Russian President Vladimir Putin told Azerbaijan’s leader that two Russian missiles were detonated next to an Azerbaijan Airlines plane last year after Ukrainian drones entered Russian airspace in an incident that killed 38 people.
In what was the Kremlin leader’s most candid admission to date that Moscow is to blame for the deadly incident, he apologized again to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and promised compensation to those affected.
Flight J2-8243, which was heading from Baku to Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, crashed on December 25 near Aktau, Kazakhstan, after diverting from southern Russia, where Ukrainian drones were said to be attacking several targets. At least 38 people died.
FREE LIST
10 small caps to invest in
The list of stocks from promising sectors on the Stock Exchange
Video footage on Thursday showed Putin and Aliyev shaking hands and smiling before a bilateral meeting in Tajikistan at which Putin spoke about the plane crash.
Last year, Putin issued a rare public apology to Aliyev for what the Kremlin called a “tragic incident” over Russia in which the plane crashed after Russian air defenses were deployed against Ukrainian drones.
On Thursday, he went further.
Continues after advertising
“Of course, everything necessary in tragic cases like this will be done by the Russian side in terms of compensation and a legal assessment of all official things will be done,” Putin told Aliyev.
“It is our duty, I repeat once again… to make an objective assessment of everything that happened and identify the true causes.”
Putin told Aliyev that two Russian air defense missiles were detonated several meters away from the plane after Ukrainian drones entered Russian airspace.
Continues after advertising
“The two launched missiles did not hit the plane directly; if that had happened, it would have crashed on the spot, but they exploded, perhaps as a self-destruction measure, a few meters away, about 10 meters,” Putin said.
“Thus, the damage was caused, mainly, not by the warheads, but, most likely, by the debris of the missiles themselves. That is why the pilot realized that it was a collision with a flock of birds, which he reported to the Russian air traffic controllers, and all of this is recorded in the so-called ‘black boxes’.”
The jet manufactured by Embraer had flown from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, to Grozny, in the Republic of Chechnya, in southern Russia, where the incident occurred, and then traveled, heavily damaged, for another 450km across the Caspian Sea.
Continues after advertising
Putin warned on Thursday that “it will probably take some more time” to fully investigate the causes of the accident.
A preliminary report published on a Kazakh government website in February found that the plane suffered external damage and was full of holes in the fuselage.
Aliyev was furious about the accident and publicly criticized Moscow’s initial reactions which he said attempted to cover up the cause of the incident.
Continues after advertising
On Thursday, he thanked Putin for personally monitoring the progress of the investigation into the deadly incident.
“I would like to express my gratitude once again for the fact that you considered it necessary to highlight this issue at our meeting,” Aliyev told Putin.
