Global News Podcast - Putin apologises over plane crash, without saying Russia is at fault

Episode Date: December 29, 2024

The Russian president apologises over the downing of an Azerbaijani plane in Russian airspace - without directly taking blame. Also: chess champion walks out of tournament over jeans row.

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Follow or subscribe and never miss an episode. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles and in the early hours of Sunday, the 29th of December, these are our main stories. President Putin has issued a rare apology after the Azerbaijan Airlines crash on Wednesday, but stopped short of confirming that Russian missiles brought down the plane. Lebanon has expelled dozens of former Syrian military figures who'd fled across the border as the new authorities in Damascus pursue supporters of the deposed president, Bashar al-Assad. An influential Sufi religious leader has been kidnapped in northern Mali. Also in this podcast...

Magnus Carlsen certainly shifted the image of chess grandmasters and at the Rapid Chess Tournament in New York, he refused a demand to wear smart trousers. A problem at a major chess event, the wearing of jeans. The Russian president Vladimir Putin has apologised to Azerbaijan's president for the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane, describing it as what he called a tragic incident in Russian airspace. It's been widely claimed that Russia accidentally shot the plane

down as it tried to land in Grozny on Wednesday, but Mr Putin did not accept direct Russian responsibility, according to Kremlin reports of the conversation. Mr Putin added that there needed to be an objective and transparent investigation. From Moscow, our Russia editor Steve Rosenberg reports. According to the Kremlin readout of their conversation, President Putin apologized to President Aliyev for what the Kremlin calls a tragic incident in Russian airspace and expressed condolences to the families of the dead. 38 people were killed when Azerbaijan Airlines flight 8243, having failed to land at Grozny Airport in the Russian North

Caucasus, was redirected over the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan where it crash-landed. The Embraer 190 is widely believed to have been damaged by missiles fired by a Russian air defense system. In the Kremlin readout, there is no direct admission by Moscow that the plane had indeed been struck by a Russian missile. The Kremlin mentions that at the time the Azerbaijan Airlines plane had been trying to land in Grozny, Russian air defenses had been repelling a Ukrainian drone attack. Still, this is the closest Russia has come so far to admitting it was responsible for the disaster. Steve Rosenberg in Russia.

So is the mention of active Russian air defence systems in the area at the time as close as one can get to actually say we did it, albeit by mistake? Where does the statement lie between an expression of sorrow and an admission of guilt? I heard more from Andre Wladoff of BBC Monitoring. It lies somewhere in between because it is very rare for Putin to apologise. This tragedy happened in Russian airspace, but actually the plane crashed in Kazakhstan.

What he appears to apologising is, and he promised full cooperation in the investigation, is that something happened in airspace that caused the crash of the plane. He didn't mention what, but clearly the Kremlin statement points out that the Russian air defenses were working to repel Ukrainian drone attacks. So in a way, it could be seen as an admission that the thing that caused the plane to crash happened in Russian airspace. Also, there's been this flurry of activity put in not only speaking on the phone to Ilham Aliyev, the Azerbaijan president, but he also spoke to Tokayev, who's the president of Kazakhstan. And something very interesting appeared there. It says that the two presidents agreed that the Kazakh government commission that investigates the incident, It will involve experts from Russia, Azerbaijan, but also Brazil

in decoding the flight recorders. And it specifically states that this work carried out on the territory of Kazakhstan will be objective and transparent, which means that the Russian side is doing everything to show that it is cooperating, that it is helping, that it is doing this in good will and possibly what we can read in this is that if they're guilty of something this must have been done by accident. And Andrei, do you expect this to be the final statement for now anyway until the investigation is concluded? I mean at first the Kremlin put in spokesman M Dmitry Peskov, declined any comment and said, yes, we're going to wait.

We have to wait for the investigation to come up with clear conclusions. And then suddenly yesterday, the head of the Russian state aviation agency, Rostov-Yatsiak, comes up and gives all these details saying that there was dense fog, but also Russian air defenses were firing. The same thing that Putin repeated today in the Kremlin statement that was published on the Kremlin website. So there have been more and more details emerging. So yes, I think we could expect that more is to come depending on what the reaction

in Azerbaijan would be. And they've been caused by MPs, by parliamentarians there for Russia to apologize officially. Probably this is Moscow answer now, this put in statement. Andrei Vladov from BBC Monitoring. A Ukrainian official has told the BBC they hope a new year prisoner exchange with Russia will happen any day, although arrangements can fall through at the last minute. Petro Yatsenko from Ukraine's headquarters for the treatment of prisoners of war said negotiations with Moscow have become more difficult in recent months since

