A drone view shows emergency specialists working on the crash site of an Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane near the town of Aktau, Kazakhstan December 25, 2024.
Azamat Sarsenbayev | Reuters
Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized to the president of Azerbaijan for the crash of the civilian airliner that killed 38 people, the Kremlin said Saturday, stopping wanting admitting responsibility.
“Vladimir Putin apologized for the indisputable fact that the tragic incident occurred in Russian airspace,” the Kremlin said.
The airliner had “repeatedly attempted to land” on the Grozny airport, Putin told Ilham Aliyev, which on the time was being “attacked by Ukrainian combat drones.”
Russian air defense systems “repelled these attacks,” Putin said.
He didn’t say if the plane was hit by Russian air defenses however the Kremlin said that an investigation was underway and civilian and military specialists were being interrogated.
The Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash-landed near the town of Aktau in Kazakhstan on Christmas day, killing 38 of the 67 people on board.
In accordance with a readout by Aliyev’s office, the Azerbaijan president told Putin of the evidence suggesting “external physical and technical interference,” specifying that it happened in Russian airspace.
Aliyev mentioned multiple holes within the airplane’s fuselage, injuries sustained by passengers and crew “resulting from foreign particles penetrating the cabin mid-flight,” and testimonies from surviving passengers and crew, a few of whom had said they felt explosions before the plane went down.
Two U.S. military officials told NBC News on Friday that the plane could have been hit by Russian missiles, saying they’d intelligence indicating that Russians could have misidentified the plane and shot it down.
The intelligence suggested that Russians believed the airliner was a drone, partly due to an irregular flight pattern, the officials said.
The Embraer 190 experienced “physical and technical external interference,” the carrier said Friday, while the plane was en route from Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, to Grozny, the capital of Russia’s Chechnya region.
Russian officials have cautioned against speculating in regards to the reason for the crash, and on Saturday Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia was “waiting on the outcomes of the investigation.”
Nevertheless, the country’s aviation ministry, Rosaviatsia, said earlier that the situation across the destination airport, Grozny, was “very complicated,” with Ukrainian drones within the vicinity.
Rosaviatsia also said there was a dense fog and no visibility at an altitude of 1,600 feet, and the pilot ultimately selected to divert after two unsuccessful attempts to land at Grozny.
