Tesla has laid off workers who only started at the company months or even weeks ago.
An intern had his full-time offer rescinded, while a recruiter was let go after just two weeks.
One manager said Tesla threatened to cut off health insurance if he refused the severance package.
Tesla workers who started their jobs only months or even weeks ago have been let go while others have had offers withdrawn as the company begins to impose cuts announced by Elon Musk in early June.
Insider found a number of posts from Tesla employees who said they’d been laid off as part of the cut, while others had their job offers rescinded.
Paul Brotherton, a senior project manager who had only started in January, told Insider: “I was very shocked when I was told that I was being let go. Being a manager, I was under the impression that my position was safe.”
Asked how Tesla had decided which roles to cut, he said: “They said that layoffs were based on performance reviews but that is a lie because I had only been at Tesla for 5 months and had yet to have performance goals set or a performance review. I asked what metrics they used and they refused to tell me.”
“The process definitely was not fair because I was never given the team that I requested.”
Brotherton said the whole process was very cold: “My manager would not look at me or shake my hand when I said goodbye.”
He added that “the severance package was very unfair, as they basically force you to accept by threatening to cut off medical insurance.”
Iain Abshier, who was part of the recruiting team, said on Tuesday in a LinkedIn post: “Damn, talk about a gut punch. Friday afternoon I was included in the Tesla layoffs after just two weeks of work.”
Robert Belovodskij had his job offer as a manufacturing controls development engineer” rescinded. He said: “The timing of the situation is also unfortunate as I was due to start in early August.”
At the start of June Musk told Tesla executives to pause all hiring because he had a “super bad feeling” about the economy and needed to cut 10% of the company’s workforce. However, he later tweeted that the headcount would increase, but the number of salaried staff would not rise.
Mansi Chandresha started at Tesla in February as a data analyst and posted on LinkedIn after learning she was being cut: “I have been trying to gather myself to the news that my position with Tesla was terminated.”
Nevertheless she added: “I am grateful for the fact that I got an opportunity to work with a fantastic team.”
Chandresha said she was urgently seeking a new role before her student visa expired at the end of July.
Two former employees are suing the company claiming the electric carmaker violated federal law by laying off hundreds of employees on short notice.
John Lynch and Daxton Hartsfield, who filed the lawsuit, said at least 500 of their coworkers in Nevada lost their jobs at around the same time, the document showed.
Insider found at least 11 more workers whose jobs had been cut. More are likely to suffer a similar fate as Musk said at the Qatar Economic Forum last week that reduction would take effect over the next three months.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, at his office in central Kyiv, in north-central Ukraine, on Thursday.Credit…Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
KYIV, Ukraine — As the European Union summit began in Brussels on Thursday evening, an aide to Ukraine’s foreign minister tuned into the proceedings on a laptop.
The minister, Dmytro Kuleba, whose left leg was in a tight red cast after a basketball injury, was upbeat as he watched the European Council grant his war-battered country something it had been seeking without success for years: the coveted status as a candidate to join the bloc.
It was one of the best pieces of news for Ukraine, which is in its fourth month of war, since a successful counteroffensive pushed Russian soldiers away from the capital. Mr. Kuleba said the council’s move was “the most important step in overcoming the last psychological barrier in the relations between Ukraine and the European Union.”
Still, he acknowledged that his country would have to wait a long time before it could join the 27-member bloc. The action by the European Council, composed of the leaders of the member states, was just the first step in a yearslong process, and Ukraine would have to make progress on combating corruption and enforcing the rule of law to finally pass muster.
“Sure, there will be talks, reforms here and in the European Union,” he said. “I don’t care. As long as the decision that Ukraine is Europe is taken, I’m fine. History has been made.”
Mr. Kuleba said that for decades, as Ukrainians fought for democracy in protest movements in 2004 and 2014, Brussels and other European capitals still “were entertaining this idea of a buffer zone of something in the middle, a bridge between Russia and the E.U.”
In the last phase, he said, European leaders were unofficially “winking” at Ukrainian officials. “Like, ‘Guys, everything will be fine, it will take years, but in the end you will be with us,’” he said. “But they were still afraid to say it out loud.”
