38 people died in the crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane on December 25, 2024. If the circumstances of the crash are not yet known, the main possibility is that of an accidental shot by the anti-aircraft defense above Russia.
“I heard a loud explosion, the oxygen masks fell, the plane shook,” remembers Rinat Assanov, survivor of the Azerbaijan Airlines crash which killed 38 of the 67 people on board at the end of December in Kazakhstan.
The main clue is that the anti-aircraft defense was fired by mistake over Russia, even if Moscow has not admitted it.
Returning home to Tokmok in Kyrgyzstan, in the north of this mountainous Central Asian country, Rinat, 20, says he has to stay “lying all day” to rest his “painful body”.
The circumstances of the crash not yet established
He must undergo treatment for another six months and this computer science student is forbidden by doctors from watching the images of the crash.
One month after the crash of flight 8243 which should have linked Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, to Grozny in Chechnya on December 25, 2024, the exact circumstances have not yet been officially established.
Azerbaijan openly accuses Moscow of accidentally shooting down the plane and then trying to cover up this reality. The images show holes in the fuselage of the plane reminiscent of those of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, shot down in July 2014 by a Russian BUK anti-aircraft missile over Ukrainian territory under the control of pro-Russian separatist rebels, killing 298 people. .
Kazakhstan, Moscow’s ally, announced on Friday that it had postponed the publication of the analysis of the black boxes until next week.
Crash in Kazakhstan: why is the track of a Russian missile favored?
“Everyone panicked”
Like many Kyrgyz citizens for whom Russia remains a preferred destination to earn a living, Rinat Asanov, orphaned as a teenager, planned to go there via Azerbaijan.
After a first night flight between the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek and Baku, Rinat boarded the plane which was to take him to Chechnya and fell asleep, exhausted.
-“I was woken up by an explosion. It made such a noise. I saw on the left side of the plane a kind of plastic that broke and the oxygen masks fell off,” he said. -he.
“Then there was a second noise, five to ten minutes later. And everyone panicked, people were getting up and walking around, crying… A flight attendant told us to calm down,” continues Rinat, scar above the nape of his neck.
But the plane continues its flight towards Aktau, on the other side of the Caspian Sea. Until now, this dangerous detour in a damaged plane has never been explained, Moscow limiting itself to asserting that it was a choice of the pilot although there were closer airfields.
“We flew for about another hour and a half and during all this time I hoped that the plane was in good condition, that we would land normally,” says the man who regularly attended sports halls before this disaster.
Three days of coma
After crossing the Caspian Sea separating the Caucasus from Central Asia, the aircraft from the Brazilian manufacturer Embraer finally crashed in the steppe three kilometers from Aktau airport.
“The flight attendant told us that the plane was going to have to make an emergency landing on land, to prepare for the impact and to exit through the emergency exits,” Rinat said.
“We were told how to protect our heads and that we had to sit correctly and remove all sharp objects, like watches,” he continues.
“There I understood that the plane was falling somewhere in a field, not at all towards the airport. And I said to myself ‘why me, why this plane, why now’. I see that the earth is getting closer, I “I was so scared that I lost consciousness and woke up in the hospital,” said the Kyrgyz citizen.
After three days in a coma, he was evacuated to Kyrgyzstan, where he was placed in intensive care.
Although he refuses to fly again for the moment, Rinat remains optimistic and plans to continue studying geodesy after obtaining his computer science degree. “Life goes on as before. I just found myself in this situation and will live with it.”
