Emergency professionals work at the crash site of an Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane near the western Kazakh city of Aktau on December 25, 2024.
Issa Tadzhenbayev | AFP | Getty Images
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on Sunday that the airliner that crashed in Russia last week, killing 38 people, was damaged by accidental fire from the ground, adding that some in Russia had lied about the cause of the accident.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday spoke to Aliyev about the “tragic incident” involving Azerbaijan Airlines Flight J2-8243 in Russian airspace after Russian air defenses engaged a Ukrainian attack drone on Wednesday. I apologized.
The Kremlin statement did not say Russia shot down the plane, only that a criminal case had been opened.
“Our plane was shot down by mistake,” Aliyev said on state television on Sunday, adding that the plane suffered some kind of electronic jamming and was shot while approaching the southern Russian city of Grozny.
The pilots who died in the crash are being praised in Azerbaijan for landing the plane with 29 people alive.
“Unfortunately, for the first three days, we heard nothing but nonsense from Russia,” Aliyev said, citing Russian statements that attributed the crash to a bird strike or the explosion of some kind of gas cylinder. said.
“We witnessed a clear attempt to cover up the problem,” said the Azerbaijani leader, who has close ties to Russia and was educated at one of Moscow’s top universities.
Aliyev said he wants Russia to admit guilt in shooting down the plane and punish those responsible.
The Kremlin said Putin and Aliyev spoke by phone again on Sunday. He gave no details, but said Saturday that both civilian and military experts were being questioned about what happened.
The head of the Russian Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, told Azerbaijan’s Prosecutor General by phone that the Russian government has assigned the most experienced experts to the investigation and is taking steps to clarify the causes and circumstances of the incident. guaranteed.
The Kremlin said the plane crashed on Wednesday near the Kazakh city of Aktau after veering from southern Russia, where Ukrainian drones were attacking several cities at the time.
President Putin’s highly unusual public apology on Saturday was the closest the Russian government has come to admitting responsibility for the disaster.
Four sources familiar with the preliminary findings of Azerbaijan’s investigation into the disaster told Reuters on Thursday that Russian air defenses shot it down by mistake.
burial
Azerbaijan on Sunday offered its condolences to the pilot and passengers of the plane.
Captain Igor Kushnyakin, a Russian national with Azerbaijani citizenship, co-pilot Alexander Kalyaninov and flight attendant Khokma Aliyev were given full honors at a ceremony at the Honorary Array in central Baku, attended by Aliyev and his wife Mehriban. was awarded.
“The pilots were very experienced and knew that they would not survive this crash,” Aliyev said, praising the pilots who sacrificed themselves.
“They acted valiantly to save the passengers, which resulted in a survivor.”
Aliyev posthumously awarded the crew the title of National Hero of Azerbaijan.
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev also recognized members of the public who helped rescue the survivors, including emergency workers, medical workers, police, and employees of the airport and local power company.
The Embraer E190 airliner flew from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, to Grozny in the Chechen region of southern Russia, before flying hundreds of miles across the Caspian Sea.
Azerbaijan’s president’s office said the pilots struggled to regain control of the plane and desperately looked for a place to land.
Despite a hole in the fuselage, several crew members being injured, and the plane being depressurized, the pilots managed to fly across the Caspian Sea before making an emergency landing.
The Alley of Honor is Azerbaijan’s holiest modern cemetery, where prominent politicians, poets, and scientists are buried, including Heydar Aliyev, the father of the current president.
Captain Kushnyakina’s daughter Anastasia Kusnyakina said her father was a dedicated pilot who took his responsibility to his passengers very seriously.
“My father always said this: When I take off, I am responsible not only for my own life, but also for the lives of all the passengers and crew,” Kushnyakina said.
“On his final flight, he proved what a true hero should be.”
