CHERNIHIV, Ukraine ― Ukraine and Russia started their largest prisoner-of-war exchange on Friday, trading 390 prisoners in a swap that will continue on Saturday and Sunday. Friday’s POW exchange was the first batch of a 1,000-prisoner swap that both sides agreed on at the first direct talks between the two countries in three years, pushed by U.S. President Donald Trump. Kyiv kept the process highly secretive due to safety concerns for the first 270 soldiers and 120 civilians, who were about to be swapped on the border with Belarus. In the northern Ukraine city of Chernihiv, hundreds of women and children were anxiously waiting for signs that their loved ones would soon return to them. Then Trump woke up in Washington. “A major prisoner swap was just completed between Russia and Ukraine. It will go into effect shortly. Congratulations to both sides on this negotiation. This could lead to something big???” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday.  In reality, the first stage of the prisoner swap had not even started when Trump posted his message.   “[Trump] wanted to be the first to break the news about it,” a Ukrainian official told POLITICO on condition of anonymity. “Fortunately, [Trump’s rushed post] did not have any effect,” the official said. “But we usually do not report on the ongoing exchanges, as you never know with Russians. Our boys were too close to the enemy.” Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s defense minister, thanked Trump for his assistance in achieving the swap, as Kyiv is still trying to keep the U.S. president in efforts to broker peace in Ukraine. This prisoner swap has become the only big success of Trump-brokered direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. The first night of the exchange, Russia attacked Ukraine with 250 drones and 14 ballistic missiles, while claiming that it would present its own version of a peace proposal after the end of the POW exchange. Ukraine attacked Russia with 94 drones the same night. ‘THANK YOU, HEROES’ Several hours before the attack, hundreds of women, men and children roared with joy as they saw the first buses arriving at a meeting spot. For some of the crowd, that day would have become either the happiest day of their lives if they recognized their loved ones in the sea of underfed, exhausted and traumatized faces and shaved heads of former Russian prisoners. Or it would be yet another tragedy if they don’t. Some people were happy, waving flags and screaming “Thank you, heroes,” while others showed the newly arrived soldiers the portraits of their loved ones who could not be found.  “Almost six months of obscurity. We came here with the hope that at least someone might have seen him in Russian prisons. Maybe some of them will recognize him from a photo, or maybe they have heard his last name,” said Liubov Zabrodina, whose husband went missing at the war front in December 2024. As the buses stop and the first soldiers come out, there’s a happy scream heard nearby, where Tetiana, a young woman waving the Ukrainian marines’ flag, sees the face of her husband. “I haven’t seen him since 2022, since Mariupol. I did not know, my friends told me. I can’t tackle my emotions. My heart is in my toes,” Tetiana happily screams as a tired hand waves at her from the bus. Most of the 390 Ukrainian prisoners released on Friday had been in prison for three years. As they came out of the buses, some were ushered to a hospital for treatment. But some stayed to look at the hundreds of pictures of others, who are missing, like Zabrodina’s husband.  For many, they are the only light of hope. Russia still does not disclose the exact number of prisoners it has captured in Ukraine. National Guard soldier Vitaly did not recognize anyone in those pictures. Nervously smoking next to a bus, he admits he did not believe he would soon be free, even though there were signs. “They let us bathe for 20 minutes instead of the usual five. They gave us new clothes. But I still refused to believe until we landed in Gomel [a city in Belarus near the border with Ukraine],” Vitaly said. “Russians liked to trick us while transferring between the prisons. They told us they were going home. But we weren’t. I guess it was funny to them,” the soldier, who spent 22 months in Russian prisons, added. As Vitaly was figuring out how to get a new phone and call his wife, Ukraine was preparing for the second day of the swap on Saturday. While hundreds of mothers and daughters will come up again to an undisclosed location in Chernihiv with hope, more than 8,000 Ukrainians illegally kept in Russian prisons are waiting for their turn to be freed.