As Mr. Kuleba was speaking in the interview, air raid sirens wailed in Kyiv. An aide ran into the office to say that there were 10 Russian missiles flying above Ukrainian airspace.
“I’m not surprised that the Russians would fire something at Kyiv today,” Mr. Kuleba said, adding that the symbolism of the day would not be lost on the Kremlin.
Mr. Kuleba, 41, a career diplomat, said he saw the European Union as “the first ever attempt to build a liberal empire” on democratic principles, contrasting it with the Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states under President Vladimir V. Putin.
“I understand that people do not like the word empire, but this is how history is written,” Mr. Kuleba said. “You have to show that different things of a similar scale can be built on different principles: those of liberalism, democracy, respect for human rights, and not on the principle of imposition of the will of one on the rest.”
Mr. Kuleba said he was grateful to other Western allies, especially the United States, for military and political support. However, he said he hoped for a more explicit articulation of Washington’s war aims.
“We are still waiting for the moment when we hear a clear message from Washington that for Washington, the goal of this war is for Ukraine to win and for international law to be restored,” he said. “And Ukraine’s victory for Washington means restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.”
Russia’s withdrawal of troops from a Ukrainian region that they encircled at the beginning of the war is proving their “inability to capture key Ukrainian cities,” the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense said Thursday.
In an intelligence update, the Ministry said “Ukrainian forces are continuing to counterattack to the north of Kharkiv, recapturing several towns and villages towards the Russian border.”
“Despite Russia’s success in encircling Kharkiv in the initial stages of the conflict, it has reportedly withdrawn units from the region to reorganize and replenish its forces following heavy losses,” the Ministry continued.
A man drives his car among Russian destroyed combat cars in Vilhivka village near Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Thursday, May 11. (Reuters/Ricardo Moraes)
AMERICAN HELD HOSTAGE BY RUSSIAN FORCES SPEAKS OUT
Kharkiv, in Ukraine’s northeast, is the country’s second-largest city with an estimated population of nearly 1.5 million.
Destroyed houses are pictured in Vilhivka village near Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Thursday, May 11.
“The withdrawal of Russian forces from the Kharkiv Oblast is a tacit recognition of Russia’s inability to capture key Ukrainian cities where they expected limited resistance from the population,” it added.
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A damaged Russian tank is seen on a highway to Kyiv, Ukraine. (AP/Efrem Lukatsky)
The Ministry says the withdrawn forces “will likely deploy to the eastern bank of the Siverskyi Donets River, forming a blocking force to protect the western flank of Russia’s main force concentration and main supply routes for operations in the vicinity of Izyum.”
Cyber attack continues on Ukraine’s defence ministry
U.S. says more than 150,000 troops still threaten Ukraine
MOSCOW/KYIV, Feb 16 (Reuters) – The United States and NATO said Russia was still building up troops around Ukraine on Wednesday despite Moscow’s insistence it was pulling back, questioning President Vladimir Putin’s stated desire to negotiate a solution to the crisis.
In Ukraine, where people raised flags and played the national anthem to show unity against fears of an invasion, the government said a cyber attack that hit the defence ministry was the worst of its kind that the country had seen. It pointed the finger towards Russia, which denied involvement. read more
The Russian defence ministry said its forces were pulling back after exercises in southern and western military districts near Ukraine – part of a huge build-up that was accompanied by demands for sweeping security guarantees from the West.
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It published video that it said showed tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and self-propelled artillery units leaving the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.
But U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said key Russian units were moving towards the border, not away.
“There’s what Russia says. And then there’s what Russia does. And we haven’t seen any pullback of its forces,” Blinken said in an interview on MSNBC. “We continue to see critical units moving toward the border, not away from the border.”
A senior Western intelligence official said the risk of Russian aggression against Ukraine would remain high for the rest of February and Russia could still attack Ukraine “with essentially no, or little-to-no, warning”.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said moving troops and tanks back and forth did not amount to proof of a pullout.
“We have not seen any withdrawal of Russian forces. And of course, that contradicts the message of diplomatic efforts,” Stoltenberg said before a meeting of the alliance in Brussels. “What we see is that they have increased the number of troops and more troops are on their way. So, so far, no de-escalation.”
