Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday apologized to his Azerbaijani counterpart for what he called a “tragic incident” following the crash of an Azerbaijani airliner in Kazakhstan that killed 38 people, but he stopped short of acknowledging that Moscow was responsible.
Putin’s apology came amid mounting allegations that the plane had been shot down by Russian air defences attempting to deflect a Ukrainian drone strike near Grozny, the regional capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya.
An official Kremlin statement issued on Saturday said that air defence systems were firing near Grozny airport as the airliner “repeatedly” attempted to land there on Wednesday. It did not explicitly say one of these hit the plane.
The statement said Putin apologized to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev “for the fact that the tragic incident occurred in Russian airspace.”
The readout said Russia has launched a criminal probe into the incident, and Azerbaijani state prosecutors have arrived in Grozny to participate.
The Kremlin also said that “relevant services” from Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are jointly investigating the crash site near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan.
The plane was flying from Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, to Grozny when it turned toward Kazakhstan, hundreds of kilometres across the Caspian Sea from its intended destination, and crashed while making an attempt to land. There were 29 survivors.
As more evidence points to the possibility a missile brought down an Azerbaijan Airlines flight, some of the survivors are speaking out about the moments before the plane crashed in Kazakhstan.
According to a readout of the call provided by Aliyev’s press office, the Azerbaijani president told Putin that the plane was subject to “external physical and technical interference,” although he also stopped short of blaming Russian air defences.
Aliyev noted that the plane had multiple holes in its fuselage and that the occupants had sustained injuries “due to foreign particles penetrating the cabin mid-flight.”
On Friday, a U.S. official and an Azerbaijani minister made separate statements blaming the crash on an external weapon, echoing those made by aviation experts who blamed the crash on Russian air defence systems responding to a Ukrainian attack.
Passengers and crew who survived the crash told Azerbaijani media that they heard loud noises on the aircraft as it was circling over Grozny.
Dmitry Yadrov, head of Russia’s civil aviation authority Rosaviatsia, said on Friday that as the plane was preparing to land in Grozny in deep fog, Ukrainian drones were targeting the city, prompting authorities to close the area to air traffic.
Yadrov said that after the captain made two unsuccessful attempts to land, he was offered other airports but decided to fly to Aktau.
As Azerbaijan mourns 38 people killed aboard a flight that crashed in Kazakhstan, experts are pointing to signs they say suggest a missile, potentially one from Russia, was responsible.
Earlier in the week, Rosaviatsia had cited unspecified early evidence as showing that a bird strike led to an emergency on board.
In the days following the crash, Azerbaijan Airlines blamed “physical and technical interference” and announced the suspension of flights to several Russian airports. It didn’t say where the interference came from or provide any further details.
Published at Thu, 26 Dec 2024 13:02:23 +0000
Musk vows to wage ‘war’ to defend visa program amid rift with fellow Trump backers
Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, vowed to go to “war” to defend a U.S. visa program for foreign tech workers, called H-1B, late on Friday amid a dispute between U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s longtime supporters and his most recently acquired backers from the tech industry.
In a post on social media platform X, which he owns, Musk said: “The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B.”
“I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend,” he added.
Musk, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in South Africa, has held an H-1B visa, and his electric-car company Tesla obtained 724 of the visas this year. H-1B visas are typically issued for three-year periods, though holders can extend them or apply for permanent residency.
Musk’s tweet was directed at Trump’s supporters and immigration hardliners, who have increasingly pushed for the H-1B visa program to be scrapped amid a heated debate over immigration and the place of skilled immigrants and foreign workers brought into the country on work visas.
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Trump has so far remained silent on the issue. The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment on Musk’s tweets and the H-1B visa debate.
In the past, Trump has expressed a willingness to provide more work visas to skilled workers. He has also promised to deport all immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, deploy tariffs to help create more jobs for American citizens, and severely restrict immigration.
The issue highlights how tech leaders like Musk — who has taken an important role in the presidential transition, advising on key personnel and policy areas — are now drawing scrutiny from his base.
The U.S. tech industry relies on the government’s H-1B visa program to hire foreign skilled workers to help run its companies, a labour force that critics say undercuts wages for American citizens.
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump continues to round out his team with hardline MAGA supporters, including Mike Waltz, a Florida congressman and outspoken Justin Trudeau critic, Fox News host Pete Hegseth, and entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Former Trump rival Marco Rubio is expected to be named Secretary of State.
The altercation was set off earlier this week by far-right activists who criticized Trump’s selection of Sriram Krishnan, an Indian-American venture capitalist, to be an adviser on artificial intelligence, saying he would have influence on the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
On Friday, Steve Bannon, a longtime Trump confidante, critiqued “big-tech oligarchs” for supporting the H-1B program and cast immigration as a threat to Western civilization.
In response, Musk and many other tech billionaires drew a line between what they view as legal immigration and illegal immigration.
Musk spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars helping Trump get elected president in November. He has posted regularly this week about the lack of homegrown talent to fill all the needed positions within American tech companies.
Published at Sat, 28 Dec 2024 19:33:55 +0000