PARIS ― French President Emmanuel Macron is celebrating a record-high wave of foreign investment in France today. Macron will seal investment deals for €20 billion as he gathers CEOs from all over the world at the Versailles palace for the annual “Choose France” kermesse, according to the president’s office. His office also confirmed €20.8 billion of investments in the artificial intelligence sector, which are part of the €109 billion investment package Macron promised at the Paris AI summit earlier this year. This year’s record amount of investments is especially welcome news for France as it grapples with sluggish economic growth, works to cut its massive budget deficit and braces for the economic consequences of the trade war with the U.S. Overall investment in Europe is dropping, especially from U.S. companies. Despite transatlantic tensions, several U.S. groups are expected to announce major investment projects, including logistics group Prologis, which will invest around €6.4 billion in new logistics facilities and data centers, and Amazon (€300 million). British digital bank Revolut will also invest €1 billion and ask French authorities for a banking license, while Spanish telecom infrastructure operator Cellnex will invest €2.5 billion. “When we take decisions that may not be the most popular, but that are coherent to make France more attractive … we succeed,” Macron said Monday morning as he visited a Daimler bus factory before heading to Versailles. During the rest of the day in Versailles, Macron will have one-on-one meetings with CEOs, attend roundtables on AI and critical minerals, and host a sumptuous dinner with executives and ministers in Versailles’ famous hall of mirrors. He will also attend a dedicated session to attract foreign movie producers to shoot in France as cinema risks becoming a new battleground in the trade war with the U.S. Macron has been organizing the “Choose France” event since he took office to showcase France’s economic attractiveness and make the point that the economic reforms he has passed during his tenure have transformed France into a more business-friendly country. France ranked as Europe’s most attractive country for foreign investors in an annual EY survey released last week. According to the study, the country registered a 14 percent drop in foreign investment last year but kept its pole position as its main rivals in this race ― Germany and the U.K. ― experienced a similar fall.

Hamas will be freeing six Israeli hostages on Saturday, in exchange for the liberation of hundreds of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, as tensions with Israel escalate in the West Bank. The hostages include  Tal Shoham, 40, Avera Mengistu, 38, Eliya Cohen, 27; Omer Shem Tov, 22; Hisham Al-Sayed, 36, and Omer Wenkert, 23, according to reports from the Associated Press. Five of them have been released so far, with the sixth — Hesham al-Sayed — expected to be released later in the day. The hostages have been held in captivity in the Gaza Strip by the militant group since its attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Their release comes amid a rapid escalation in tensions between Israel and Hamas, as violence in Tel Aviv and the West Bank threaten a fragile cease-fire deal in Gaza after almost 16 months of war. On Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the military to carry out an “intensive operation” in the West Bank after national police reported the explosion of three empty buses near Tel Aviv on Thursday.  After the explosions, Hamas released the remains of four dead Israeli hostages — but tensions escalated after it was revealed that the militant group had handed over the wrong body claimed to be the remains of Shiri Bibas, an Israeli mother of two.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that he could impose tariffs on auto imports beginning April 2, a move that would further strain trade relations with North American neighbors, Europe and the rest of the world. Trump made the statement in response to a reporter’s questions about when he could follow through on a previous threat to impose auto duties. “Maybe around April 2,” Trump said during an executive order signing ceremony in the Oval Office. That would be one day after a slew of trade reports on potential tariff actions are due at the White House under an executive order he signed on Inauguration Day. Context: Last year, the United States imported $471 billion worth of auto products. That included $214 billion worth of cars, $192 billion worth of parts and $65 billion worth of trucks, buses and special purpose vehicles. The biggest foreign supplier of cars was Mexico ($49 billion), followed by Japan ($40 billion), South Korea ($37 billion), Canada ($28 billion) and Germany ($25 billion). Mexico, Canada and South Korea currently have duty-free access to the United States for most of their cars, assuming they meet the auto “rules of origin” provisions under the free trade agreements they have with the United States. However, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement is already in danger of becoming irrelevant because of Trump’s threat to impose a 25 percent tariff on Mexico and Canada due to concerns about border security. The president initially threatened to impose those tariffs earlier this month but paused them until March 12 as government leaders negotiate. On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order that sets the stage for him to impose country-by-country reciprocal tariff rates in the coming weeks or months, based on the an assessment of each country’s tariffs and other trade barriers. Any auto tariffs could potentially be in addition to those reciprocal tariff rates.