Stoltenberg later said NATO could prove Russia’s failure to pull back its troops with satellite images. read more
Ukraine’s Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov told Reuters in an interview his country’s latest intelligence report similarly showed no sign of a Russian pullback. He said the combined strength of Russian military and pro-Russian separatist forces near Ukraine’s borders stood at about 140,000. read more
The Kremlin said NATO’s assessment was wrong. Moscow’s ambassador to Ireland said forces in western Russia would be back to their normal positions within three to four weeks.
INVESTORS WARY
World stocks edged lower on Wednesday while oil and gold rose as investors nervously responded to a lack of tangible evidence of Ukraine tensions being lowered. read more
Russia says it never planned to attack Ukraine but wants to lay down “red lines” to prevent its neighbour from joining NATO, which it sees as a threat to its own security.
A view shows a freight train transporting Russian military vehicles, which leave the Crimean peninsula towards the Russian mainland along a railway bridge across the Kerch Strait, in this still image taken from video released February 16, 2022. Russian Defence Ministry/Handout via REUTERS
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The Kremlin said Putin was keen to negotiate with the United States, which has offered discussions on arms control and confidence-building measures while ruling out a veto on future NATO membership for Ukraine.
But Russia also said it would be ready to re-route energy exports to other markets if it was hit by sanctions, which Washington and its allies have threatened if it invades Ukraine.
Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said sanctions against Russian banks would be “unpleasant” but the state would ensure all deposits with banks and transactions were secured. read more
Russia has accused the United States of hysterical war propaganda after repeated warnings of a possible attack and reports in some Western media that it would happen on Wednesday.
U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that more than 150,000 Russian troops were still massed near Ukraine’s borders and an invasion remained “distinctly possible”.
Military analysts say a significant pullback would involve field hospitals and fuel stores being dismantled and units from Russia’s far east, which are taking part in exercises in Belarus this week, returning to bases thousands of miles away.
Russia security specialist Mark Galeotti said the absence of an attack did not mean that “Putin blinked”.
“Putin could have invaded yesterday, he can still do so tomorrow,” he wrote on Twitter.
DAY OF UNITY
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy designated Wednesday a patriotic holiday in response to the reports Russia could invade on that day. “No one can love our home as we can. And only we, together, can protect our home,” he said. read more
The defence ministry said hackers were still bombarding its website and had found vulnerabilities but that traffic was being rerouted to servers in the United States while the issue was being fixed.
A senior Ukrainian security official said the only country interested in such cyber attacks was Russia. The Kremlin denied Russia was involved but said it was not surprised Ukraine would blame Moscow.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin had “taken note” of a request from Russia’s parliament on Tuesday for him to recognise the “independence” of two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian government forces since 2014.
But he said that would not be line with agreements aimed at ending the conflict, in which Ukraine says some 15,000 people have been killed, indicating Putin would not rush to recognise the separatist areas but might keep the option in reserve.
Blinken said such a step would undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty, violate international law and “necessitate a swift and firm response from the United States in full coordination with our Allies and partners”.
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Reporting by Alexander Marrow and Alexander Vasovic; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu and Susan Heavey in Washington, Phil Stewart and Sabine Siebold in Brussels; writing by Mark Trevelyan; editing by Philippa Fletcher, Gareth Jones and Grant McCool
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Attorneys for Gregory McMichael informed the court that the prior plea agreement over hate crime charges is null and void, according to court documents filed Thursday in federal district court. Trial proceedings are slated to begin Monday. He has pleaded not guilty.
The federal charges include one count of interference with rights and one count of attempted kidnapping, according to an indictment.
Gregory McMichael was found guilty on state charges and sentenced last month to life in prison for his role in the 2020 killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who was chased and gunned down after jogging near Brunswick, Georgia.
Travis McMichael, Gregory’s son and the man who shot and killed Arbery, will make a court appearance Friday for a change of plea hearing, according to the court docket. His plea deal with prosecutors was rejected by a federal judge Monday.
Travis McMichael had agreed to plead guilty to a single hate crime charge — interference with rights — in exchange for prosecutors recommending he serve 30 years in federal prison.
After completing the federal sentence, he would’ve been returned to Georgia to finish his sentence of life in prison without parole. Five of those final years would have counted toward his supervised release from federal prison.
