Ukraine challenges the official version of the causes of the crash of Azerbaijan Airlines flight J2-8243 this Wednesday in Kazakhstan and assures that it was shot down by Russian anti-aircraft defenses. The hypothesis that is gaining more strength is that a Russian missile hit the plane when Moscow was trying to repel a Ukrainian drone attack on Grozny, the capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya. Up to four sources consulted by Reuters who know the details of the investigation support this theory.
Azerbaijani airlines and the Russian Federal Air Transport Agency said on Wednesday that the plane, which was covering the route between Baku, Azerbaijan, and Grozny, “collided with a flock of birds.” After that incident, the captain decided to make an emergency landing in Aktau (Kazakhstan), according to that version, about 420 kilometers east of Grozny, on the opposite shore of the Caspian Sea. 38 of the 67 occupants died.
The head of the Center for Combating Disinformation of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Andri Kovalenko, has pointed out without hesitation that Russia is the culprit. “The explosion of an air defense missile damaged the plane and disabled its systems,” he wrote on social networks on Wednesday without mentioning, but without denying, that they were repelling a drone attack from Ukraine. This Thursday he insisted on this theory and added: “The holes in the fuselage of the plane during flight are not caused by birds. “The passengers clearly recorded it on video.”
One of the sources consulted by the Reuters agency, with knowledge of the investigation being carried out by Azerbaijan, assured that preliminary results show that the plane was hit by a Russian Pantsir-S anti-aircraft defense system. The electronic warfare systems used to neutralize the drones blocked the aircraft’s communications as it approached Grozny. Public information from flight trackers confirms that the plane lost the GPS signal during its flight in southern Russia.
“No one claims it was done on purpose. However, taking into account the established facts, Baku hopes that the Russian side will confess to the downing of the Azerbaijani plane,” the source stated. Three other people consulted by the agency supported these statements.
A senior US official consulted by Reuters also pointed out that the first indications point to the impact of a Russian anti-aircraft system. If confirmed, they would highlight Russian recklessness in its invasion of Ukraine, he added.
Since the accident occurred, videos recorded inside and outside the Embraer 190 have circulated that aviation experts have worked to analyze. Their conclusions, after observing holes on the outside of the plane, in the tail area, and inside, in life jackets, are that they were produced by the impact of an anti-aircraft missile with shrapnel. The passenger account of the flight also suggests that an explosion occurred outside. In recordings made before the plane crashed, it is seen that the oxygen masks were deployed and the passengers were wearing emergency vests. Shots recorded after the impact show bloodied people and injured passengers emerging from the wreckage of the device.
Jamzat Kadyrov, secretary of the Chechen Security Council and nephew of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s top leader, confirmed the drone attack on Grozny on Wednesday morning, as well as the activity of Russian anti-aircraft missiles to try to neutralize them: “Everything that was flying was shot down,” he stated, also on social networks.
“Russia should have closed the airspace over Grozny, but it didn’t. “The Russians damaged the plane and sent it to Kazakhstan instead of allowing an emergency landing in Grozny to save lives,” said Kovalenko, who accuses the Kremlin of trying to cover up what happened. “Russia will do everything possible to hide its own guilt in the air disaster and the loss of human life.”
Moscow declines to comment
Moscow for now refers to the ongoing investigations. Dmitri Peskov, spokesman for the Russian presidency, has avoided the question about the theory of the impact of a Russian missile: “It would be a mistake to formulate hypotheses before the conclusions of the investigation. We, of course, will not do it and no one should,” he stated in his daily press conference. At first, official Russian agencies reported that the flight could not land in Grozny due to fog, and later added the alleged collision with birds.
Kazakhstan’s Deputy Prime Minister Kanat Bozumbayev has also called for restraint until the investigation is concluded. Specialists from the Interstate Aviation Committee, the body that investigates air accidents of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) – a group of former Soviet republics led by Russia – will arrive in Kazakhstan this Friday.
The team will be joined by representatives of Embraer, the Brazilian aeronautical manufacturer responsible for the ship, along with members of the Air Force of this country, according to the deputy prime minister. NATO spokesperson Farah Dakhlalla has called for a “thorough” investigation into the incident.
Some Russian channels are coming to the same conclusion as Ukraine and investigators. The VChK-OGPU Telegram channel, with more than a million subscribers, publishes excerpts from the conversation between the plane crew and the Grozny flight operations officer. According to the dialogue, the aircraft was a victim of the drone jammers that were in operation due to the Ukrainian attack. When the descent for landing began, the GPS stopped working and contact was lost. “The pilot could not land the plane in those conditions and decided to fly to Baku. As he began to turn around, an explosion occurred nearby; Everything indicates that the plane was hit by anti-aircraft defense systems,” that channel publishes.
Yuri Podolyaka, a well-known Russian defense blogger, also claimed in a Telegram post that the plane had probably been “accidentally shot down by an air defense system.” Just like the Fighterbomber channel, which shared some of the videos circulating about the accident and believed that it was unlikely that a bird strike would have pierced the fuselage.
Air safety company Osprey Flight Solutions said in a note to its clients that images of the wreckage and circumstances around the airspace in southwestern Russia indicated the possibility that the plane had been hit by some type of anti-aircraft fire. . The Grozny area has been targeted in recent weeks by the launch of Ukrainian drones, intercepted by Russian defenses. On Wednesday, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that it had neutralized 59 Ukrainian drones in several regions.
In July 2014, a Malaysia Airlines flight with 298 people on board was shot down in eastern Ukraine while en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. An international investigation concluded that he was shot down by a Buk surface-to-air missile supplied by Russia to the pro-Russian separatists in Donbas, mistaking the plane for a military target.
