Global News Podcast - Man detained after Russian general's assassination

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

Russia has detained an Uzbek man suspected of assassinating an army general. Russia says the suspect was recruited by Ukraine. Also: The UN warns Syria is unable to cope with large numbers of refugees returning home.

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I'm John-Etta Chalile and at 14 Hours GMT on Wednesday the 18th of December these are our main stories. Russia has detained an Uzbek man accused of assassinating a senior general in Moscow on behalf of Ukraine. The United Nations expresses concerns about the expected large scale return of refugees to Syria. Two of Japan's biggest car makers, Nissan and Honda, are considering merger talks because of increased competition from Chinese electric vehicle makers. Also in this podcast, Polish prosecutors seek a Europe-wide arrest warrant for a former

deputy justice minister accused of misusing state funds. And? The bear was up on this deck here testing the door. What did you do? You use your vehicle horns and you chase him in a desirable direction, which in this case would be away from town. How melting sea ice has drawn polar bears closer to people. melting sea ice has drawn polar bears closer to people. A day after a senior Russian general was assassinated in the heart of Moscow, Russia's security service, the FSB, says it has detained a 29-year-old man from Uzbekistan over the killing, saying

he acted under instructions from Ukraine. General Igor Kirilov died alongside his assistant when a bomb went off outside his apartment on Tuesday. He was in charge of the force protecting Russia's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and had been accused of using chemical weapons in Russia's war in Ukraine. Svetlana Petrenko is a spokeswoman for the investigative committee which looks into major crimes in Russia. During interrogation he explained that he was recruited by the Ukrainian Special Services. On their instructions he arrived in Moscow and received a homemade

explosive device. He placed it on an electric scooter, which he parked at the entrance of the residential building where Igor Kirilov lived. To monitor servicemen's home, he rented a car-sharing vehicle in which he installed a video surveillance camera. BBC Monitoring's Russia editor Vitaly Shevchenko told us more about the arrest of the Uzbek suspect. We have got statements from both the investigative committee and also the Russian Federal Security

Service and also a video published by the security service showing the apparent perpetrator, the man himself, and all of them are basically saying the same thing, that this man, a citizen of Uzbekistan, bought a scooter. Then several months later, and this operation apparently took several months, he received parts for the bomb, which he assembled, then parked the scooter outside General Kirilov's house, set up a camera which was live streaming to the Uzbek man's alleged handlers from the Ukrainian security service. So when on Tuesday morning, they saw General Kirilov emerge from his house, the Uzbek suspect pressed a button detonating

the bomb that killed the general. According to the man we can see in that video published by the Russian security service, he was allegedly promised $100,000 for killing the general and also a chance to move to the EU and settle in the EU. Whether any of that is true is of course another matter, but it's very significant that the Russian security services are saying that Ukrainian agents have been able to organize the killing of a senior and very important figure. Ukrainians, they are reluctant to go on the record officially and issue official statements via named representatives saying

we did it. But what they do and what they've done in the case of General Kyrgyzlov as well, various unnamed sources in the Ukrainian security services, they speak to the media and say that this is us, we did it. But officially, Ukraine tries to maintain a certain distance, but it's very significant that Russia is now pointing the finger of blame at Ukraine. Ukraine, of course, would argue, if it was to argue, would say that it's defending itself in response to the Russian invasion and it is interesting that this killing came just a day after the Ukraine Secret Service charged the

general in absentia. Well the timing is really interesting. On Monday the Ukrainian security service, the SBU, said that General Kirillov was responsible for the use of banned chemical weapons against Ukrainian forces. For example, hand grenades containing CN and CS tear gas dropped from Russian drones into Ukrainian trenches. That's according to the SBU. So clearly, Ukraine is interested in eliminating people like General Kyrgyzlov. And also, it would be interested in sending out a message to other figures in the Russian military saying, we can get

you wherever we want. We are lethal. We can get you right in the heart of Moscow. Be afraid and look over your shoulder. Vitaly Shevchenko, the sudden collapse of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria earlier this month led to scenes of rejoicing in Damascus and other cities and the return of homesick Syrians longing for an end to 13 years of civil war. It also prompted a number of European countries to suspend asylum claims from Syrians,

