Azerbaijan Blames Russia for Plane Crash and Rebukes Kremlin

 

Azerbaijan Blames Russia for Plane Crash and Rebukes Kremlin

 

The leader of Azerbaijan criticized the Russian response to the crash of a passenger jet that Azerbaijani officials said had most likely been hit by Russian air defenses.

 

Anatoly Kurmanaev

By Anatoly Kurmanaev

Reporting from Berlin

Published Dec. 29, 2024

Updated Dec. 30, 2024, 3:51 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/29/world/europe/azerbaijan-blames-russia-plane-crash.html

 

The leader of Azerbaijan directly blamed Russia on Sunday for the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet last week, calling on Moscow to accept responsibility and offer compensation to victims.

 

President Ilham Aliyev said in an interview with Azerbaijan’s national broadcaster that a vague apology issued by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia a day earlier would not suffice to preserve friendly relations between the two former Soviet states.

 

The Embraer 190 airliner was traveling from Baku, Azerbaijan, to Grozny in southern Russia on Wednesday, but was diverted from its path after encountering interference with its navigation systems and impact with external objects, according to Azerbaijan’s government. The plane crashed in Kazakhstan soon after, resulting in the deaths of 38 of the 67 people on board, more than half of them Azerbaijani citizens.

 

Azerbaijani and U.S. officials, as well as international aviation experts, had said they believed that the plane was most likely shot down by a Russian air defense missile. Moscow, however, has not admitted responsibility.

 

Mr. Aliyev’s comments on Sunday offered the most direct rebuke yet of Kremlin’s position on the crash.

 

“We can clearly say today that the plane was shot down by Russia,” Mr. Aliyev said in the 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.”

 

Mr. Aliyev added that Moscow had met only the first condition thus far.

 

On Saturday, Mr. Putin broke the Kremlin’s three-day silence on the crash. He called Mr. Aliyev and apologized, without directly acknowledging Russian responsibility, according to summaries of the call published by the two governments.

 

“Vladimir Putin offered his apologies that the tragic incident took place in the Russian airspace,” the Kremlin said in its summary.

 

Russia said that as the plane approached Grozny, Russian air defenses had begun to repulse an attack by Ukrainian drones on the airport there and others nearby.

 

Ukraine, which has targeted Grozny with drones in recent weeks, has not confirmed or denied that such an attack took place.

 

Mr. Aliyev said in the television interview that the airliner was hit by accident. He criticized, however, Moscow’s tardy and noncommittal response, which initially attempted to blame the crash on fog or birds.

 

“Unfortunately, for the first three days, we heard nothing from Russia except for some absurd theories,” Mr. Aliyev said.

 

Analysts said that Mr. Aliyev had taken a strong stand on Russia because he himself accepted responsibility and offered compensation when Azerbaijan’s military mistakenly shot down a Russian military helicopter in 2020, killing two Russian service members.

 

“Azerbaijan now expects similar actions from Moscow,” said Zaur Shiriyev, a Baku-based foreign policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a policy research organization.

 

It remains unclear if Mr. Aliyev’s strongly worded demands to the Kremlin signaled a cooling of relations between the two countries, or were meant primarily to satisfy a domestic audience.

 

Azerbaijan has assumed a neutral position on the war in Ukraine, benefiting from growing trade with Russia while exploiting Moscow’s distraction to pursue its interests in the Caucasus. Analysts have said the country has little incentive to let the crash derail this beneficial status quo with Moscow.

 

Some analysts have said that Mr. Putin could resolve the flare-up of tensions with Mr. Aliyev, a fellow autocrat with longstanding ties to Moscow elites, by striking a private deal.

 

Such a scenario would spare Mr. Putin the political cost of assuming responsibility for the crash but it would be likely to breed long-term resentment against Russia among the Azerbaijani public, the analysts say.

 

The Kremlin did not immediately comment on Mr. Aliyev’s demands on Sunday.

 

Milana Mazaeva contributed reporting from Istanbul.

 

Anatoly Kurmanaev covers Russia and its transformation following the invasion of Ukraine. More about Anatoly Kurmanaev