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Russian anti-aircraft fire may have caused a plane to crash in Kazakhstan on Christmas Day, according to defense experts and officials in the region.
The Azerbaijan Airlines flight was en route from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to Grozny in Chechnya, southern Russia, when it diverted and crashed in Kazakhstan, killing 38 people. 29 passengers survived.
Most of the passengers on the plane, an Embraer 190, were Azerbaijani citizens. There were also 16 Russians and several citizens of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan on board.
In preliminary official reports Wednesday, Russia said heavy fog forced the plane to deviate from its planned landing in Grozny and attempt a landing in Kazakhstan, where it crashed after hitting a flock of birds.
On the same day, the Azerbaijani president said he had been informed that the plane had been diverted due to poor weather conditions.
However, this was contradicted by experts and officials in the region and in Ukraine, who cited evidence that Russian air defense forces were deployed over Grozny at the time in response to a Ukrainian drone attack. They also cited images of what appeared to be shrapnel damage to the interior and tail of the destroyed plane.
Andriy Kovalenko, an official at Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, wrote on Telegram: “Russia should close the airspace over Grozny, but has not done so.” . The plane was damaged by the Russians and sent to Kazakhstan instead of being able to make an emergency landing in Grozny and save lives.”
Senior Ukrainian officials confirmed to the Financial Times that Kiev believes the plane was most likely hit by Russian air defense systems.
Osprey, an aviation security agency, said: “Subsequent videos of the wreckage and the circumstances surrounding the airspace security environment in southwest Russia indicate that the aircraft may have been struck by some form of anti-aircraft fire.”
A senior official in the Caucasus region said there was evidence the plane was damaged by anti-aircraft missiles over the Grozny area.
“If (Russian authorities) were to (use) jamming systems and anti-aircraft systems, they should have closed (the airspace),” the official told the FT. “The most benign explanation (why they didn’t do this) is incompetence.”
Cartography by Steven Bernard
