RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR Putin has apologised to his Azerbaijani counterpart for what he called a “tragic incident” following a plane crash in Kazakhstan that killed 38 people.
The Azerbaijani plane was flying on Wednesday from Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku to Grozny, the regional capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, when it turned towards Kazakhstan and crashed while making an attempt to land.
There were 29 survivors.
In an official statement today, the Kremlin said air defence systems were firing near Grozny on Wednesday due to a Ukrainian drone strike – but it stopped short of saying one of these hit the plane.
Azerbaijan’s leader Ilham Aliyev told Putin that the Azerbaijani Airlines plane was first hit by “external physical and technical interference” over Russia.
According to a statement from the presidency in the capital, Baku, Aliyev pointed to survivors testimony as part of his country’s argument that the plane was suffered interference while in Russian airspace.
A survivor, Subkhonkul Rakhimov, told Russia’s state broadcaster RT that an “explosion” appeared to happen outside the plane as it attempted to land in Grozny in fog, causing shrapnel to penetrate inside.
“I wouldn’t say it was inside the plane because the skin of the fuselage near where I was sitting flew off,” he said.
“I grabbed a life jacket and saw there was a hole in it – it was pierced by shrapnel.”
The Embraer 190 jet crashed near the Kazakh city of Aktau after two attempts to land at its destination in the Russian city of Grozny and then diverting far off course across the Caspian Sea. The diversion was due to thick fog, the airline and Russian authorities have said.
On Friday, a US official and an Azerbaijani minister made separate statements blaming the crash on an external weapon.
The specialist website Flightradar24, which tracks flights, said the flight had experienced “significant GPS interference”.
The plane “stopped sending positional data” for a few minutes, the site said.
In a statement Baku’s presidency said that Aliyev “emphasised” to Putin that the plane had a “complete loss of control” due to “external physical and technical interference” while in Russian airspace.
It added Aliyev “highlighted that the multiple holes in the aircraft’s fuselage, injuries sustained by passengers and crew due to foreign particles penetrating the cabin mid-flight”.
This, combined with testimonies from survivors, helped to “confirm evidence of external physical and technical interference”, the Azerbaijan presidency said.
With reporting by David Mac Redmond and PA
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