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00:00Bring in Doug Herbert for more clarity, our international affairs editor.
00:03Great to have you on the programme, Doug.
00:04How are you, Gavin?
00:05I mentioned Vladimir Putin's statements.
00:08It's interesting how carefully calibrated it seems.
00:12And beyond the careful calibration, Gavin,
00:14there's the fact that Putin is making a statement at all.
00:17We've had, you know, similar types of incidents in recent years
00:20where there's been total radio silence from the Kremlin,
00:23if not days and months, even years.
00:25The fact that he is in some way reacting, like you said,
00:28not recognising that Russia necessarily was directly implicated,
00:33but at least apologising for what he calls a tragic incident,
00:36shows that he wants to show that he is visible and president
00:39and is concerned with trying to give reassurances in this case.
00:42Now, the fact that we're talking about that this was done,
00:46apparently, in a phone call with Azerbaijan's president,
00:49Ilham Aliyev, an ally of Vladimir Putin's.
00:52Yes, it's been a complicated relationship at times,
00:54Azerbaijan and Russia, but we do know that a few months back,
00:57Azerbaijan asked to become a member of the BRICS group,
01:01a group that is putatively led by Russia.
01:05It's a country that Russia has relied on for energy exports at a time of war.
01:10So when I say it's an ally, yes, not always an easy ally, but an ally.
01:13And this is a president with which Putin would, you know,
01:17have a great pause before he'd want to rile him in any way
01:20and probably take pains to want to reassure.
01:22But there's also a commercial, perhaps political imperative here as well.
01:26Putin wants to speak up to reassure because, as you said,
01:29you know, in this statement, right, and we could see that, the statement there,
01:34he wasn't taking responsibility.
01:35He was basically saying that the plane was trying to land in an area
01:39where there were active drone operations,
01:41basically saying Ukrainian combat drones operating in that area.
01:44So basically, you know, turning the burden of blame,
01:48the onus of the blame to Ukraine and saying that Russian air defenses
01:52were in operation at the time,
01:53not linking that with the fact that this plane went down
01:57with what some intelligence agencies say are signs of sort of holes in the fuselage,
02:04suggesting shrills, shrapnel from some sort of object.
02:07So Putin wanting to reassure.
02:09I will note that after, in the days since this plane crash in Kazakhstan,
02:14remember, was across the Caspian Sea because it couldn't land in Grozny.
02:17He had to fly across the Caspian to land in Kazakhstan on the eastern coast
02:22of the Caspian is where it crashed.
02:24In the days since, we've had several airplanes,
02:27airlines, including Azerbaijan airline,
02:29canceling flights between, in Azerbaijan's case, Baku and seven Russian cities,
02:35including, of course, Grozny.
02:36But we've also had El Al canceling flights between Tel Aviv,
02:40suspending for the time being Tel Aviv and Moscow.
02:42We've had a Fly Dubai airline between Dubai and Sochi, among other cities.
02:49And we've also had Kazakh airlines suspending its flights
02:53between Astana and Yekaterinburg in central Russia.
02:57So all of this economic imperative, Putin can't say this is a war going on
03:01and therefore we're suspending flights over Russian territory.
03:04It's a special military operation for Russia.
03:06But he's trying to issue reassurances that he's there, he's aware of what happened
03:10and perhaps giving hints that whatever went wrong,
03:13he wants to take measures to assert that airplanes and commercial aviation
03:18will be safe flying over Russian territory.
03:20So we have these cancellations,
03:21we're hearing from different voices in the course of five days,
03:24big questions for Russia over what happened.
03:27It clearly seems, I mentioned US intelligence,
03:30that this flock of birds that was first put out
03:32seems to have dissipated a long time ago.
03:34I should also mention, baptism of fire
03:36for the new EU foreign affairs chief, Kaya Kayas, she's been speaking today.
03:40Yeah, and she is, Kaya Kayas, the Estonian new foreign policy chief of the EU,
03:46has been outspoken, if anything,
03:48about what she sees as blatant, rapid Russian aggression in almost all areas.
03:54She does not and has not,
03:56also by dint of Estonia and the Baltic states history
03:59with their much larger Russian neighbor,
04:01does not give Russia the benefit of the doubt.
04:03And you could say that she is justified in doing so,
04:05given Estonia's experience with Russia.
04:08And this case is no exception.
04:10She has said that the Russian reaction to this
04:14and the information that you cited coming from intelligence agencies,
04:18Western intelligence agencies,
04:19including US military officials that have spoken to US news outlets,
04:24saying that they have intelligence indicating
04:25that there may have been Russian missiles, Russian air defenses
04:28that misidentified the plane and shot it down.
04:30All of this gives very disturbing, unsettling echoes of the shooting down
04:35of the, you'll remember MH17, the Malaysian Airlines jetliner over Ukraine
04:39by then pro-Russian forces in Ukraine back in 2014,
04:45with all the civilians aboard there being killed.
