While gray areas persist around the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane in Kazakhstan, the airline announces that it will suspend its connections with seven Russian cities on Friday, December 27. A decision made “taking into account the preliminary results of the investigation into the Embraer 190 crash [et des] risks to flight safety”she justifies. On Wednesday, his flight from Baku was scheduled to land in Grozny, in the Russian republic of Chechnya, before diverting towards Kazakhstan and crashing on landing, killing 38 people.
The Azerbaijani company is suspending its flights to Grozny, but also Mineralnye Vody, Sochi and Makhachkala, three other Russian cities in the Caucasus, as well as Volgograd, Ufa and Samara. In a press release, however, it emphasizes that it continues to provide services to other cities in Russia, namely Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Astrakhan, Kazan and Novosibirsk.
Russian civil aviation assured on Friday that the plane had not been able to land in Grozny due to the presence in the airspace of Ukrainian drones which “carried out terrorist attacks against civilian infrastructure in the cities of Grozny and Vladikavkaz”. Dmitri Yadrov, the head of this agency, says on Telegram that the situation was “very difficult” at Grozny airport, also immersed in a “thick fog” which prevented any visibility “at an altitude of 500 meters”. “The captain made two attempts to land in Grozny, which failed. Other airports were offered to him. He decided to go to Aktau airport”in Kazakhstan, he explained. The Kremlin said Friday morning that it would not comment until the investigation is complete.
Moscow did not, however, mention the possibility that a Russian anti-aircraft missile could have hit the aircraft, a hypothesis raised by experts and Western media. In photos and videos showing the remains of the plane, “is you can (…) the fuselage of the plane with holes which are normally caused by anti-aircraft missiles”, Azerbaijani MP Rassim Mousabekov told AFP. “An investigation is underway to establish whether [le crash a été causé par] a strike by Russian air defense or another cause”, he declared.
The day before, Ukrainian officials also pointed towards Russia, against which the country has been at war for more than two years. Lieutenant Andriy Kovalenko, head of the center for combating disinformation within the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, blamed the Russian air defense system in a message published on X. “Russia should have closed the airspace over Grozny, which was not done,” he accused.