Witnesses who spoke at Monday’s plea hearing included an FBI special agent, who testified that authorities searched Travis McMichael’s cell phone and social media accounts and found “frequent use of racial slurs” in reference to Black people.
US District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood said she was not comfortable with the sentencing guidelines. Arbery’s family also opposed the deal.
The Department of Justice respected the court’s decision to not accept the plea and had “entered the plea agreement only after the victims’ attorneys informed me that the family was not opposed to it,” Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, said in a statement provided to CNN.
The judge had been expected to rule separately on the same plea deal for Gregory McMichael, but after the judge rejected Travis’ deal, attorneys for both McMichaels asked for more time to decide whether to change their pleas to guilty.
A third individual found responsible for Arbery’s murder, neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan, was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole and also faces federal hate crime charges.
CNN’s Alta Spells, Raja Razek, Maria Cartaya, Elliot C. McLaughlin, Angela Barajas and Melissa Alonso contributed to this report.
MOSCOW — A Russian-led military alliance on Thursday began the process of withdrawing troops from Kazakhstan, Moscow said, after a weeklong deployment that helped stabilize the Central Asian country amid a wave of political unrest that left dozens dead and thousands injured.
Troops of the alliance, the Collective Treaty Security Organization, a NATO-like group that includes Russia and five other former Soviet states, have begun handing over strategic facilities that they were guarding to the local authorities and were preparing to leave the country, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
A least one military transport plane with Russian troops on board has already departed from the airport in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, according to video footage from the scene. The Russian defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, said at a meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin on Thursday that the withdrawal should be completed by next Wednesday.
Russian and Kazakh officials had said this week that the troops would be withdrawn once the unrest had been brought under control, amid concerns among many in Kazakhstan that they would be stationed indefinitely in the country, permanently anchoring it in the Kremlin’s sphere of influence.
Many people in Kazakhstan had “negative” feelings about the presence of Russian troops in their country and therefore “the decision was made to announce as quickly as possible that their mission had been fulfilled,” Dimash Alzhanov, a political analyst, said in a phone interview from Almaty.
By extending a helping hand at the time of crisis, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had achieved a geopolitical triumph, Mr. Alzhanov said. But “such a favor has its own price and will not be forgotten,” the analyst noted. “We will know what that price will be later.”
Last week, Kazakhstan was plunged into the worst political crisis in its three decades as an independent country, after protests over a fuel price hike spread across the country and turned Almaty, its most prosperous city, into a scene of armed street battles.
While protests were largely peaceful in the west of the country, they spiraled out of control in several big cities and most of all in Almaty, with the police there either unwilling or unable to contain violence that led to mass looting and the burning of cars and buildings. The airport in Almaty was captured by a mob and only reopened to flights on Thursday.
The Kazakh authorities have been sending contradictory messages about the origins of the violence. In a speech on Monday, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said, without presenting evidence, that his country had been overrun by a group of international terrorists. He also said that 20,000 “bandits” had attacked Almaty in a Twitter post that was later removed from his official account.
Adding to the overall sense of confusion, the authorities still haven’t released an official tally of how many people died in the clashes, and many Kazakhs have been unable to locate relatives and friends. More than 9,800 people have been detained in the aftermath of the crisis, according to the authorities.
Some analysts say they believe that the violence stemmed from an internal power struggle among the country’s elites, pointing to the removal of various government and security officials that followed the unrest.
On Thursday, the National Security Committee, Kazakhstan’s most powerful security agency, said that it suspected Karim Masimov, its former chief who was dismissed during the turmoil last week, of attempting to stage a coup. Mr. Masimov and two of his deputies have been arrested.
Mr. Masimov was one of the most powerful allies of the former president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, according to Mr. Alzhanov. Mr. Nazarbayev ruled Kazakhstan from 1990 to 2019, when Mr. Tokayev, his handpicked replacement, took over. Mr. Tokayev has since made comments implying that Mr. Nazarbayev was responsible for the cronyism and corruption that many analysts feel contributed to the unrest.
Understand the Protests in Kazakhstan
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What led to the protests? The protests began when the government lifted price caps for liquefied petroleum gas, a low-carbon fuel that many Kazakhs use to power their cars. But the frustration among the people runs deep in regards to social and economic disparities.
