Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on Sunday that the Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed this week was shot down by Russia, albeit unintentionally, and criticized Moscow for trying to “silence” the matter for days.
“We can say with complete clarity that the plane was shot down by Russia…. We are not saying it was done on purpose, but it happened,” he told Azerbaijan state television.
Aliyev said the plane that crashed in Kazakhstan on Wednesday was hit by ground fire over Russia and “went out of control as a result of electronic warfare.” He accused Russia of trying to “silence” the case for several days, expressing that he was “upset and surprised” by the versions of events presented by Russian officials.
“Unfortunately, for the first three days we had no news from Russia except crazy versions,” Aliyev said.
38 of the 67 people on board died in the crash. The Kremlin said air defense systems fired near Grozny – the regional capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, where the plane was trying to land – to repel a Ukrainian drone attack.
Aliyev said that Azerbaijan had sent three demands to Russia in connection with the disaster.
“First of all, the Russian side must apologize to Azerbaijan. Secondly, he must admit his guilt. Third, punish those responsible, hold them criminally liable and pay compensation to the Azerbaijani state, injured passengers and crew members,” he said.
Aliyev noted that the first demand had “already been fulfilled” when Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized to him on Saturday. Putin called the disaster a “tragic incident” but stopped short of acknowledging Moscow's responsibility.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian state media on Sunday that Putin spoke on the phone with Aliyev again, but did not provide details of the conversation.
The Kremlin also said that a joint investigation by Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan had begun at the crash site near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan.
The plane was flying from Azerbaijan's capital, Baku, to Grozny in southern Russia when it veered toward Kazakhstan, hundreds of kilometers across the Caspian Sea from its intended destination, and crashed while attempting to land.
As mounting evidence points to the possibility that an Azerbaijan Airlines plane was shot down by a missile, some survivors are recounting the moments before the plane crashed in Kazakhstan.
Passengers and crew who survived the crash told Azerbaijani media that they heard loud noises in the plane as it circled over Grozny.
Dmitry Yadrov, head of Russia's civil aviation authority Rosaviatia, said Friday that as a plane prepared to land in Grozny in deep fog, Ukrainian drones targeted the city, prompting authorities to close the area to air traffic.
The crash is the second fatal civil aviation accident related to fighting in Ukraine. Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by a Russian surface-to-air missile, killing all 298 people on board, as it flew over an area in eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed separatists.
Russia denies responsibility, but in 2022, a Dutch court convicted two Russians and a pro-Russian Ukrainian for participating in the shooting down of a plane with an air defense system brought to Ukraine from a Russian military base.