Following the crash of an Azerbaijani airliner in Kazakhstan that left 38 people dead, Russian President Vladimir Putin has apologized to the president of Azerbaijan for the plane crash occurring in Russia’s airpace, but did not identify Moscow as responsible.
The plane was flying from Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, to Grozny when it turned toward Kazakhstan, hundreds of kilometers (miles) across the Caspian Sea from its intended destination, and crashed while making an attempt to land. There were 29 survivors.
On Saturday, the Kremlin issued an official statement amid allegations 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.
The statement said Putin apologized to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev “for the fact that the tragic incident occurred in Russian airspace.”
According to the readout, Russia has launched a criminal probe into the incident, and Azerbaijani state prosecutors have arrived in Grozny to participate. 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.
On Friday, a U.S. official and an Azerbaijani minister made separate statements blaming the crash on an external weapon, echoing statements made by aviation experts who named the cause of the crash as Russian air defense systems responding to a Ukrainian attack. Earlier this week, the Azerbaijani Prosecutor General’s office confirmed that investigators from Azerbaijan are working in Grozny.
Several other airlines have made similar announcements since the crash, with Kazakhstan’s Qazaq Air saying on Friday it would stop flying from Astana to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains for a month. Meanwhile, Turkmenistan Airlines, the Central Asian country’s flagship carrier, halted flights to Moscow for at least a month on Saturday, citing safety concerns. Earlier this week, Israel’s El Al carrier suspended service from Tel Aviv to the Russian capital, citing “developments in Russia’s airspace.”
Dmitry Yadrov, head of Russia’s civil aviation authority Rosaviatsia, said Friday that as the plane was preparing to land in Grozny in deep fog, Ukrainian drones were targeting the city, prompting authorities to close the area to air traffic. He added that after the captain made two unsuccessful attempts to land, he was offered other airports but decided to fly to Aktau.
