The Kremlin announced that Vladimir Putin “spoke by telephone with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on Saturday”thus delivering its “first comment” since the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, reports The Guardian.
The Embraer 190, which was carrying 67 people, was supposed to connect Baku to Grozny, capital of the Russian Caucasian republic of Chechnya, but failed to reach its destination and crashed in western Kazakhstan, killing 38 people.
“Until now, Russia's version was that the plane collided with a flock of birds”reminds The Country. But on Saturday, Putin acknowledged that as the Azerbaijan Airlines plane approached Grozny, the city “was attacked by Ukrainian drones” and that “Russian air defense systems repelled these attacks”.
Le Kremlin “did not recognize that Russia had [accidentellement] shot at the plane, causing it to crash”as the United States suggests, but Vladimir Putin's words constitute “the closest thing to an acknowledgment of responsibility”judges the Madrid daily.
“Tragic incident”
During the telephone conversation, Mr. Putin also acknowledged that “the tragic incident [s’était] produced in Russian airspace” and has “expressed his condolences to the families of the victims”note Medusa. The Russian president further clarified that the device had made “several attempts to land at Grozny airport”.
According to the independent Russian media outlet, Mr Aliyev, in his own account of the conversation, reiterated that the device had been “subject to external physical and technical interference in Russian airspace, leading to a tragic incident” – being careful not to directly accuse Moscow, with which Baku maintains close relations.
Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty observes that a beam of “evidence” actually seems to point towards “a missile strike” to explain the accident, including “images of the damage inside the plane before the crash and the hole in the tail after impact, as well as comments from survivors who said they heard at least one explosion outside the plane over Chechnya”.
EU wants “rapid and independent” investigation
The Russian president said that “Russia had opened a criminal investigation into the accident” and that she welcomed “Azerbaijani investigators in Grozny”reports the New York Times. For the American daily, Mr. Putin “attempts to present a united front between the three nations most affected by the crash”ensuring that “relevant agencies of Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are closely cooperating at the disaster site”.
The European Union also called for an investigation on Saturday, “fast and independent”, through the voice of its head of diplomacy, Kaja Kallas.
In a lighting article, Time emphasizes that for ten years, “missiles fired from conflict zones become the direct cause causing the most casualties in civil aviation”.
If it is confirmed that the Azerbaijan Airlines crash “is due to Russian air defense, this would be the third major incident over a war zone after the flight of Malaysia Airlines on July 17, 2014 and that of Ukraine International Airlines on January 8, 2020, shot down by Islamic Revolutionary Guards over Tehran”notes the Swiss title.
