a Russian missile at the origin of the drama?

A passenger plane crashed in Kazakhstan. 67 people, including five crew members, were on board. The Russian missile track is considered.

It was a tragedy that occurred this Wednesday, December 25, in the west of Kazakhstan. An Azerbaijan Airlines plane crashed, 38 people died and around twenty were injured, according to the latest report. There were 62 passengers and five crew members, according to a statement from the Kazakh Transport Ministry. The plane was to connect Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, and Grozny, the capital of the Russian Caucasian republic of Chechnya. It ultimately crashed near the town of Aktau in western Kazakhstan, according to the Kazakh Emergency Situations Ministry.

“According to initial information, there are 25 survivors, of which 22 were hospitalized,” continues the ministry in a press release published on Telegram, specifying that 150 rescuers were dispatched to the scene, reports France 24.

A Russian shooting causing drama

But what are the circumstances that led to such a tragedy? Indeed, the plane is known to be the safest means of transport, and accidents as serious as this one are rare. Azerbaijan Airlines specifies on X that it was an Embraer 190 plane which “made an emergency landing”.

Initially, the airline assured that the crash was an accident after the plane hit a flock of birds. This information has since been removed. But several experts assure that the cause of the crash was in fact the firing of a Russian missile on the plane. “The plane was hit by a series of impacts which corresponds to shrapnel, the steel balls which are found by the thousands inside anti-aircraft defense missiles,” assures Xavier Tytelman, former military aviator and defense consultant. , to Le Parisien, based on videos filmed in mid-flight and the debris of the machine. Accusations also made by Andriy Kovalenko, lieutenant of the Ukrainian air forces, on X: “The plane was damaged by the Russians and sent to Kazakhstan instead of making an emergency landing in Grozny to save lives.” The accusations, however, do not speak of intentional shooting. Indeed, the Ukrainian army was carrying out drone attacks passing through this area and the airspace was not closed. This would then be a deviation from Russian systems. Xavier Tytelman explains that “Russia has already shot down around ten of its own fighter planes as they returned from missions in Crimea or Belgorod”.

For Dmitri Peskov, Kremlin spokesperson, “we must wait for the end of the investigation”. Same story from the president of the Kazakh Senate, the upper house of the Parliament of Kazakhstan, Maoulen Ashimbaev, who assures that it is “not possible” to say that it was a Russian shot which led to this catastrophe. The investigation is underway, led by a Kazakh interministerial cell.