Russian forces began making significant advances on the front lines. Thousands of relatives of Ukrainian prisoners are now spending Christmas without their loved ones. From Keeve our correspondent Will Vernon reports. A Christmas Day concert in Keeve. The dancers of the National Operetta Theatre performed the Blue Danube Waltz. Originally composed by Johann Strauss in 1866 to lift the Austrian public spirits after a war. It's a festive favourite for Ukrainians, exhausted by their conflict. Backstage getting ready, dancer Liliya, who's spending her third Christmas without her boyfriend, Bogdan. He was captured by Russian forces two and a half years ago. She hasn't heard from him since. Bogdan is very kind, very caring. He really loves cats just like I do. How is it spending the third Christmas without Bogdan? The Christmas holidays are a painful time. If you want to celebrate, then you should,

but without forgetting that we need to support our soldiers." Lillia still sends little hearts to Bohdan's phone almost every day. The messages are unread. It's pretty noisy as you can hear, drivers sounding their horns in support of the several hundred people who have gathered here in the wintry heart of Kiev to stage a special Christmas demonstration in support of the thousands of Ukrainians who remain in captivity this Christmas. For the Tura's family, the wait is over. It's their first Christmas together.

Husband and wife Andriy and Lena served in the Ukrainian military and were both captured in 2022. Lena, who was pregnant, was released after two weeks. But Andriy was set free only recently. He spent two and a half years as a prisoner in Russia. They beat us mercilessly, with sticks in their fists and feet. The food was horrifying, rotten fish heads and sour cabbage. I thought about my wife constantly. I remembered her smell and was desperately hoping to receive a letter from her.

The most important thing is to make sure our son has a happy Christmas. We want to spend these holidays together and feel the warmth of being a family. While the BBC can't independently verify everything Leona and Andri told us, their accounts are corroborated by international organisations who have interviewed hundreds of Ukrainian POWs. In a statement, the Russian authorities told us allegations of mistreatment of prisoners were false and captured Ukrainian militants were treated humanely, according to the Geneva Convention.

That report by Will Vernon in Ukraine. Lebanon has expelled around 70 people, including officers and soldiers believed to have escaped there from neighbouring Syria. The new authorities in Damascus have been conducting an operation against what they describe as remnants of the Assad regime. Local media reported that the soldiers of various ranks were found in a truck in the northern coastal city of Jbeil and had been sent back to Syria. Many senior Syrian officials and people close to the former ruling family of Baasha

al-Assad are alleged to have escaped to Lebanon after Mr Assad was toppled early this month. This latest handover by Lebanon of the soldiers belonging to the former Assad regime seems to have been captured on video, posted on social media, although not so far verified by the BBC. Ben James spoke to our Middle East regional editor, Sebastian Asher, who's in the Syrian capital Damascus, about what the videos appear to show. Well, there have been a couple of videos now which show lines of men walking among armed Syrian fighters, presumably from HTS. This is, we believe, at the Al-Aridah border crossing between the two countries. It's already desolate, windswept, rainy. And what we have heard from a variety of sources is that they are members of President Assad's forces, officers and soldiers, and maybe also some members of their family.

And the reports that we have had, again, this hasn't all been officially confirmed, but from various security officials, that they were found during an inspection of a truck in Jebeil, which is a town in the north of Lebanon. And they are among a pretty sizable number of Syrians connected to the Assad regime who crossed the border into Lebanon. There have also been people who crossed into Iraq. And it's the first cooperation between the Lebanese security officials and the new Syrian authorities in this drive by the new powers to round up essentially as many of the kind of leading regime officials that they can in order to bring them to justice. And we've seen this in Syria itself, in the West, in

Tartus particularly, where there's been in some ways almost a kind of manhunt that's been going on. That has caused some unrest there as well amongst the Alawite community to which the Assad's belong. But nothing yet from the Syrian authorities on this particular group. Have they said anything more generally about what justice might look like for people who are found to have been involved in the Assad regime? I mean what they're saying in public is that they want people to be brought to proper justice. So that implies that there'll be trials and they don't want Syrians themselves to take justice into their hands to commit acts of personal revenge. I mean there have been videos circulating again, none of them really confirm of firm of some lynchings. So there is a concern inside Syria and obviously outside that this

