Azerbaijan receives evidence that its plane was shot down by Russian missile - Reuters
The Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane that crashed in December 2024 near the Kazakh city of Aktau was shot down by the Russian Pantsir-S air defense system. Baku has a fragment of a missile recovered from the wreckage.
This was reported to Reuters by a source in the Azerbaijani government, Censor.NET reports.
The source said that the country has accurate confirmation that the plane was shot down by a Russian Pantsir-S air defense system.
"The Azerbaijani side has a fragment of the Pantsir-S missile, which was removed from the plane and identified by international expertise," the source told Reuters.
Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash in Kazakhstan
On 25 December, an Embraer plane en route from Baku to Grozny, Russia, crashed near the Kazakh city of Aktau.
38 people died as a result of the downing of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane. According to one version in the media, the plane could have been hit by air defence systems over the territory of the Russian Federation.
According to media reports, a Russian surface-to-air missile caused the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane in Aktau.
Defense Intelligence Chief Kyrylo Budanov says that the Azerbaijan Airlines plane was shot down by Russia's Pantsir-S1 air defense system.
Azerbaijan expects Russia to officially recognize the downing of the passenger plane, Reuters reports.
The spokesman for the Russian dictator Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on the information about Russia's involvement in the crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane in Kazakhstan.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed his condolences to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and the Azerbaijani people over the crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane and said that the facts indicate that Russia is responsible for the tragedy.
On December 29, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that the Azerbaijan Airlines plane crashed in Kazakhstan as a result of shelling from the ground over Russian territory.
During a telephone conversation with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, during which they discussed the crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin apologized for the fact that "the tragic incident occurred in Russian airspace."
Later, Putin called Aliyev again to continue discussing the crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane.
