The president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, has apologized to his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, because the “tragic” accident of the Embraer 109 Azerbaijan Airlines plane occurred in Russian airspace, although at no time has he admitted responsibility for a hypothetical demolition of the device, as the White House hinted yesterday.
On Christmas Day, an Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer 190 plane covering the Baku-Grozny route crashed three kilometers from the airport in the Kazakh city of Aktau, leaving 38 dead and 29 injured, most of them seriously. Just after a couple of hours of flight, the plane requested an emergency landing. Due to thick fog in Grozny, it was diverted first to Makhachkala, Russian Dagestan, and then to Aktau, where it eventually crashed.
“Vladimir Putin apologizes for the tragic incident that occurred in Russian airspace and once again expresses his deep and sincere condolences to the families of the victims and wishes a speedy recovery to the injured,” the Kremlin published in a statement.
Putin has claimed that Ukrainian drones were attacking the Russian region of Grozny, where the plane tried to land on several occasions shortly before the incident. “At that time, Grozny, Mozdok and Vladikavkaz were attacked by Ukrainian combat unmanned aerial vehicles, repelled by the Russian defense system,” says the text, collected by Europa Press.
Currently, two employees of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Azerbaijan are in Grozny, where they are working together with representatives of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office and the Investigative Committee to clarify what happened. The relevant services of Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are cooperating at the disaster site near the city of Aktau.
NATO has requested that a “thorough” investigation be carried out into the accident, after the Reuters agency published a few days ago that the plane was shot down by the Russian air defense systemaccording to sources in Azerbaijan linked to the investigation. The EFE agency also claimed, citing two sources from the Azerbaijani Government, that the device was hit by shrapnel from a Russian surface-to-air missile when it was in the airspace of the Russian city of Grozny, its destination point.
The Azerbaijani media calls on Moscow to take responsibility for the events. The accident could have been caused by the work of Russian anti-aircraft defenses to repel an attack by Ukrainian drones in the North Caucasus that coincided with the flight of the Azerbaijani plane. Ukraine is also directly targeting Russia.
Source: www.eldiario.es
