Russian President Vladimir Putin has apologized for what he described as a “tragic incident” that ended with the downing of an Azerbaijan Airlines commercial flight this Wednesday, killing 38 of the 67 occupants. Until now, Russia’s version is that the plane had collided with a flock of birds. This Saturday, Putin acknowledged that Grozny, the capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, where the flight from Baku (Azerbaijan) was heading, was being attacked by Ukrainian drones, “and Russian air defense systems repelled these attacks.” . Experts had warned that the accident had been caused accidentally by a Russian anti-aircraft missile.
“Vladimir Putin apologized for the tragic incident that occurred in Russian airspace and once again expressed his deep and sincere condolences to the families of the victims and wished a speedy recovery to the injured,” the Kremlin said in a statement. “At that time, Grozny, Mozdok and Vladikavkaz were being attacked by Ukrainian drones, and Russian air defense systems repelled these attacks,” he added. The Kremlin’s unusual statement does not acknowledge that Russia fired at the plane and that this was the cause of its crash, but it is the closest thing to an assumption of responsibility. The text does report that Moscow has opened a criminal case. Among the passengers were 16 Russians.
Ilham Aliyev, president of Azerbaijan, had indicated that the plane had been “subject to external physical and technical interference in Russian airspace, which caused a complete loss of control and its diversion to the Kazakh city of Aktau,” according to the office. Presidential of Azerbaijan. Putin’s ally avoided openly pointing out the Kremlin.
Flight J2-8243 crashed near Aktau, about 420 kilometers east of Grozny, on the opposite shore of the Caspian Sea. In addition to the impact of the missile, the electronic warfare systems that Russia uses to try to neutralize the Ukrainian drones had caused the Embraer 190 aircraft to lose.,Brazilian manufacturing, GPS signal. In its final moments before the crash, the plane performed a series of erratic maneuvers, with notable changes in altitude.
Photographs and videos recorded by passengers before and after the accident allowed aviation experts to make a quick assessment. The holes that could be seen on the outside of the aircraft, in the tail area, and inside (even in the life jackets) had been caused, in all likelihood, by the impact of an anti-aircraft missile with shrapnel. The testimony of the passengers, who stated that they heard explosions outside, also pointed to this hypothesis.
The evidence accumulated and sources from the Government of Azerbaijan assured anonymously that preliminary results showed that the plane had been hit by a Russian anti-aircraft defense system.Pantsir-S. Azerbaijani Transport Minister Rashad Nabiyev later noted that “all [los supervivientes] Without exception, they had stated that they had heard three explosions while flying over Grozny.”
Ukraine was the first country to put forward the anti-aircraft missile theory. The pressure was mounting on Moscow, which on Thursday had asked not to speculate until the investigation, led by Kazakhstan, was concluded. The spokesman for the White House National Security Council, John Kirby, assured on Friday that the United States had “preliminary indications” that the plane could have been “shot down” by Russian forces. “We have offered our help to that investigation, should it be needed,” Kirby added without going into details.
This Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shared on social media that he had also called Ilham Aliyev to express his condolences. “The priority now is a thorough investigation that answers all questions about what really happened. “Russia must give clear explanations and stop spreading disinformation,” he said. Ukraine has attacked Chechnya and other areas of the Russian Caucasus in recent weeks.
The head of European diplomacy, Kaja Kallas, had called this Saturday for an “international, rapid and independent investigation.” The EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security stressed that the case was “a harsh reminder of the [accidente del] MH17″. In July 2014, a Malaysia Airlines plane with 298 people on board was shot down in eastern Ukraine while en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. As on this occasion, commercial flight MH17 was shot down by a Russian rocket. In that case it was a Buk surface-to-air missilesupplied by Moscow to the pro-Russian separatists in Donbas, who allegedly mistook the passenger plane for a military target.
Russia never admitted its responsibility in that case and despite pressure from the EU, international investigations also failed to directly blame Moscow. However, they did conclude that Putin had authorized the sending of the missile launcher that shot down the plane. In November 2022, Dutch justice sentenced three soldiers from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (two Russians and one Ukrainian) to life imprisonment in absentia for their role in the demolition.
The Azerbaijani flight incident has raised concerns about the lack of security in Russian airspace. Several international airlines, including Azerbaijan Airlines, had been announcing since Thursday the suspension of their flights to Russia, concerned about the safety of their passengers. The first was the Israeli El Al, which announced that it was suspending its flights to Moscow for a week. They were followed by the Kazakh Qazaq Air, which canceled its flights to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg until the end of January; the Emirati Flydubai, which has suspended two routes to Russia this week and next; and Turkmenistan Airlines.
Kazakhstan and Russia had activated specialists from the Interstate Aviation Committee, the body that investigates air accidents in the Commonwealth of Independent States – a group of former Soviet republics led by Russia – to investigate the incident. Furthermore, as the Embraer manufacturing country, Brazil has announced that members of its Air Force and the producing company would join the investigators. However, according to the Azerbaijani press cited by the BBC, Baku has called for an independent international investigation.
