Ukraine claims Azerbaijani plane shot down by Russian defense system

The Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer 190 plane, which failed to complete its flight from Baku in Azerbaijan to Grozny in Russia and crashed in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, was shot down by a Russian air defense systemsaid this Thursday (12/26/2024) the head of the Center for Combating Disinformation of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Andri Kovalenko.

“The explosion of an air defense missile damaged the plane and disabled its systems”Kovalenko wrote on Telegram. The holes in the plane’s fuselage that appeared during the flight would be shrapnel debris and not damage caused by birds, as Russian sources initially reported, he said. “The plane was damaged by the Russians and sent to Kazakhstan, instead of making an emergency landing in Grozny and saving lives,” Kovalenko stressed.

“Russia had to close the airspace over Grozny, but it did not do it”he added, referring to the risks created by the Ukrainian drone attack that was occurring in Grozny at the same time. The Russian city was attacked on Wednesday morning, according to Chechnya Security Council Secretary Jamzat Kadirov. “Everything that was flying was shot down,” he said that same day.

Peskov asks to wait for investigations

Kovalenko indicated that only the professionalism of the plane’s pilots prevented Russia from “turning this story into a Russian provocation against Ukraine,” and warned that Russia will do everything possible to hide its own responsibility for the plane crash and the deaths of people.

“It would be a mistake to formulate hypotheses before the conclusions of the research. We, of course, will not do it and no one should.”said the spokesman for the Russian presidency, Dmitri Peskov, when asked about this possibility. The spokesperson insisted that we have to “wait until the investigation is over.”

On Wednesday morning, 38 of the 67 people on board the plane died in the accident that occurred near the city of Aktau (Kazakhstan), after failing to land in the Russian city of Grozny (Chechnya). Several pro-war Russian military bloggers have noted that the plane was possibly shot down by Russian air defenses.

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