunday, after the site reported that soaring numbers of new users crashed its servers.
“Sorry about the errors and glitches, we are increasing our capacity to handle the load. We expect things to become more stable in the next 12-24 hours,” Hijazi wrote.
What are the censorship concerns regarding TikTok?
Since the TikTok US deal went live last week, the tag #TikTokCensorship has been trending on the US sites of social platforms like X and Instagram.
Users are accusing TikTok of suppressing videos in support of Palestine. The ban on Bisan Owda has only appeared to support their claims.
Many are also accusing TikTok of quelling content that’s critical of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), amid outrage over the force’s deadly crackdown on immigrants and US citizens alike. This week, ICE officials killed emergency nurse Alex Pretti, less than three weeks after killing another civilian, Renee Good. Others say any anti-Trump criticism is similarly being shadow-banned.
Meanwhile, California Governor Gavin Newsom said in a Tuesday post on X that he would investigate TikTok after users complained of being flagged for content about Jeffrey Epstein, the late convicted child sex offender alleged to have ties to numerous high-profile figures, including President Trump.
Separately, TikTok users have complained of video glitches on the app since last week’s business deal. Creators say they are seeing zero views on their videos and are experiencing slow uploads.
In a statement on Monday, TikTok said the glitches were caused by a “major infrastructure issue triggered by a power outage” at one of its US data centre partner sites.
Which other apps have surged in popularity in recent years?
Skylight, which launched in April last year, is another app that’s gaining prominence as a TikTok alternative.
The American short-form vertical video app has gained more than 380,000 users and saw an uptick in downloads over the weekend, according to reporting by tech website TechCrunch.
Tom Homan, United States President Donald Trump’s so-called “border czar”, on Thursday indicated a shift in immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota, but doubled down on the administration’s efforts to crack down on undocumented migrants despite mounting protests.
Speaking during a news conference from the Midwestern state, where he was sent after immigration enforcement officers killed two US citizens this month, Homan suggested he would seek to cooperate with local officials — who have opposed federal agents’ conduct towards immigrants and protesters.
Still, he largely placed the blame of recent escalations on the administration of former US President Joe Biden and the policies of local officials, saying that more cooperation would lead to less outrage and potentially a “drawdown” in federal agents.
“I’m staying until the problem’s gone,” Homan told reporters on Thursday, adding the Trump administration had promised and will continue to target individuals that constitute “public safety threats and national security threats”, while adding that those in the country without documentation are “never off the table”.
“We will conduct targeted enforcement operations. Targeted what we’ve done for decades,” Homan said. “When we hit the streets, we know exactly who we’re looking for.”
While Homan portrayed the approach as business as usual, immigration observers have said the administration has increasingly used dragnet strategies in an effort to meet increased detention quotas.
State and local law enforcement officials last week even detailed that many of their off-duty officers had been randomly stopped and asked for their papers. They noted that all those stopped were people of colour.
On the campaign trail, Trump had promised to target only “criminals”, but shortly after taking office, White House spokesperson said it considered anyone in the country without documentation to have committed a crime.
Homan pledged to continue meeting with local and state officials, hailing early “progress” even as differences remain. He highlighted a meeting with the State Attorney General Keith Ellison in which he “clarified for me that county jails may notify ICE of the release dates of criminal public safety risks so ICE can take custody”.
It remained unclear if the announcement represented a policy change. Minnesota has no explicit state laws preventing authorities from cooperating with ICE and the state’s prisons have a long track record of coordinating with immigration officials on individuals convicted of crimes.
County jails typically coordinate based on their own discretion.
Homan said more cooperation with local officials would allow “us to draw down on the number of people we have here”, adding ICE and border patrol staff were drawing up plans for such a drawdown.
Trump sent Homan to replace Greg Bovino, the top border patrol official, who was sent to the state as part of a massive enforcement operation, dubbed Operation Metro Surge, that has sparked widespread protests.
Homand hinted at internal changes, but did not provide further details, just saying “no agency or organisation is perfect”.
“President Trump and I, along with others in the administration, have recognised that certain improvements could and should be made. That’s exactly what I’m doing here,” he said.
“I want to make it clear ICE and [border patrol] officers are performing their duties in a challenging environment, under tremendous circumstances,” he said. “They’re trying to do it with professionalism. If they don’t, they’ll be dealt with. Like any other federal agency, we have standards of conduct.”
Homan later added that: “I don’t want to see anybody die — not officers, not members of the community and not the targets of our operation”.
Local officials have been pushing for independent state investigations into the killing of Good and Pretti, which have so far been blocked by the administration.
Critics have voiced concerns over Trump administration officials’ immediate claims that both Good and Pretti were threatening lethal force, long before any investigation had been conducted.
The Trump administration announced earlier this week that two border patrol officers involved in Pretti’s killing had been placed on administrative leave.
Israel has handed over the bodies of 15 Palestinians to the International Committee of the Red Cross in exchange for the final Israeli captive, whose remains were recovered by Israeli forces earlier this week, closing the chapter on this part of its more than two-year genocidal war on Gaza.
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza, said Palestinian authorities are still trying to determine whether the bodies of the Palestinians will be released at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis or at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City later on Thursday.
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On Wednesday, Israel laid to rest policeman Ran Gvili, who was killed during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attacks on southern Israel.
Of the 251 captives taken by Hamas and other Palestinian groups that day, Gvili’s were the last remains held in the Palestinian territory.
At his funeral on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Gvili as a “hero of Israel” and warned Israel’s enemies that they would pay a heavy price if they attacked again.
The return of all the captives from Gaza dragged on over the course of Israel’s war in a series of ceasefire and prisoner-swap deals as well as some mostly failed attempts to rescue them militarily.
The most recent set of captives-for-prisoners handovers was part of the ceasefire that took effect on October 10.
While all the captives held in Gaza have been returned to Israel, thousands of Palestinians continue to languish in Israeli prisons, many without charges or trials.
A July 2024 report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights found that Israel was holding about 9,400 Palestinians as “security detainees”, often without giving them a reason for their detentions, in facilities where abuses such as torture and sexual assault were rife.
In November, the rights group Physicians for Human Rights-Israel released a report stating that of the Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, at least 94 have died during detention from causes such as torture, medical neglect, malnutrition and assault. The report said the true number is likely much higher.
Dozens of bodies of Palestinian prisoners that have been returned in previous exchanges have shown signs of torture, mutilation and execution.
Meanwhile, Palestinians are awaiting the reopening of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, which Israel has been pushed by Washington to do as part of the current United States-brokered ceasefire with Hamas.
After the completion of the captive-prisoner exchanges, that agreement calls for a political transition in Gaza that will start with a committee of Palestinian technocrats in charge of day-to-day governance of the enclave.
Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said the group was ready to transfer the governance of Gaza to the committee.
“Protocols are prepared, files are complete and committees are in place to oversee the handover, ensuring a complete transfer of governance in the Gaza Strip across all sectors to the technocratic committee,” Qassem said.
The committee is to work under the supervision of the Board of Peace, created and chaired by US President Donald Trump. Its work promises to be difficult.
On Thursday, Gaza’s Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal warned that the besieged territory is experiencing an “unprecedented catastrophe” due to the lack of shelter and food as well as shortages of medical supplies due to a continued Israeli blockade.
