Azerbaijan Airlines Plane That Crashed In Kazakhstan May Have Been ‘Accidentally’ Shot Down By Russia: Report

The Azerbaijan Airlines plane which went down near the Kazakh city of Aktau on Wednesday killing 38 people on board may have been “accidentally” shot at by Russia, reports say.

A Russian military blogger named Yury Podolyaka told news agency AFP that the holes seen in the plane’s wreckage were similar to that caused by an “anti-aircraft missile system”. The damage on the plane suggests it may have been “accidently struck by an air-defence missile system,” he said.

The head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council’s Center for Countering Disinformation, Andriy Kovalenko, also claimed that the crash was caused by the Russian air defence fire, The Guardian reported.

“This morning, an Embraer 190 aircraft of an Azerbaijani airline, flying from Baku to Grozny, was shot down by a Russian air defense system. However, admitting this is inconvenient for everyone, so efforts will be made to cover it up, even the holes in the remaining parts of the aircraft. There is also video footage from inside the plane during the flight, showing punctured life vests and other damage,” he stated in a post on X, sharing screenshots from a video footage shot inside the plane. 

Here’s a video posted on X showing several holes in the plane’s fuselage, resembling pinpricks. The video was shared by Clash Report which covers military conflicts. 

Very interesting: Shrapnel marks on the fuselage of Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed in Kazakhstan today. pic.twitter.com/3X5PTIR66E

— Clash Report (@clashreport) December 25, 2024

According to a report by the BBC, aviation experts have suggested that the ill-fated plane might have been hit by Russian air defence systems over Chechnya as the wrecked fuselage appeared to have been caused due to shrapnel damage.

The Embraer 190 aircraft, before crashing in Aktau, was diverted across the Caspian Sea, from its destination in the Russian city of Grozny in Chechnya to western Kazakhstan. It is said to have veered off hundreds of mile away from its set route before coming down in Aktau. Out of the 67 people on the flight, 29 of them, including two young girls, managed to survive. 

Soon after the incident, Russian state-controlled TV stated the crash most likely happened due to a flock of birds. However, an aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia told news agency Reuters that if that was the reason, the plane would have glided to the nearest airfield instead of wildly flying off course. 

Another person named Justin Crump from a risk advisory company told BBC that the pattern of damage indicated the Russian air defence activity in Grozny might have led to the deadly crash. “It looks very much like the detonation of an air defence missile to the rear and to the left of the aircraft, if you look at the pattern of shrapnel that we see,” he told BBC.

Notably, the authorities in the regions near Grozny had reported drone strikes in Ingushetia and North Ossetia on Wednesday morning, the report said.

A UK-based aviation risk management firm’s Chief Intelligence Officer Matt Borie told The Wall Street Journal that the wreckage suggests the plane was hit by “antiaircraft fire”. “The wreckage and circumstances around airspace security in southwest Russia indicates… the aircraft was hit by some form of antiaircraft fire,” he claimed.

Another report by a Russian media outlet Meduza also concurred to the claims being made and stated that the footage of the plane after the crash showed traces of a surface-to-air missile impact, which it said was similar to other cases when a civilian and military aircraft were shot down by such missiles.

Some survivors have also claimed to have heard explosions outside the plane, soon after which requests for landing were made, but were rejected at Grozny.

A survivor told Russian TV that the plane had tried to land twice in the dense fog over Grozny but “something exploded the third time…some of the aircraft skin had blown out”, BBC reported.

Russia Reacts To ‘Hypotheses’ Surrounding Kazakhstan Plane Crash

Amidst these claims, the Russian government has warned against promoting “hypotheses” regarding the crash and asked everyone to wait till the ongoing investigation is completed. 

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “It would be wrong to put forward any hypotheses before the investigation’s conclusions. We, of course, will not do this, and no-one should do this. We need to wait until the investigation is completed.”

Meanwhile, the head of the Kazakh senate, Ashimbayev Maulen, asserted that the cause behind the crash was yet to be ascertained and that all information regarding the incident would be made public. “None of these countries – Azerbaijan, Russia or Kazakhstan – is interested in hiding information. All information will be made available to the public,” he said.

The authorities in Kazakhstan have recovered the flight data recorded and an investigation is underway.

The country’s state news agency, Azertac, stated in a report that an official delegation of the emergency situations minister, the deputy general prosecutor, and the vice-president of Azerbaijan Airlines went to Aktau for an “on-site investigation”, The Guardian reported.

The plane’s black box, which contains all the flight data to help determine the reason behind the crash, had been found, Interfax reported.