even as great uncertainty remains about how the Islamist rebels who overthrew Mr. Assad will govern the country. Now, a senior United Nations official on a visit to Damascus has warned that Syria is not stable enough for the large-scale return of refugees. Amy Pope, who's head of the UN's International Organization for Migration, told the BBC that without humanitarian assistance, sending people back would further destabilise Syria. We know that there are people who have been longing for home for years, and this is an important opportunity for them. At the same time

because of the significant humanitarian needs, because of the destruction to infrastructure, to health care, to schools, to houses, because of the number of unexploded ordinances around the country, an influx of people coming in in large, large numbers at this moment in time could actually destabilise the country at a moment where they're trying to get their feet. So our concern is not about people going home. Our concern is that if people come home in large numbers early on, it could actually undermine the very fledgling new government that exists and could create pressures for

people to leave again. Our correspondent in Damascus, Lina Sinjab, says in a nation shattered by years of war, economic crisis and last year's devastating earthquake, the scale of the challenge is immense. There are nearly 6 million Syrians who have been forced to leave due to Assad atrocities over the course of the last decade. And most of those wanting to return, especially those in Turkey, in Lebanon, who are living in difficult conditions, many of whom are living in tents, especially in Lebanon. But for them to come back, they need their homes back, they need the economy, they need jobs to work in.

And that's for the new interim government and the de facto leader, Ahmad al-Sharah. They won't be able to deliver on their own. They need international support, they need the international community, and first of all they need the sanctions imposed by the U.S. and the EU to be lifted. Those sanctions were tailored against the government of Bashar al-Assad because of atrocities against Assad. There are other designated sanctions that are headed to members of the regime, but there

are sanctions on the country that blocked the money coming in, blocked aid to rebuild the country coming in. And that's a priority for the government and for Syrians and those refugees who want to come back first. Lina Sinjab. And following the rapid developments in Syria, the BBC World Service has launched a news and information service for people in Syria and neighbouring countries. It will be broadcast mainly in Arabic, but there will also be some programmes in English. The service is on FM on 93 MHz and on medium wave on 730 and 639 kilohertz.

Last month Holly Bowles and Bianca Jones from Australia, both 19, travelled to Southeast Asia to celebrate their graduation. What should have been the trip of a lifetime for the best friends ended in tragedy. They were among six tourists who died after drinking alcohol thought to have been laced with methanol at a hostel in Laos. Holly's father, Sean Bowles, wants to make other travellers aware of the risks of methanol poisoning. He's been speaking to my colleague Emma Barnett. It's something that you wouldn't wish upon anybody. What we're going through at the moment, it's just horrendous you know when you lose your daughter at such a young age it's um I don't think there's anything worse they were having an unbelievable time they were just having so much fun um and doing what two 19 year old girls

should be doing it was just horrendous for it to end the way that it did. If I look at accountability people have been, in total I believe eight people, working where they were staying. The Laos government say it's conducting investigations to find causes of the incidents and will bring perpetrators to justice. What is your view of that process and how much confidence do you have? We absolutely want whoever is responsible brought to account and brought to justice. And we're going to do everything that we can to make sure that is the case because someone, somewhere has done the wrong thing and they need to be held to account. So we will put as much energy when the time is right

into doing that. As far as how confident I am, we've got the Australian Federal Police who have been with us from the start, who have been outstanding. They are still in contact with us. I know that they've offered their assistance to the Lao police, which I don't believe to date has been accepted, but we certainly hope that they do. Have you had any contact from the Lao authorities? Have you had any support in your mission to try and raise awareness or any feedback on that front? Not from the Lao authorities, no. They reached out through the Australian Federal Police and offered their condolences, but that's as much as we've got from them today.

