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By Guy Falconbridge, Andrew Osborne and Nailia Bagirova
MOSCOW/BAKU (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin apologized to Azerbaijan’s leader on Saturday after Russian air defenses shot down an Azerbaijani airliner in what the Kremlin described as a “tragic incident” against Ukraine.
While the Kremlin’s statement did not say Russia had shot down the plane, citing criminal charges, the rare public apology from Putin was the latest Moscow to accept some blame for Wednesday’s crash.
Flight J2-8243, en route from Baku to the Chechen capital of Grozny, landed near Aktau in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, where Ukrainian drones are said to be attacking several cities. At least 38 people were killed.
Four sources familiar with the initial findings of Azerbaijan’s investigation told Reuters on Thursday that Russian air defenses had mistakenly shot down the airliner. Passengers reported hearing a loud noise outside the plane.
Putin called President Ilham Aliyev and “apologized for the tragic incident in Russian airspace and once again expressed his deep and sincere condolences to the families of the victims and wished them a speedy recovery,” the Kremlin said.
“At that time, Grozny, Mozdok and Vladikavkaz were attacked by non-Ukrainian air vehicles, and Russian air defense systems returned these attacks.”
The Kremlin said civilian and military specialists were being questioned.
Putin called his counterpart in Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, and expressed his condolences for the loss of life in the accident.
On Saturday, US President Joe Biden responded to questions about whether Putin should take responsibility for the disaster as he left a church in the US Virgin Islands where he was on vacation.
“It looks like he did, but I haven’t talked to him or my team,” Biden replied.
The White House said on Friday that it had seen early signs that the airliner might have been brought down by Russian air defense systems, and that Washington had provided assistance to the investigation into the crash.
MSNBC reported on Friday, citing two unnamed US military sources, that US intelligence agencies may have mistakenly shot down the plane after Russia identified it as an intruding drone.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also called Aliyev to express his condolences and asked Russia for a clear explanation in a statement at the X forum.
Things that are broken by airplane fuses
Azerbaijan, for its part, said that Aliyev informed Putin that the plane “was under the control of external physical and technical interference in Russian airspace and turned around to the Kazakh city of Aktau due to a complete loss of control.”
As of Saturday, Russia’s last working day before the long New Year holidays, the Kremlin said it was inappropriate to comment on the incident until official investigations were completed.
The Embraer jet had flown from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, to Grozny, in the southern Russian region of Chechnya, where the incident occurred, and then traveled another 280 miles (450 kilometers) across the Caspian Sea.
Footage taken by passengers before the crash shows oxygen masks dropped and people wearing life jackets. Later videos showed bloodied and injured passengers being pulled from the wreckage. There were 29 survivors.
Baku cited the damage caused by objects that had penetrated the plane’s fuselage and the testimony of survivors as evidence of “external physical and technical intervention.”
Even when planes fly hundreds of kilometers from a war zone, the crash underscored the threat to civil aviation, especially as Ukraine tries to strike Russia behind the front lines with its mass deployment of drones.
Russia uses electronic jamming to confuse the geographical location and communications of Ukrainian drones, which it does with air defense systems.
In the year In 2020, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian airliner, killing all 176 people on board.
In the year In 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine, killing 298 passengers and crew, by what Dutch investigators said was a Russian BUK missile system. Russia has denied involvement.