Gabriel Gavin covered the fall of Nagorno-Karabakh for POLITICO, and the following excerpts are taken from his forthcoming book on the conflict, “Ashes of Our Fathers: Inside the Fall of Nagorno-Karabakh.” Ruben Petrosyan was getting ready for work when he heard the first explosion. The father of three had a desk in the unassuming office building that housed Nagorno-Karabakh’s security services. For weeks, he and his colleagues had known something big was coming. They knew it when their wives came back empty-handed after lining up at the shops for rations of bread and sour cream. They knew it when troops on the contact line spotted a massive Azerbaijani build up. And they knew it on Tuesday September 19, 2023, when the war started.  Minutes before the first barrage began, up in the hills, volunteers and conscripts serving in the Nagorno-Karabakh Defence Army began noticing that the Russian peacekeepers who stood between them and enemy lines were jumping into vehicles and leaving in a hurry. Across the dusty gulf of no-man’s-land, they could see camouflage netting being pulled off Azerbaijani military hardware and ambulances lining up on the asphalt roads leading to the positions opposite, flanked by barbed wire and landmines. Ruben’s wife, Nouné, had taken their two girls to the dentist. He grabbed his jacket and ran out of the house to go and pick them up. An air raid siren was ringing out all over the city, families were racing to the shelters, shops pulling down their metal shutters. The streets were a picture of chaos and confusion, the roads choked with parents trying to pick up their children from schools and kindergartens across town. Ruben found his family, took them to a shelter under a church next to the security services building, then went into work. They didn’t know it yet, but Nouné and the children would spend the next six days there.  As the Russians abandoned their posts — reneging on their pledge to protect the breakaway region following a war in 2020 — Nagorno-Karabakh’s troops dug in for what would be the final battle in three decades of fighting over the territory, inside Azerbaijan’s internationally-recognized borders but held by Armenian separatists since the fall of the Soviet Union. Within a week, local forces had been overwhelmed and the entire population was packing its bags to flee, taking what few possessions they could pack into cars or strap on the top of buses as they did. The violent end of Nagorno-Karabakh may have been a sign of Russia’s diminishing influence as a result of its catastrophic invasion of Ukraine, but it was a personal defeat too for the then-president of the European Council, Charles Michel. At the same time as Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was negotiating new fossil fuel deals with Baku, the bloc’s frequently sidelined other leader was trying to take on the role of mediator in the country’s conflict with Armenia. The mild-mannered Belgian, an ex-prime minister, was theoretically in charge of the EU’s foreign policy but, in practice, spent his time picking individual issues to weigh in on. For nearly two years, whenever journalists reached out to Michel’s office with queries about some aspect of European affairs, they were batted away with a simple answer: He was busy trying to prevent a war in the South Caucasus. Eyeing the power vacuum created by Russia’s strategic collapse in its former imperial hinterlands, this was an opportunity for the EU to step up, bolster its influence and replace Moscow’s brutal realpolitik with values-based humanitarian considerations. But, despite efforts to build relations with both sides, Michel’s campaign suffered from a fundamental failure to understand who he was dealing with — or how high the stakes were. If Armenia and Azerbaijan were talking, the Eurocrats concluded, at least it meant they weren’t shooting at each other. But, in reality, they were doing both. The near-daily clashes claiming hundreds of soldiers’ lives along the line of contact continued unabated, and EU officials, determined not to lose their role as impartial facilitators, refused to comment on who was to blame. Whenever there was even a hint of criticism aimed at Baku, Azerbaijan’s most prominent commentators would loudly warn that the EU was losing its perceived neutrality.  To speak to officials in Brussels was to enter a parallel universe where everything was moving in the right direction. Careful diplomacy was the only way to prevent misunderstandings, they had opined in 2022, when Azerbaijan launched its Two Day War against Armenia. The talks were really promising, they insisted a few months later, as the blockade began and people started to starve. Peace, they maintained, had never been closer—just as it seemed more than ever like another war was on the cards. Every move Azerbaijan made to bring about the inevitable showdown shifted the frame of reference for diplomacy; they might have imposed the blockade but they’ve at least now agreed to let the Red Cross operate, so that’s a positive development, the thinking went. Baku was taking three steps forward and winning plaudits whenever it moved a millimeter back.  