By KONTUR and per Concordiam news services
A rare apology from Russian President Vladimir Putin has done little to satisfy his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, in the wake of the downing of an Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet.
On January 6, 2025, Aliyev once again called on his neighbor and ally — in the most strident of terms — to accept responsibility and compensate victims of the Christmas Day incident that claimed the lives of 38 of the 67 people on board the Brazilian-made Embraer 190.
“We can clearly say today that the plane was shot down by Russia,” Aliyev said in a television interview, according to a summary published in English by Azerbaijan’s state news agency. “First, the Russian side must apologize to Azerbaijan. Second, it must acknowledge its guilt. Third, those responsible must be punished.”
The New York Times newspaper, citing analysts, said that Aliyev’s strong repudiation of Moscow comes because he took responsibility and offered compensation when Azerbaijan mistakenly shot down a Russian military helicopter in 2020.
Azerbaijani officials and international observers say the plane, Flight 8243, was hit by a Russian air defenses as it tried to land in Grozny, Chechen Republic, Russia.
Survivors have described hearing explosions outside the plane, which then diverted more than 400 kilometers across the Caspian Sea toward Aktau, Kazakhstan, where it crash-landed.
Absurd theories
Aliyev’s unusually forthright accusation of his country’s traditional ally came a day after he spoke with Putin by phone.
“The facts are that the Azerbaijani civilian plane was damaged from the outside over Russian territory, near the city of Grozny, and almost lost control,” Aliyev told state television at the airport in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku.
“We also know that electronic warfare systems put our plane out of control. … At the same time, as a result of fire from the ground, the tail of the plane was also severely damaged,” he said.
Aliyev said it was “regrettable and surprising” that Moscow “put forward theories” that, he said, “clearly showed the Russian side wanted to cover up the issue.”
“For the first three days, we heard nothing from Russia except some absurd theories,” he said, adding that these included the plane hitting a flock of birds.
He called the theory “completely removed” from reality, pointing out that the plane’s “fuselage is riddled with holes.”
Putin told Aliyev that the systems were active at the time and that he was sorry the incident took place in Russian airspace.
Victims of military operations
The Geneva-based International Air Transport Association (IATA), which represents 340 airlines making up more than 80% of global air traffic, called for a thorough, impartial and transparent investigation.
“Out of respect for the 38 people who lost their lives and to those who survived, we must find out why this catastrophe happened and take action to ensure there is never a repeat,” IATA director general Willie Walsh said on December 29. “Civil aircraft must never be the intended or accidental target of military operations.”
The extraction of flight data from the Azerbaijan Airlines plane’s black boxes has been completed at a Brazilian Air Force lab and sent to the Kazakhstan authority investigating the crash, Reuters reported on January 6.
Walsh, the IATA head, said an interim report should be published within 30 days.
“Should the conclusion be that this tragedy was the responsibility of combatants, the perpetrators must be held accountable and brought to justice,” he said.
The European Union and NATO also called for quick and thorough investigations into the crash, as did Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“We can see how the clear visual evidence at the crash site points to Russia’s responsibility for the tragedy,” Zelenskyy said in a social media post on December 27.
The United States on December 27 said it had “early indications” that Russia was responsible for the crash but did not provide details.
History repeats
If the accusations prove to be true, the December 25 tragedy would be the third time in history that Russian or Russian-backed forces have shot down a civilian airliner.
On July 17, 2014, Russian-backed separatist forces using a Buk surface-to-air missile destroyed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 as it was flying over eastern Ukraine. All 283 passengers and 15 crew were killed.
On September 1, 1983, a Soviet air force fighter jet shot down Korean Airlines Flight 007 in the Sea of Japan, killing all 246 passengers and 23 crew.
In both prior incidents, Moscow resorted first to denial, deception and disinformation.
“The Kremlin denied responsibility and spun out various conspiracy theories, blaming the crash on either a Ukrainian fighter jet or some kind of elaborate CIA plot,” Washington Post columnist Max Boot wrote December 27 regarding the Malaysia Airlines crash.
“History appeared to repeat itself this week,” Boot wrote.
Independent investigations proved the fault of Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
On the 10th anniversary of the Malaysia Airlines crash, the European Union’s EUvsDiSiNFO website (euvsdisinfo.eu) in July listed the stages of Russian denial of guilt in killing the MH 17 passengers and crew: “we never said we did it,” “it was staged,” “they did it themselves” and “blaming Ukraine and the West.”
In 1983, the Kremlin initially denied shooting down the Korean Airlines flight and later groundlessly accused the dead crew of spying on Soviet defenses for the United States. Washington made the Kremlin’s continued denials of destroying the plane untenable when it played intercepted audio of the fighter pilot and his combat controller’s radio transmissions to a session of the United Nations Security Council.
Only in 1992, after the fall of the Soviet Union, did the nascent Russian government release the black boxes of the Korean Airlines flight, which Moscow had been hiding for nine years.
A version of this story originally ran on the Kontur website on Dec. 30, 2024: Azerbaijan plane downing brings back troubling memories of MH 17 disaster