Flight attendant Zulfuqar Asadov says he felt “some kind of external strike” while the Azerbaijan Airlines jet was over Chechnya. “The impact of it caused panic inside,” he said. “We tried to calm them down, to get them seated. At that moment, there was another strike, and my arm was injured.”
Washington now says Russia may be to blame. White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters the United States had seen “early indications” that Russian forces could have brought down the plane, which crashed on 25 December and killed 38 people. He gave no detail. He did say Washington had offered help to the crash investigation, and, according to the Washington Post, that what the US had seen went beyond the widely circulated photos of the damaged aircraft.
What happened to Flight 8243
The Embraer 190 was flying from Baku to Grozny, with 62 passengers and 5 crew aboard. The plane is thought to have been hit by Russian air defence fire as it tried to land in Chechnya. It was then sent across the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan, where it crashed. Of the 67 people on board, 29 survived. The pilots, who died, are credited with saving those survivors by getting part of the aircraft onto the ground.
Aviation experts and others in Azerbaijan believe electronic jamming knocked out the plane’s GPS and that shrapnel from Russian air-defence missile blasts then damaged it.
Baku stops short of blaming Moscow
Azerbaijan has not accused Russia. Transport minister Rashad Nabiyev did say the aircraft suffered “external interference” and was damaged inside and out as it approached. Survivors, he said, “without exception” reported hearing three blasts above Grozny, and investigators will now work out “what kind of weapon, or rather what kind of rocket was used”.
A pro-government MP, Rasim Musabekov, was blunter. “The plane was shot down over Russian territory, in the skies above Grozny. Denying this is impossible,” he told the AFP news agency. He said the pilot, with the aircraft damaged, asked for an emergency landing in Grozny but was not pointed to nearby airports. Instead the crew was “sent far away” over the Caspian, he said, and without GPS.
The Kremlin’s answer
The Kremlin has refused to comment on the growing number of reports that its air defences hit the plane. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said an investigation was under way and that “until the conclusions are made as a result of the investigation, we do not consider ourselves entitled to give any assessments.”
The head of Russia’s civil aviation agency took a different line, saying the situation in Chechnya was “very complicated” because of Ukrainian drone strikes on the region.
Who investigates is also in dispute. Reports in Baku say Russia and Kazakhstan have both proposed a committee from the Commonwealth of Independent States, a regional organisation dominated by Russia. Azerbaijan wants an international inquiry instead. Kazakh authorities, meanwhile, have been treating the injured and working closely with Azerbaijan on the investigation.
Sources
- Russia may be responsible for downed Azerbaijan Airlines plane, says US
- Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243