drive for justice against the Assad regime, which doesn't degenerate into essentially a form of revenge in which violence becomes the main way that it's meted out. I mean, that would be seen obviously as a failure of the new authorities to impose their idea of law of a new free Syria where they say people can breathe easily which is what one hears on the streets. And as for Lebanon, a country which has been under a great deal of strain in a great deal of ways for all sorts of reasons. Are they pretty keen to assist in whatever way they can to return people who may have been associated with the Assad regime to Syria, since they've been shouldering a lot of burden of refugees

and others for so many years? I mean, I think they're keen to establish a new relationship with Syria, but the government, the authorities want to open a new page, one in which Syria, and this is what the de facto leader of Syria, Abdel-Nashar, said, that Syria will no longer have a negative influence in Lebanon. So this kind of cooperation would be an effort to show from a Lebanese side that they're willing to help the authorities and the hope would be that that would build confidence. Toby Hightower

Sebastian Asher in the Syrian capital Damascus. Apologies for the quality of the telephone connection there. Next to northern Gaza, the UN agency, the World Health Organisation has criticised an Israeli raid on the last remaining hospital in the area, warning that the lack of medical facilities was close to a death sentence for patients. A senior Palestinian official said staff at the Kamal Adwan hospital had been threatened and the premises had been cleared. Israel described the site as a Hamas terrorist stronghold. Our correspondent, Emir Nader, reports from Jerusalem. After weeks in which staff issued desperate pleas to be protected from Israeli military strikes in and around its building,

Palestinian officials say the Kamal Adwan Hospital now lies empty. Gaza's Deputy Health Minister told the BBC that around 100 of the staff were interrogated overnight, with some receiving humiliating treatment. A number have been released while others continue to be detained, including the hospital's director, Dr. Hosam Abu Safiha. Medical staff report around 25 patients with acute needs were transferred to a nearby hospital that was itself evacuated by the Israeli military early this week and is badly damaged. It is reported to have no oxygen or water. Tarek Jasarevic from the World Health Organization says he's deeply concerned by what's happened. There is almost nothing left in the north of Gaza and people who are still there will simply have no option to receive any medical care. And for people who are injured, that's

close to the death sentence. Israel said yesterday that the Kamal Adwan hospital was a Hamas terrorist stronghold but didn't provide specific detail or evidence. The military denied responsibility for a fire that broke out in the hospital during the evacuation. Emennada in Jerusalem. Saturday was a day of national mourning in India. The sound there of guards carrying the coffin of the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh

through the streets of Delhi as crowds watched on. He died at the age of 92. He was considered to be the man behind India's 21st century economic rise. Many politicians were present to share words of mourning, including the current Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But despite his special status in Indian society, Mr Singh was commemorated in a typical way, cremated outside along with others who had recently died, with their families also watching on.

Our correspondent Arunoday Mukherjee was there. He told us more about the Indian tradition of cremation. It is a common practice for Hindus and Sikhs, two different religions, to actually at the time of death to cremate the body with various Hindu rituals and Sikh rituals and that's what we saw happen to the former Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh as well. There are prayers that are said, various customs that are followed before the actual cremation takes place. Then the body is placed on the pyre and covered with wood. Again, there are various sacred chants that are made. There is a priest who is present, the family members are present.

There is holy water that is scattered around the pyre and then it is set on fire. Essentially, if you go back to the scriptures, it means that you came from the ashes and that's what you're reduced to. It was a common cremation ground but obviously for the former Prime Minister, the place where he was cremated was on an elevated platform but there were other families who were also there with their loved ones who had passed away to cremate them as well. Here was a former Prime Minister whose pyre was burning, along with several other pyres, and everyone's eventually on that pyre.

That was a big takeaway for people who were there witnessing that moment. Our honour, Day Mukherjee. Still to come... The simple solution. Each year we'll save thousands of tons of electronic waste, facilitate the reuse of old electronics. A new law has come into force in the European Union requiring most electronic devices sold to have the same type of charging port. For just as long as Hollywood has been Tinseltown, there have been suspicions about what lurks

behind the glitz and glamour. Concerns about radical propaganda in the motion pictures. And for a while, those suspicions grew into something much bigger and much darker. Are you a member of the Communist Party? Or have you Are you a member of the Communist Party? Or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? I'm Una Chaplin, and this is Hollywood Exiles. It's about a battle for the political soul of America, and the battlefield was Hollywood.