S1 I'm sure you've gone over this a million times in your mind. There's very little that your girls, your daughters could have done differently. They're in a bar, they're having a great time, we imagine. S2 Yeah, look, they were doing what hundreds and thousands of other travelers... I've done it. I'm sure you've done it. Absolutely, yeah, I've done it. I was in Thailand with Bianca's father 25 years ago. Really? Gosh, I didn't realize that you had that connection, that you traveled together as the dads and your daughters had followed too.

Well, I'm sure you're both trying to hold each other up. When we're together, there's some comfort. the dads and your daughters had followed suit. Well, I'm sure you're both trying to hold each other up. When we're together, there's some comfort. It's just bizarre to be going through the same thing with your best friends. But we are and just being together and just talking just helps us get through the days. Sean Bowles, the father of teenager Holly Bowles, who died from suspected alcohol poisoning in Laos. It's a town known as the polar bear capital of the world, Churchill in northern Canada. Climate change is a danger to both the bears and

the people living there. Melting sea ice is forcing the dwindling and often hungry bear population to spend more time on shore closer to humans. Our science correspondent Victoria Gill went to Churchill with a team of polar bear researchers. We're coming up to the cabin here. I caught one of the bears trying to get in. Oh really? It's hungry. All bears are hungry right now. Ian Van Nest is a ranger for the Polar Bear Alerts programme in Churchill, Manitoba. It's

his job to move bears away from the town and from people. The bear was up on this deck here testing the door. What did you do? You haze them, right? You use your vehicle horns, crocker shells and you chase them in a desirable direction which in this case would be away from town. In a warming Arctic, living alongside polar bears is becoming even more complicated. So while Ian and his colleagues keep bears and people apart, conservation scientists head to Churchill every year because as the sea ice forms here at the start of winter, the bears gather, waiting. For polar bears, sea ice means food.

Alisa McCall is from the organisation Polar Bears International. It gives them access to their main prey, seals. And polar bears need a ridiculous amount of calories to function out there on the Arctic sea ice and they can only get that amount of calories from seal blubber. The ice-free summer period, when bears aren't able to hunt, is now about a month longer than it was in the 1980s. And in that time, this area has lost about half its polar bears. This was the first area where we could link the loss of sea ice to changes in polar bear

populations. Monitoring and studying polar bears here is a research team that we're tagging along with on the subarctic tundra a few miles from Churchill. About an hour into our trip a young male bear approaches. There's a polar bear under our tundra boogie right now. He's very curious about us. Oh, my heart's really beating. I mean, they're intensely curious about anything new in their environment. They want to check it out.

That's Polar Bears International's Jeff York. If bears are spending more time on land, does that mean there's more of a period where they're likely to be closer to people? It definitely increases the probability. So the longer bears are on shore, the more opportunity they have to interact with people, and the longer they might need to start looking for alternative sources of energy and food. And sometimes those sources are us.

So for now, Churchill has to deal with hungry polar bears waiting for longer on shore. But in the long term, the sea ice that brings the polar bears and thousands of tourists here every year is melting away. What I've seen is that the weather has become very unpredictable. You don't know what you're going to get. Dave Daley runs Wapusk Adventures,

and he's raced sled dogs across the Arctic. We've adapted. I have my sleds that I designed to go on the snow, and then I built four carts that mimic the sleighs, but on wheels. The disappearance of the sea ice here could transform this environment. That's why a new research facility that opened just this year is pumping cold water from the Hudson Bay

into the laboratory to study it. Professor Fei Yu Wang is a senior researcher at the new Churchill Marine Observatory. With projecting the next few decades, the bay will be open ocean all year round. By the meantime, it also opens up opportunities for shipping, for other development. Because essentially that seaway has been blocked by the ice. Exactly.

And that ice is retreating. This is a town preparing for a less icy future. But the fate of its polar bears depends on us and whether we can reign in rising temperatures and preserve that sea ice that they depend on. That report by Victoria Gill. The goat was erected for the first time in 1966. It's 13 metres tall, 7 metres long and weighs 3 tonnes and it's a genuine work of art.

