Azerbaijan Airlines plane crashed on Christmas Day killing 38 people which the US is adding to initial claims of Russian anti-aircraft system the caused of the unwanted aviation disaster.
Since the incident, a Ukrainian national security official and several sources in Azerbaijan claimed that the crash was caused by Russian air defence fire as reported in The Guardian.
Andriy Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council’s Center for Countering Disinformation, posted on X on Wednesday: “This morning, an Embraer 190 aircraft of an Azerbaijani airline, flying from Baku to Grozny, was shot down by a Russian air defence system.“ He cited video footage from inside the plane that showed “punctured life vests”.
Three countries Azerbaijan where the plane was flying from, Kazakhstan where the accident occurred and Russia the proposed destination of the plane, are seriously involved in the inquiry unearth the cause of the Christmas Day Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash.
The plane, which was flying from the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, to the Russian city of Grozny in Chechnya, came down in a field near Aktau in Kazakhstan after veering hundreds of miles off its planned route. Twenty-nine people survived.
Both Kazakhstan and Russia have not come out publicly to accept or deny initial questioning but appear to be counting on investigation to know details about the accident. Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesperson said on Thursday that there is an opened investigation into the cause of the crash, adding that it would be “wrong” to speculate before the inquiry concluded.
Kazakhstan’s senate chair Ashimbayev Maulen also stressed that the cause remained unknown. “None of these countries – neither Azerbaijan, Russia nor Kazakhstan – is interested in hiding information. All information will be made available to the public,” He described the allegations of air defence fire as unfounded and “unethical”.
As investigation to know the cause heightens, the US has shown a remarkable interest.
On Thursday, a US official told Reuters that there are early indications that a Russian anti-aircraft system may have struck the Azerbaijan Airlines plane. The allegation was echoed by four sources in Azerbaijan who spoke to Reuters. The four, all of whom had knowledge of the investigation, told the news agency that the flight was downed by a Russian air defence system.
One of the sources told Reuters that preliminary results showed the plane had been struck by a Russian Pantsir-S air defence system, and its communications had been paralysed by electronic warfare systems on the approach into Grozny.
“No one claims that it was done on purpose,” said the source. “However, taking into account the established facts, Baku expects the Russian side to confess to the shooting down of the Azerbaijani aircraft.”
Caliber, an Azerbaijani news website, also alleged that the airliner had been fired upon by a Russian Pantsir-S air defence system as it was approaching Grozny. It questioned why Russian authorities had not closed the airport after Wednesday’s drone attack, and why the plane had not made an emergency landing in Grozny or at other Russian airports nearby after it was hit.
There has also been speculation in Russian media that the plane could have been shot down by Russia’s air defences that mistook it for a Ukrainian drone.
The Fighterbomber Telegram channel, which is believed to be run by Ilya Tumanov, a captain in the Russian army, released a clip that appeared to show holes in the plane’s wreckage, which some suggested resembled the kind of damage caused by shelling or an explosion with shrapnel. Fighterbomber said it was unlikely that the holes were caused by a bird strike.
The Kazakh aviation expert Serik Mukhtybayev told the Orda news outlet that a bird strike causing the plane crash was “nearly impossible” given the altitude at which the aircraft was flying when it encountered trouble. He pointed to external impact as a probable cause.
Flight-tracking data from Flightradar24.com showed the aircraft making what appeared to be a figure of eight while nearing the airport in Aktau, the plane’s altitude moving up and down substantially over the last minutes of the flight before hitting the ground.
Separately, FlightRadar24 said online that the plane had faced “strong GPS jamming” that “made the aircraft transmit bad ADS-B data”, referring to the information that allows flight-tracking websites to follow planes in flight. Russia has been blamed in the past for jamming GPS transmissions in the wider region.
Russia has previously employed jamming technology to defend against drone attacks, and some reports suggest that Chechnya came under such an attack shortly before the crash.
On Wednesday morning, Khamzat Kadyrov, a local security official and nephew of the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, wrote on Instagram that “all drones were successfully shot down”.
In recent weeks, Ukrainian drones have targeted several sites in Chechnya, including a facility housing local police forces.
The popular Russian pro-war blogger Yuri Podolyaka said holes seen in the wreckage of the plane were similar to the damage caused by “anti-aircraft missile system”, adding: “Everything points to that.”
In Brussels, Nato called for an investigation into the cause of the crash. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and victims of Azerbaijan Airlines flight J28243,” spokesperson Farah Dakhlallah said on social media. “We wish those injured in the crash a speedy recovery and call for a full investigation.”
The Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev, said it was too soon to speculate on the reasons behind the crash, but that the weather had forced the plane to change from its planned course. Russia’s civil aviation authority said preliminary information showed the pilots diverted to Aktau after a bird strike led to an emergency onboard.
Azerbaijan’s prosecutor general’s office has opened a criminal investigation.
The country’s state news agency, Azertac, said an official delegation of the emergency situations minister, the deputy general prosecutor and the vice-president of Azerbaijan Airlines were sent to Aktau to conduct an “on-site investigation”.
On Thursday, national flags were lowered across Azerbaijan, traffic across the country stopped at noon, and signals were sounded from ships and trains as the country observed a nationwide moment of silence for the victims of the plane crash.
Kazakhstan’s main transport prosecutor, Timur Suleimenov, told a briefing in the capital, Astana, that the plane’s black box, which contains flight data to help determine the cause of a crash, had been found, Interfax reported.
A spokesperson for the Kazakh emergencies ministry said on Thursday that specialists were working to identify the bodies of those who died in the crash. Of the survivors, 11 were in intensive care, the spokesperson said. Russia’s emergencies ministry said on Thursday morning it had evacuated nine nationals who survived the crash, including one child, on a special flight from Aktau to Moscow.