All episodes of Hollywood Exiles from the BBC World Service and CBC are available now. Search for Hollywood Exiles wherever the BBC World Service and CBC are available now. Search for Hollywood Exiles wherever you get your podcasts. Over the last few years, Mali has experienced two military coups, Islamist rebellions and a failed French military intervention. Now security officials there have confirmed that an influential religious leader has been kidnapped in the north of the country. I heard more about him from our Africa regional editor Will Ross. This man, Amadou Haditao, he's the leader of a Sufi order,

also known as the Caliph of Tijaniya. Now we understand he was at a kind of pilgrimage close to the Mauritanian border and he was traveling in a convoy of three vehicles when armed men attacked the convoy and only took him, left everybody else alone, so clearly a targeted attack. Now no one has said it carried out this attack but this is an area where Islamist militants are extremely active. And why are the Sufis in particular being targeted by jihadist groups if this indeed is the case? Well basically they have very different views of Islam. The Islamist militant groups have

their own very extremist view and they consider that Sufis are un-Islamic and the fact that Sufis worship saints and that's why over a decade now, back in 2012, when large areas of northern Mali were taken over by the Islamist militants, they literally went to smash up the Sufi tombs using pickaxes and vehicles and destroyed quite a number of them before the Islamist militants were pushed out of those areas. I mentioned the fact that the French peacekeepers moved out a couple of years ago. How is the Malian authorities in the military able to protect people, particularly the Sufis in such vast areas?

Well, they've really struggled since the two coups. They've kind of turned their back on France. The whole international alliance against the Islamist militants has kind of collapsed and Mali's embraced Russia, both politically and militarily, and that hasn't managed to stop the spread of these jihadist attacks. And we're seeing a similar story in neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger. I mean, there have been relentless attacks against the militaries there and also against civilians. And also human rights groups point out that there have been more and more abuses, partly because of Russian soldiers being involved with the Malian military, but certainly things seem to be getting worse across the wider Sahel region and other countries beyond these three are also worried about the militancy

spreading and affecting their countries too. Well Ross, a spree of mass killings in China this year has sparked real soul-searching about what's going on that people feel compelled to commit such horrific crimes. Well the faltering economy which has led to many losing their jobs and homes has been blamed as has the Chinese state tightening its grip on all aspects of people's lives while not providing a way for them to air their grievances or to get support or counselling. The communist authorities have promised to address the problem but as our China correspondent Stephen McDonnell reports, it's not clear they can.

The scene in front of me is being repeated right across China today and in fact every day. Parents wait outside the gates of a school to pick up their kids. They feel the need to protect their children and don't want to risk anything going wrong if they were to make their own way home on say public transport. But such fears have only heightened lately with schools being targeted by those seeking to violently take out revenge on society for a range of grievances. This is all making for

some pretty grim introspection as people here ask what's going wrong with Chinese society that's causing such bloody desperate attention seeking. My kid is so young so for safety reasons I try my best to drop them off at school and pick them up at the end of the day. Other parents tell us they're not so worried because the number of recent mass attacks in China has been statistically small. George Magnus, a research associate at Oxford University's China Centre says that the relatively small number of mass killings doesn't reflect the overall build-up of tensions, which seems

undeniable. I think China's become trapped in a sort of a cycle of social repression and economic repression on the one hand and a kind of a faltering economic development model on the other. So I think this this cycle actually is quite corrosive of trust and of belief that there is somewhere I can go to get help. What are being referred to here as revenge on society attacks are not new in China but this year there have been so many that they have been hard to keep track

of. On the 11th of November there was dismay as footage spread of a 62-year-old man driving his car into those exercising outside a sports stadium in Zhuhai, killing at least 35 people who had been jogging or dancing outdoors. Police said he had been unhappy with his divorce settlement. Days later, another car was being driven into children outside their primary school in Changde, Hunan. After the vehicle stopped, locals smashed in its windows, then bashed the driver and held the man down until police could get there. And on and on the list goes. Lynette Ong is a professor of political science at the University of Toronto.

China is moving into a new phase, such as a lot of random attacks and pockets of protests and social instability emerging. With tension increasing in Chinese society, the government has also been criticised for not providing enough counselling services for those in distress. People feel they can't turn to the courts because they're seen as inefficient and only loyal to the party. With state-controlled media it mostly won't air people's stories if they make high-level officials look bad. For now the stress points seem likely to keep opening even wider. The only question is just how much pressure this might bring to bear on social order.

