President of Azerbaijan accuses Russia of trying to hide the causes of the plane crash

The president of accused, this Sunday (29), the of having tried to hide that the national airline plane that crashed on Wednesday in Kazakhstan was hit by shots fired from Russian territory, and demanded a public apology from Moscow. Since Wednesday’s incident in which an Azerbaijani plane crashed in western Kazakhstan, killing 38 people, suspicions have been that Russia may have accidentally shot down the plane. Putin apologized on Saturday to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev for the “tragic accident” in a telephone conversation, but did not say that the Russian air defense system shot down the device, a hypothesis suggested by experts from the United States and other Western countries.

The leader of Azerbaijan publicly pointed out Russia’s “guilt” in an interview with a national television network, insisting that the plane “was shot down accidentally”. “We know that the electronic jamming systems” active in Grozny “caused our plane to lose control and its tail was also seriously damaged.” Ilham Aliev considered that the different versions of events presented by Russia after the accident “clearly demonstrate that the Russian side wanted to cover up the matter”. “Unfortunately, during the first three days after the accident, we heard nothing but absurd theories from Russia,” he said on national television, according to the state news agency Azertag.

“Admitting guilt, apologizing in time to Azerbaijan, which is considered a friendly country, and informing the public about this are measures and steps that should have been taken,” he added. The Brazilian-made Embraer 190 plane from Azerbaijan Airlines, with 67 people on board, was on a flight from Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, to Grozny on Wednesday. The plane crashed and caught fire near Aktau, a port on the Caspian Sea in western Kazakhstan and far from its normal route.

*With information from AFP
Posted by Victor Oliveira