Drone footage of emergency specialists working at the crash site of an Azerbaijan Airlines airliner near the city of Aktau, Kazakhstan, on December 25, 2024.
Azamat Sarsenbayev | Reuters
Russian President Vladimir Putin has apologized to Azerbaijan’s president for the crash of a commercial airliner that killed 38 people, but stopped short of accepting responsibility, the Kremlin announced on Saturday.
“President Vladimir Putin has apologized for the fact that the tragic incident occurred in Russian airspace,” the Kremlin said in a statement.
Putin told Ilham Aliyev that the airliner had “repeatedly attempted to land” at Grozny airport and was under “attack by Ukrainian combat drones” at the time.
President Putin said Russia’s air defense systems “repelled these attacks.”
He did not say whether the plane had been attacked by Russian air defenses, but the Kremlin said an investigation was underway and civilian and military experts were being questioned.
An Azerbaijan Airlines jet crashed on Christmas Day near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan, killing 38 of the 67 people on board.
According to a statement from President Aliyev’s office, the Azerbaijani president informed Putin of evidence suggesting “external physical and technological interference,” specifying that it occurred in Russian airspace.
Aliyev said there were multiple holes in the plane’s fuselage, injuries to passengers and crew “due to foreign objects that entered the cabin during the flight,” and survivors who said they felt an explosion before the plane crashed. He referred to the testimonies of passengers and crew.
Two U.S. military officials told NBC News on Friday that the plane may have been hit by a Russian missile, and that they had received information indicating the Russians may have shot down the plane in a misidentified manner. said.
Officials said intelligence suggests the Russians believe the plane was a drone, in part because of its erratic flight pattern.
The Embraer 190 was en route from Azerbaijan’s capital Baku to Grozny, the capital of Russia’s Chechnya region, when it suffered “external physical and technical interference,” the airline said on Friday.
Russian officials have warned against speculating about the cause of the crash, and on Saturday Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was “awaiting the results of the investigation.”
However, the country’s Aviation Ministry Rosavyatsia said earlier that the situation around the destination, Grozny Airport, was “very complicated” as Ukrainian drones were flying nearby.
Rosavyatsia also said that at an altitude of 1,600 feet, there was heavy fog and no visibility, and the pilot finally chose to change course after making two unsuccessful attempts to land in Grozny.