04:48So obviously very serious echoes.
04:49She is connecting the dots here,
04:51saying we're seeing another incident of what she suspects to believe,
04:55based on the intelligence we're hearing,
04:57still under investigation of Russian foul play.
05:00She's not giving them the benefit of the doubt.
05:02She's sending a strong signal calling for a rapid
05:06and thorough and independent investigation,
05:09an international independent investigation.
05:12Doug, stay with us.
05:13Let's bring in from Kiev, in fact, Emmanuel Chaz,
05:16our correspondent there, who's on the phone.
05:18Emmanuel, first of all, very interesting listening to Doug.
05:20Given that go back 10 years, we had this first incident,
05:24this flight being shot down MH17.
05:26I was there in Hilversum, I remember very well,
05:29where all of the many Dutch citizens that had flown that day,
05:33their bodies for the burial,
05:35for the mass remembrance service to them that day.
05:38Now, what's being said from President Zelensky?
05:42What's being said in Ukraine today, Emmanuel?
05:45Well, first of all, President Zelensky offered condolences
05:49for the people who died in this new plane crash
05:54that seems to also bear all the signs of having been shot down.
05:59Of course, President Zelensky is being cautious about that.
06:02He explains, he says that the pictures that we've seen,
06:05the video that we've seen of the plane after its crash,
06:13seem to corroborate the fact that it was shot down.
06:16Of course, he calls for a thorough investigation
06:19to establish the chain of responsibility.
06:22And you were mentioning this crash that happened
06:24on the 17th of July, 2014 in Donetsk Oblast.
06:29And that was actually, that cost the life of 298 people,
06:36the majority of which were Dutch citizens.
06:39The chain of responsibility had been established
06:42for this crash following an international investigation.
06:45And four names emerged, three of them being Russian commanders
06:50and a pro-Russian separatist Ukrainian commander in Donetsk Oblast.
06:55The missile that was used was a surface-to-air anti,
07:01a surface-to-air missile, sorry.
07:04The missiles came from the Russian army
07:07in something that is perhaps similar to what we're seeing now.
07:10And those anti, the air defense missiles being used in such cases,
07:17well, those systems cannot make the difference
07:19between a civilian airline, a military airplane,
07:23and this could lead to confusion.
07:26And this could lead exactly to the shooting down of a civilian plane.
07:31So it's very significant that President Zelensky
07:34talked to RAF today about this case.
07:41Emmanuel, good to talk to you.
07:42We're going to try and talk to you in the next hour or so in person.
07:45We can hear you just about by phone,
07:47but that was very useful to hear.
07:50Emmanuel shares our correspondent in Kyiv.
07:51Doug is still with us.
07:52Doug, take us somewhere else close to the Finnish coast,
07:56the Baltic Sea as well,
07:57because another incident alleged to be involving Russia,
08:02so-called ghost ships,
08:03one that's being close to analysis now by Finland.
08:07What's going on here?
08:07Yeah, the ghost ships are a shadow fleet, right?
08:09Russia has maintained, according to intelligence agencies,
08:14oil and gas and energy experts across the world.
08:16You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure it out.
08:19In order to circumvent the sanctions on their oil,
08:22they've had a shadow fleet,
08:23that is of these unofficial sort of vessels
08:26throughout the international waters,
08:27trying to transit their oil around the world.
08:31And, you know, perhaps some estimates say
08:33as much as 70% of Russia's oil right now
08:36is transported by these so-called phantom vessels,
08:38these shadow fleets.
08:39Now, there's one particular ship.
08:41It was a Cook Islands registered ship,
08:44which officials say left from a Russian port.
08:47That is the preliminary information.
08:49And Finnish Coast Guard officers,
08:52basically abseiled from,
08:54were dropped by a helicopter on Thursday,
08:56landed on board of this vessel,
08:58which they're calling the Eagle S in the Baltic waters.
09:02And they landed on the ship,
09:03took command and sailed the vessel into Finnish waters.
09:06What they're doing now is,
09:08they have moved that vessel into Inner Anchorage.
09:12That is a port not far from Helsinki
09:15for further investigation.
09:16I will say the context here is important
09:18because these cables were severed.
09:19There's no absolute definitive conclusion right now.
09:21But since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022,
09:24we have had a string, a series of power outages,
09:28of telecom links going down,
09:30of gas pipelines being severed,
09:32which some suspect investigators have to do
09:35with foul play, sabotage by suspected Russian players.
09:39Not always, but there is suspicion of that,
09:41which is why Baltic nations have been on high alert.
09:43And the nations, not just Baltics,
09:45but Finland as well,
09:46have been always very, very on high alert
09:48to these types of incidents.