Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash in Kazakhstan caused by Russia? The hypothesis is strengthened

INTERNATIONAL – Could the Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed in Kazakhstan, killing 38 people, have been shot down by accident by Russian anti-aircraft defense? This is what several experts mention, as you can see in the video at the top of the article. A scenario favored this Thursday by an American official while Russia warns against “hypotheses” circulating about the cause of the crash.

This Embraer 190 aircraft with 67 people on board was flying on Wednesday between Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, and Grozny, capital of the Russian Caucasian republic of Chechnya. It crashed and caught fire near Aktau, a Caspian Sea port in western Kazakhstan and far from its normal route, killing 38 people, according to authorities in the Central Asian country.

According to the Flightradar24 service, which tracks the movement of planes in real time, the aircraft crossed the Caspian Sea, deviating from its normal route, before circling above the area where it crashed. . An investigation is underway but some military and aviation experts said the plane, which was flying over an area of ​​the Russian Caucasus where a drone attack was reported, may have been shot down by accident by a Russian air defense system. A hypothesis confirmed by Azerbaijani government sources, according to Euronews.

But both Russia and Kazakhstan refuse to comment. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov assured this Thursday that it was necessary “wait for the end of the investigation”. “It would be inappropriate to make any assumptions prior to the findings of the investigation. We won’t do it and no one should.”he insisted. The authorities of Kazakhstan, a close ally of Russia, also denounced “speculations”.

“Shrapnel Shards”

A Russian blogger and military expert Yuri Podoliaka assured, on Telegram, that visible holes on the plane’s fuselage were similar to those that could be caused by “an anti-aircraft missile system”.

“What we actually see is the testimony of a passenger who received shards in his life jacket, (…) that the cabin, the entire rear part, the fin, is completely riddled with shards »a former expert from the Bureau of Investigation and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) told AFP. “There are still a lot of pieces of shrapnel”he underlined, believing that this image was reminiscent of that of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing, Flight MH17, shot down by a surface-to-air missile over Ukraine in 2014.

Azerbaijan Airlines initially claimed that the plane had struck a flock of birds, before withdrawing this information. For its part, the regional department of the Kazakh Ministry of Health reported, in a press release, a “balloon explosion” on board the device, without further details.

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