The peculiar Swedish Christmas tradition that's become the target of arsonists. World of Secrets is where untold stories are exposed, and in this new series we investigate the dark side of the wellness industry. Following the story of a woman who joined a yoga school only to uncover a world she never expected. I feel that I have no other choice. The only thing I can do is to speak about this. Where the hope of spiritual breakthroughs leaves people vulnerable to exploitation. You just get sucked in so gradually and it's done so skillfully that you don't realise. World of Secrets, the bad guru. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts. You're listening to the Global News podcast. Two major Japanese

carmakers, Honda and Nissan, have been holding talks, including on a possible merger on how to better compete against fast-growing electric vehicle manufacturers, particularly Chinese ones and Tesla. If Nissan and Honda did merge, they could create the world's third biggest auto group by vehicle sales after Toyota and Volkswagen. The talks come at a time of concern about what Donald Trump's return as US President would mean for the global car industry. Our business reporter, Suranjana Tiwari, told us more about what's being discussed.

These discussions were between the two auto giants were first reported by Japan's Nikkei newspaper. They're understood to be in the very early stages and there's no guarantee that a deal will be struck. But really this is the clearest sign yet of some sort of reorganisation in Japan's auto industry in the face of immense challenges posed by car makers like Tesla but also Chinese manufacturers of electric vehicles in particular and this isn't the first time that the two manufacturers have collaborated in fact they agreed to collaborate on some aspects of making electric vehicles with that announcement coming back in March but these talks

seem to be around deepening those ties. The two car makers are Japan's number two and number three automakers. And this would create a formidable domestic rival to Toyota, which is, of course, Japan's largest automaker. And this would also help Nissan and Honda, if they were to merge, to make investments that would allow them to compete against electric car makers. That's right. I mean, some analysts that we spoke to today did say this is very good news, merge to make investments that would allow them to compete against electric car makers? That's right. I mean, some analysts that we spoke to today did say this is very good news because both companies are facing significant challenges. And we saw on the stock market that there was a great deal of optimism around a potential merger. Again, it's not confirmed. It is a potential merger. Shares in Nissan surged more than 20% in Tokyo

trade before having to be suspended, whereas Honda's shares were actually down 1.6%. And that gives us some indication about the optimism around the smaller company, which is Nissan, and how a potential merger might actually change things for Nissan. As you mentioned a merger would allow them to make some more and perhaps better investments and it would also reduce costs but of course there are always issues like having to make job cuts in these situations as well. Most of all aside from the competition the state of the global economy is also a real concern. Borrowing costs have been high for both these carmakers and demand has been down in both Europe and the US. And one analyst we spoke to said that even if a merger comes through,

these companies are facing so many challenges, it might be a little too late. He described it as just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Surinjana Terwari. Now another story involving one of the world's most recognisable car brands. The BBC has seen evidence that the multinational corporation which owns Jaguar Land Rover arranged for a whistleblower to be sacked for publishing concerns about the safety of electric cars it helped to design. Confidential emails between executives at companies owned by Tata Group reveal they retaliated against the engineer involved. He'd posted on the social media site Reddit that lives were being put at risk. Jaguar Land Rover and Tata Group have declined

to comment. Here's our Financial Investigations correspondent Andy Verity. Huzzah Denley, who's a mechanical engineer, first raised concerns internally while working for Tata Group's global engineering consultancy, Tata Technologies. In test driving electric cars designed by Tata for the new Vietnamese carmaker, Vinfast, he says he identified poor components in the car's suspension and steering, some of which were snapping off or otherwise failing. He proposed solutions, but says they were rejected, so he resigned. Then in May this year, when he'd been separately

hired by Jaguar Land Rover, he decided to speak out and post his concerns on Reddit, after a VINFAST car in California veered off a road and crashed, killing a family of four. Confidential emails reveal that after seeing those posts, Tatar executives contacted Jaguar bosses and his contract was terminated. He was then blacklisted. Wimfast said it didn't interfere in Tatar Group's HR activities. Andy Verity, in Poland a former deputy justice minister seems to have disappeared. Why? Well state prosecutors accuse Marcin Romanowski of misusing millions of state funds. Last week a warrant for his arrest was issued in the country but the search has now widened as I heard from our