Stephen MacDonald in Beijing. Next to the world of technology, discovering that you've left home without a mobile phone charger can be a source of great frustration, especially as there's no guarantee your colleagues or friends will have the particular one that your phone needs. But in Europe it seems a new law is changing this. Alfie Haberschen reports. As smartphones become faster and more powerful, a lot of people's cupboards become full of wires they no longer need. The iPhone has already been through three different types of charges and that's not to mention all the other phones on the market. They might need a USB-A, a USB-B, a USB-3, the mini USB or even the micro USB. But for Europeans,

it might be about to get a bit less confusing. A new law says that from Saturday all phones, tablets and earphones sold in the EU will have to work with just one type of charger, the USB-C. And EU's rapporteur, Aleksey Duseleba, says it's not just about making life easier. The simplest solutions are often the best. And the simple solution each year will save thousands of tons of electronic waste, facilitate the reuse of old electronics,

better consumer convenience, reduce unnecessary costs, and also help to save millions of euros. As living costs rise all over the continent, Europe says being able to stick with the same charger will make households a quarter of a billion euros richer. The new law even says that laptops will be expected to follow by 2026, but it has taken two years to get it passed,

with Apple being the main barrier in the EU's way, complaining that it would block innovation before then giving in last year, and is now no longer selling the iPhone 14 and SE in Europe because they use a different type of charger. Alfie Haberschen. More than a thousand critically endangered snails, each the size of a pea, have been released onto a remote Portuguese island. It's the size of a pea, have been released onto a remote Portuguese island. It's the end of a long journey that began when a small number were discovered by conservationists who took them away to be bred in captivity in zoos in France and the UK. Our science correspondent, Victoria Gill, has more.

This is a story with some very tiny main characters, the Desertus Island land snails. They were rescued from the brink of extinction and brought to Chester Zoo, where they've been living and breeding inside this converted shipping container. These were snails that were at risk of extinction or thought to be actually extinct in the wild. That's Chester Zoo's invertebrate keeper Imogen. So we were lucky enough to have them brought to us. And this is where we've managed to breed up from very low numbers to what we have here today which is almost like 1,400 snails ready for a release.

There are two snail species that the team are bringing back to their wild island home off the coast of Portugal. Discula snails and the even smaller Geometra. They're prepared for their journey with a little scientific makeover. We have UV markers and literally just a metallic pen. Why do they need to be marked? Basically so there are some individuals left in the wild and we just want to be able to distinguish the ones that we've bred and released so that we can track them and track their progress. The desertous islands close to Madeira in Portugal are their destination and their natural home.

The largest of the islands, where the last snails were found, has had its habitat decimated, eaten away by goats, rats, and mice that were brought here by people. So the team has transported the snails to the protected neighboring island of Bujio. It's meant a long and precarious journey. After waiting for the ideal, cooler evening conditions, it's finally time to set the snails free.

We're going to release them really close under the rocks, which will be the perfect place for the new life, where they have protection, humidity and a lot of food. This is a small but significant part of a mission to restore the natural habitat and wildlife on these mountainous Atlantic islands. If it goes well, more snails will be brought here next year, each bringing a small splash of colour back to their habitat. Victoria Gill, the Norwegian chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen has quit a world tournament in New York after the game's governing body said he could not carry on playing wearing jeans. He was given the opportunity to change

into smarter trousers but refused, using offensive language. Paul Moss reports. He's always been considered a maverick in the chess world. Magnus Carlsen certainly shifted the image of chess grandmasters. Often seen as introverted or geeky, he by contrast was famed for his alcohol capacity, earning the nickname Dr. Drunkenstein. Mr. Carlsen also tends to dress more stylishly than his opponents, and at the Rapid Chess Tournament in New York, he refused a demand to wear smart trousers. Warned he'd be kicked out unless he changed out of jeans immediately, Magnus Carlsen's response was rather direct.

They can enforce their rules, that's fine by me and my response is then I'm out, like f*** you. This is not Magnus Carlsen's first controversy. He once accused an opponent of having radio controlled objects inserted in a certain bodily orifice, signalling which move to make. That matter was eventually resolved, but Mr Carlsen's sartorial choices look set to remain a running sore in the world of chess. Paul Mosse reporting. And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast Paul Moss reporting. by Pat Sissons. The producer was Liam Sheffrey. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles and until next time, goodbye.

Do you ever find yourself missing out on episodes of your favourite podcast because you didn't know a new one's out? Well, here's an easy way to get new episodes automatically. Whether it's World of Secrets or any of your other favourite BBC World Service podcasts, just find the show on your podcast app and click follow or subscribe. And if you switch on notifications, you'll get a reminder too. It's that easy. Follow or subscribe and never miss an episode.