A key suspect in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was detained on unrelated charges in eastern Ukraine around the time the murder trial against the MH17 suspects started in the Netherlands this spring, BBC Russia reported Thursday. Former field commander Leonid Kharchenko, 47, is the only Ukrainian passport-holder among four suspects named by the Dutch-led investigation into the tragedy that killed all 298 people on board flight MH17 in July 2014. The other three are Russian nationals who, like Kharchenko, are expected to be tried in absentia. Pro-Russian authorities in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic arrested Kharchenko near his home on March 11, BBC Russia cited an unnamed former commander who had served with Kharchenko as saying. He was reportedly charged with illegal possession of firearms and an illegal search. The MH17 trial began on March 9. Former fellow soldiers say they believe that the pro-Russian authorities pressed what they call “ridiculous” charges against Kharchenko in order to shield him from a kidnapping attempt by Ukraine. “Kharchenko lived a quiet life in Donetsk and didn’t suspect that this could happen to him,” BBC Russia quoted an unnamed former fellow soldier as saying. “Perhaps they’re guarding him in this cruel way, but it’s a very strange way of securing a person.”<br/>
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BA will press ahead with cutbacks that could result in 12,000 job losses, Willie Walsh, the CE of its parent company has said, despite the government’s extension of the furlough scheme. In a letter to the chair of the transport committee, Huw Merriman, Walsh said government pay support would not compensate for “the reality of a structurally changed airline industry in a severely weakened global economy”. “I want to confirm, therefore, that we will not pause our consultations or put our plans on hold,” the IAG chief said. Walsh’s letter is an apparent response to Merriman’s call in the Commons and on Twitter this week for BA to “put these redundancy plans back in the hold where they belong”. The extension of the wage subsidy scheme announced by the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, on Tuesday was intended to pull employers back from a “cliff edge” after which they would be forced to make redundancies. But Walsh has since said the extension only bought IAG “a few extra days”.<br/>