The heart of the problem was that the people in the room simply weren’t qualified to deal with the conflict they had waded into. Wars in and around Europe for almost the entire post-World War II history of the continent had been dealt with either by individual member countries, by the U.S. or, more recently, by NATO. There simply wasn’t the institutional knowledge or understanding of how to conduct this kind of high-stakes foreign policy among officials in the European Council or the European External Action Service. Nagorno-Karabakh’s troops dug in for what would be the final battle in three decades of fighting over the territory, inside Azerbaijan’s internationally-recognized borders. | Srtinger/Getty Images In the arena of Western politics where they’d cut their teeth, the worst imaginable outcome was that a poorly phrased missive might rile an EU country’s prime minister or upset an industry lobby group. Now, they’d inserted themselves into a bitter ethnic dispute where the worst thing that could happen was somebody burning down your house and cutting your head off. That was simply unimaginable for career diplomats who put total faith in the idea that no problem was too big to be sorted out over a plate of sandwiches in a Brussels meeting room.  And while the EU had been represented in talks over other international crises, like the Dayton Accords that ended the Bosnian War, it had played second fiddle to more serious diplomatic services like those of the US, France and Britain. Now, Brussels thought it had what it took to run the show. That paradigm counted doubly for Michel. His team constantly talked up his credentials as the former prime minister of Belgium. But being at the helm of a tiny Western European nation with no notable active foreign policy conflicts or international disputes did not instantly turn a lifelong centrist politician into a titan on the world stage. Worse still, he wasn’t even a titan in his own office. As European Commission president, von der Leyen wielded far more practical power than Michel did in his largely symbolic role. And she was set on doing her gas deal with Baku, no matter whether it compromised Michel’s ability to act as a mediator or not. The pair had a famously fractious relationship, both vying to position themselves as the true owner of key issues like foreign affairs. In 2021, during a joint meeting with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, von der Leyen was visibly shocked when her Belgian colleague darted in to grab the only available chair opposite the Turkish president, relegating her to a nearby couch. But, as the offensive began, triggering the mass exodus from Nagorno- Karabakh, Michel dropped what had been his flagship issue faster than anyone could have expected. Apart from an initial call for restraint and respect for the rights of the Karabakh Armenians on Twitter, he almost never again commented on the issue publicly. Through the 24 hours of fighting, and the four days of chaos and uncertainty that followed, those in the Nagorno-Karabakh security services had tried to do their jobs as best they could, coordinating the response and tracking the enemy troops getting closer and closer to the capital. Now they’d done all they could. Ruben Petrosyan had left the office to try and gather what he could from his house, in a suburb where there had been sightings of Azerbaijani forces. There was a suitcase by the door, stuffed with all the pictures Nouné had taken down off the walls, along with documents and some essentials for their children. It had been there since after the 2020 war. Now, friends, cousins and colleagues were ringing around desperately trying to work out how to make their escape. The Facebook pages and message groups that they’d used to swap scant supplies during the blockade suddenly lit up again.  “Doesn’t anyone have two litres of petrol? That’s how much it should take to get to Kornidzor.”  “Who has a truck that can carry furniture? I can pay.”  “Is anyone from Berdashen village? My mother lives there and I can’t get in touch with her.”  Already having been let down by Russia, the murderous, disinterested state that had once claimed to be their ally, other Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians began wondering whether they had been truly left to fend for themselves. After 24 hours on the road fleeing his homeland, a 58-year-old former security guard called Spartak had some questions of his own. “Everyone is saying they care about us, but where are they?” he asked, sitting in the leafy garden of a hotel serving as an emergency shelter. “Where is France? Where is America? Where is Charles Michel?” Ashes of Our Fathers: Inside the `Fall of Nagorno-Karabakh is published Jan. 9, 2025, by Hurst and Oxford University Press.