Politics Plane crash: Azerbaijan increases pressure on Moscow
Following the crash of a passenger plane in Kazakhstan with 38 fatalities, Azerbaijan is increasing the pressure on Russia to cooperate in the investigation of the accident.
28.12.2024, 04:36
SDA
For the first time, the government in Baku said that the Azerbaijani plane had been hit by a weapon in Russian airspace over Grozny. "The investigation will clarify what kind of weapon was used to cause the external impact," said Transport Minister Rashad Nabiyev in Baku, according to the Azerbaijani state news agency Azertag.
Kazakhstan will do everything possible to investigate Wednesday's crash comprehensively and objectively, said President Kassym-Shomart Tokayev in a telephone conversation with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev. The Azerbaijan Airlines plane with 67 people on board was supposed to fly from Baku to Grozny, the capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya. However, it was damaged during the landing approach.
Damage to the wreckage and witness statements suggested that the plane had been damaged from the outside, said Azerbaijani Minister Nabiyev. "According to them, there was a sound of an explosion outside, and then the plane was hit by something." At the time, Russian air defenses were fighting Ukrainian drones in the North Caucasus. Nabiyev did not say who, according to his government's findings, had fired. According to unofficial sources in Baku, however, it is assumed that the Russian air defense system missed.
USA sees evidence of accidental launch
The USA also made this suspicion public. "We have seen some early indications that the jet may have been brought down by a Russian air defense system," said National Security Council Communications Director John Kirby.
Moscow has so far warned against speculation. "The situation on that day and during those hours in the Grozny airport area was very complicated," said the head of the Russian aviation agency Rosaviatsiya, Dmitry Yadrov. "Ukrainian combat drones were carrying out terrorist attacks on civilian infrastructure in the Grozny and Vladikavkaz areas at that time."
It was the first time that an official Russian agency had established a temporal link between the drone alert and the accidental flight. The Grozny airport had been closed, said Jadrow.
Many questions from Baku to Moscow
Azerbaijani Minister Nabiyev listed further questions for Moscow. After the damage, the plane had flown over the Russian airport in Makhachkala, he said. Investigators would have to clarify whether an emergency landing there had been approved or rejected. It must also be clarified why the GPS positioning of the aircraft was disturbed.
The head of Rosaviaziya Yadrov said that the pilots had been offered several alternative Russian airports. However, they had wanted to fly over the Caspian Sea to Aktau in Kazakhstan. Azerbaijani media cast doubt on this account. During the attempted landing in Aktau, the Embraer 190 aircraft crashed. As many as 29 people survived, albeit many with serious injuries. The victims of the accident were buried in Azerbaijan on Friday to great public sympathy.
Embraer specialists at the scene of the accident
Specialists from the Brazilian manufacturer Embraer have arrived in Aktau to help with the investigation into the cause of the crash, the Kazakh state news agency Kazinform reported.
Western military experts suspected a hit by an anti-aircraft missile due to the many small holes in the tail of the wreckage. Obviously, projectiles in the form of cube-shaped shrapnel had perforated the plane, said Colonel Markus Reisner, Ukraine expert of the Austrian Armed Forces, on ORF radio. It was probably not a direct hit, but a close-range hit. The target itself is not hit, but the projectile explodes in the immediate vicinity.
In 2014, pro-Russian forces accidentally shot down a Malaysian Boeing over eastern Ukraine using a Russian Buk air defense system. At the time, 289 people were killed.