What do the protesters want? The demands of the demonstrators have expanded in scope from lower fuel prices to a broader political liberalization by seeking to oust the autocratic forces that have ruled Kazakhstan without any substantial opposition since 1991.
Why does the unrest matter outside this region? Until now, the oil-rich country has been regarded as a pillar of political and economic stability in an unstable region. The protests are also significant for Vladimir Putin, who views Kazakhstan as part of Russia’s sphere of influence.
How has the government responded? President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has called the protesters “a band of terrorists,” declared Kazakhstan under attack and asked the Russian-led military alliance to intervene. Officials have instituted a state of emergency and shut off internet access.
Many in Kazakhstan, however, doubt that Mr. Masimov could have orchestrated the unrest on his own.
“Masimov with two of his deputies could never organize a coup to push Tokayev out of power without Nazarbayev and his family,” Baltash Tursumbayev, a former Kazakh deputy prime minister, told TV Rain, an independent Russian television station.
Mr. Nazarbayev has not appeared in public since the crisis began, fueling speculation about his whereabouts and the fate of his family members, who are among the richest people in Kazakhstan. He was dismissed last week from his post as chairman of the government’s Security Council.
On Monday, in a speech to senior government officials and members of Parliament, Mr. Tokayev vowed to implement reforms in the country that would address wide income inequality and tackle the corrupt practices that analysts say have enriched the country’s elite, and which experts believe have contributed to the unrest.
However, even as he has tried to signal a break with past ways of doing things, he has also continued with some of the repressive tactics honed by his predecessor.
Several journalists were detained in Kazakhstan during and after the protests. At least three, including Nurzhan Baimuldin, who criticized the decision to invite Russian troops to Kazakhstan, have been sentenced to administrative detention.
While access to the internet has been mostly restored, Orda.kz, one of the main independent news websites has been blocked.
“The man at the top of the system has changed,” said Mr. Alzhanov, the political analyst, referring to Mr. Nazarbayev’s greatly diminished influence. “But the construction and the framework of the authoritarian model have remained intact.”
Thousands of Russian troops are reportedly withdrawing from the Ukrainian border after conducting drills for roughly a month.
Reuters reported on Saturday that more than 10,000 Russian troops were leaving a number of regions near Ukraine — including Crimea, Rostov and Kuban — and returning to permanent bases.
The news service pointed to reporting from the Interfax news agency, which cited the Russian military.
“A stage of combat coordination of divisions, combat crews, squads at motorized units… has been completed. More than 10,000 military servicemen… will march to their permanent deployment from the territory of the combined arms’ area of drills,” the Russian army is quoted as saying in the Interfax report, according to Reuters.
Russia had amassed tens of thousands of troops in regions north, east and south of Ukraine, Reuters noted, which alarmed Kyiv and western nations that Moscow may be planning an attack.
U.S. intelligence earlier this year revealed that Russia was planning a military offensive against Ukraine as early as next year that would involve the deployment of 175,000 troops near the border.
The intelligence document, which was obtained by The Washington Post, included satellite photos of the military buildup.
Russia, however, has denied having any plans of that kind. Instead, Moscow has called on NATO to promise that it will not extend the alliance in the direction of Russia’s borders, according to Reuters.
Russia has reportedly said that Ukraine’s increased association with NATO is presenting a threat to Moscow.
The Kremlin has also said that it has the authority to deploy troops within its borders as it sees necessary, according to Reuters.
Reports of Russian troops withdrawing from the Ukrainian border come more than two weeks after President BidenJoe Biden Harris tests negative for COVID-19 after close contact with aide Standing with Joe Manchin Holiday caller to Biden: ‘Merry Christmas and let’s go Brandon’ MORE and Russian President Vladimir PutinVladimir Vladimirovich PutinMoscow says it expects US response on security guarantees by next month Lithuania stands up to Beijing — but needs stronger support Biden administration welcomes ‘small’ steps toward diplomacy with Russia MORE spoke by phone for just over two hours.
The White House said Biden during the conversation warned Putin against inviting Ukraine, cautioning that Moscow would suffer economic consequences if it mobilized an offensive against Ukraine.
Biden also reportedly presented the option of de-escalating the situation through diplomatic channels with the U.S. and other European nations.