correspondent Adam Easton in Warsaw. Today's news has taken on an international dimension because they've asked the court to issue a European arrest warrant for Mr Romanovsky, who's an opposition MP, after he's just basically fallen off the radar for the past week and a half. He failed to turn up to a court hearing more than a week ago, which ruled that he should be remanded in custody for three months to await trial on 11 charges of fraud. He was responsible when he was Deputy Justice Minister between 2019 and 2023 for what it was called here a justice fund. That's money meant to help crime victims and reintegrate prisoners

back into society. And he is accused of basically using all that money, up to 40 million dollars, to fund projects that he liked politically or were close to his heart an audit found that only 40% of money from that justice fund was actually used to help crime victims. And he's reported not to have used his phones for a while. Yeah he hasn't allegedly used the phones that are registered to him since December the 6th. He was supposed to turn up at that court hearing on the 7th and on social media there was a picture of him in what appeared to be a hospital bed. No idea where that was, but his political supporters were saying, oh, what are you doing hounding this man? He's had a serious operation.

This is ridiculous. But as I say, he's not been seen at all since more than a week and a half in the country. Party members of the now opposition Law and Justice Party, which was in government when he was the Deputy Justice Minister today, they have no idea where he is. But one governing party MP says he thinks he may have fled to Hungary where he may be seeking refuge. Adam Easton. Finally, a peculiar Swedish Christmas tradition. Every winter, the town of Jävle erects a giant straw goat to celebrate the holidays. But it's become a favourite target for arsonists and now artificial intelligence. Stephanie Zakristen takes up the story.

You might think that the Swedish holiday season is all about meatballs, ski slopes and northern lights but another highlight of the festive period is Gävleboken, a giant effigy made of straw that's been part of the Christmas celebrations for almost six decades as Maria Wallberg from Gävle Council explains. The goat was erected for the first time in 1966. It's 13 metres tall, 7 metres long and weighs three tonnes and it's a genuine work of art made by hand. The goat symbol has origins in pagan traditions and Nordic mythology. Up to the 1800s it was actually a quite scary looking goat man who brought presents during the festive season

in Sweden. Today, the goat is a common Christmas decoration. I've got one myself, although it's much smaller than the one on display in Gävle. The effigy takes about 1,000 hours to make, but that effort has perhaps felt like a bit of a waste for the workers involved, since the goat has regularly met a fiery fate. Even in its first years, it didn't last longer than New Year's Eve, setting a tradition for decades to come. Once it was burned down by vandals who used burning arrows to set it alight. Over the last couple of years, the council has upped its budget and put in a range of

protections, double fencing, CCTV, security guards and 24-7 monitoring. All failed to deter the arsonists. Many Swedes follow the council's live stream to check in on the celebrity, with some betting on how long it will last this holiday season. This past weekend, video footage began spreading on social media, suggesting the goat had once again met its match. A clip showed the goat doing what it does best, going up in flames. And it seemed like this year's display was

done for. But it turned out the clip originated from a fake website, jävleboken.com, which imitated the council's live stream. And Swedish TV is reporting that the video was created using artificial intelligence. The council reported the website and it has now been taken down. On the real live feed, the goat appears to be doing fine where it stands on the square with a sprinkle of snow on the ground. As for now, it's still standing. And that report was by Stephanie Zakrisson. 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 or the topics covered, you can send us an

email. The address is globalpodcastatbbc.co.uk. This edition was mixed by Craig Kingham, the producer of Chantal Hartle, the editor is Karen Martin. I'm Juna Chalil. Until next time, goodbye. World of Secrets is where untold stories are exposed. And in this new series, we investigate the dark side of the wellness industry following the story of a woman who joined a yoga school only to uncover a world she never expected. I feel that I have no other choice the only thing I can do is to speak about this. Where the hope of spiritual breakthroughs leaves people vulnerable to exploitation. You just get sucked in so gradually and it's done so skillfully that you don't realize.

World of Secrets, the bad guru. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts.