The president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, has directly blamed Russia for shooting down the passenger plane that crashed last week as it approached the Russian city of Grozny, killing 38 of the 67 passengers on board. In an interview with Azeri state television broadcast this Sunday, the president stated that the aircraft was damaged by gunfire from Russian territory and that Moscow has attempted to cover up the true cause of the disaster. The president demands that Russia recognize its responsibility in the incident.
“Unfortunately, in the first three days we only heard absurd versions from Russia,” Aliyev criticized in his statements on television – broadcast by the state agency Azertac – in reference to the Kremlin’s explanations that initially attributed the accident to the fact that the plane had crashed. with a flock of birds or the explosion of a gas cylinder inside. “We have witnessed clear attempts to cover up the matter,” added the Azeri leader. On Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone with Aliyev and apologized for what he called “a tragic incident.” It is the closest he has come to acknowledging his involvement.
At the same time, Moscow issued a statement indicating that an investigation and a criminal case have been opened to determine the reasons for the event, but without admitting any responsibility. This Sunday, the head of the Russian Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, assured the Prosecutor General of Azerbaijan that Moscow has assigned the investigations to the most experienced experts and that measures are being taken to establish the cause and circumstances of the incident, reports Reuters
In the days after the event, different experts rejected the Kremlin’s initial version and warned that the crash of the aircraft was accidentally caused by a Russian anti-aircraft missile after this country’s air defenses faced Ukrainian attack drones in response. to the large-scale Russian invasion that the country has suffered since February 2022. Four sources familiar with the preliminary results of the investigations have supported this theory, according to Reuters.
Putin, in fact, has acknowledged that Grozny was being attacked by Ukrainian drones “and Russian defense systems repelled these attacks,” he said. The commercial flight J2-8243 of the state company Azerbaijan Airlines was heading to the Russian capital of Chechnya, from Baku (Azerbaijan), at whose airport it tried to land repeatedly. Finally, it was diverted towards the Kazakh city of Aktau, where it ended up crashing in a fireball.
“Our plane was shot down by accident,” Aliyev insisted, then adding that the device, an Embraer 190, had been subject to some type of electronic interference and then had been shot. The fact that the fuselage had numerous holes completely eliminates the version of the flock of birds, the president added. “Of course, the definitive version will be known after the black boxes are opened. But the initial versions are sufficiently justified and based on facts. And the facts are that the plane was damaged from outside on the territory of Russia, near the city of Grozny, and almost lost control. We also know that our plane became uncontrollable due to electronic warfare,” declared the head of state. Aliyev added that as a result of the fire opened from the ground, the tail section of the aircraft was also seriously damaged.
“One of the things that bothered and surprised us was the fact that Russian official structures put forward the version of a gas cylinder explosion. That is to say, [se] “openly showed that the Russian side wants to hide the matter, and this, of course, does no honor to anyone,” emphasized the Azerbaijani leader, a dictator who has been in power for almost 20 years and who maintains a good relationship with Putin and Russia. , since he completed his higher studies in International Relations in Moscow. Russia and Azerbaijan are allied states and maintain bilateral political, economic, cultural and, above all, military relations, since the former is one of the main suppliers of weapons to the latter.
Putin and Aliyev had another phone call this Sunday, according to the Kremlin, which has not offered further details. In the televised interview, the Azeri president has expressed three demands to Moscow that he is convinced they will fulfill, he said. The first, already satisfied, apologize; the second, recognize their responsibility in the accident; the third, punish the guilty and compensate the Azeri State and the victims.
Tribute to the victims
This Sunday, while Azerbaijani television broadcast Aliyev’s statements, tribute was paid in Baku to the pilots and passengers of the crashed plane. Captain Igor Kshnyakin and co-pilot Alexander Kalyaninov, both ethnic Russians with Azeri citizenship, and Hokuma Aliyeva, a flight attendant, received full honors in a ceremony held in the Alley of Honor, Azerbaijan’s most sacred modern cemetery, where Prominent politicians, poets and scientists are laid to rest, including Heydar Aliyev, father of the current president. Aliyev and his wife, Mehriban Aliyeva, attended the funeral, Reuters reports.
The pilots have been praised for landing in a way that allowed 29 people to survive but caused their own deaths. “The pilots were experienced and knew that they would not survive this forced landing,” Aliyev praised, highlighting that they sacrificed themselves by putting the nose down first in an attempt to save some of the passengers.
