Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized on December 28 to Azerbaijan’s leaders for what he referred to as a “tragic incident,” which was the crash of an Azerbaijani airliner in Kazakhstan. Thirty-eight people were killed. Putin stopped short of admitting that Russia was responsible.
The apology came as allegations grew that the plane had been shot down by Russian air defenses attempting to deflect a Ukrainian drone strike near Grozny, the regional capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya.
An official Kremlin statement issued Saturday said air defense systems were firing near Grozny airport as the airliner “repeatedly” attempted to land there on Wednesday. It did not specifically say one of these hit the plane. In the statement, Putin apologized to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev “for the fact that the tragic incident occurred in Russian airspace.”
In the statement Russia says it has launched a criminal probe into the incident. Azerbaijani state prosecutors have gone to Grozny to participate in the investigation. The Kremlin also said that “relevant services” from Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are jointly investigating the crash site near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan.
Aliyev stated that the plane had multiple holes in its fuselage and that the occupants had sustained injuries “due to foreign particles penetrating the cabin mid-flight.” He went on to say a team of international experts had begun probing the incident at Azerbaijan’s initiative. The Azerbaijani Prosecutor General’s office had confirmed earlier that investigators from Azerbaijan were working in Grozny.
On Friday, December 27, a U.S. official and an Azerbaijani minister made separate statements blaming the crash on an external weapon, echoing those made by aviation experts who blamed the crash on Russian air defense systems responding to a Ukrainian attack.