ReutersAzerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev has asked Russia to accept blame for the plane crash that took place on Christmas Day that killed 38 people.
The plane is thought to have been attacked by Russian air defense systems while trying to land in Chechnya before being diverted to Kazakhstan, where it crashed.
On Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized to the Azerbaijani president for the downing of the plane in Russian airspace – but stopped short of taking responsibility.
Aliyev accused Moscow of initially “covering up” its involvement in the accident. While accepting Putin’s apology, he said that Russia “must admit that it is guilty” and pay compensation.
An Azerbaijan Airlines flight was en route from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, to the Chechen capital, Grozny, on December 25 when it is thought to have caught fire.
Flight J2-8243 was forced to divert from Chechnya and crashed near Aktau, Kazakhstan, killing 38 of the 67 people on board.
Most of the passengers on the plane were from Azerbaijan, with others from Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
Aviation experts and others believe that the plane’s GPS was affected by electronic jamming and damaged by explosives from Russian air defense missiles.
But Aliyev said that, in the days following the incident, “Russian agencies put out versions [of events] about the explosion of a certain gas cylinder that “clearly showed that the Russian side wants to close this issue”, according to the transcript of the interview with state media.
He also said that some in Russia hold to the idea that the plane was hit by birds. Aliyev described both these ideas as “stupid and dishonest”.
The president of Azerbaijan accepted that the plane was shot down by mistake, but said that in the first three days after the crash, “we heard only absurd versions from Russia”.
Baku made a series of demands to Moscow on Friday over the incident, he said, only one of which – an apology – has been met so far.
On Saturday, Putin said a “tragic incident” occurred when Russian air defense systems shot down Ukrainian planes, and expressed “deep and sincere condolences to the families of the victims”.
The Russian president admitted that the plane had made several attempts to land at the airport in Grozny, Chechnya.
However, at that time the cities of Grozny, Mozdok and Vladikavkaz “were attacked by Ukrainian drones, and Russian air defense systems repelled these attacks”, Putin said.
The President of Ukraine, Volodymr Zelensky, said that Russia must “stop spreading untargeted information” and that the damage to the plane was “very reminiscent of an air defense missile strike”.
The Kremlin did not directly acknowledge that the plane was hit by a Russian missile.
Aliyev said Baku wants Russia to “admit guilt”, punish those at fault, and pay compensation to Azerbaijan and the survivors of the accident.
Azerbaijan and Russia are allies. The president of Azerbaijan said: “No one would have thought that in a country friendly to us, our plane would be shot down from the ground.”
He said this while Azerbaijan was honoring the pilots and passengers of the downed plane.
Three crew members – Captain Igor Kshnyakin, pilot Alezander Kalayaninov and flight attendant Hokuma Aliyeva – were honored for landing the plane in a way that allowed 29 people to survive, although it led to their deaths.
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