The president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, promised this Thursday to his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, that Moscow will pay the compensation required for the accident of the Azerbaijani passenger plane that crashed in Kazakhstan on December 25, 2024 after being hit by missiles in Russian airspace.
“Of course, everything that is required in such cases, in such tragic cases, will be done by the Russian side in terms of compensations,” Putin told Aliyev at a bilateral meeting in Dushanbe, the start of which was broadcast on Russian state television.
In his most candid admission to date of the fatal accident, Putin explained to the president of Azerbaijan that two russian missiles detonated a few meters from the Azerbaijan Airlines plane after Ukrainian drones entered Russian airspace, in an incident that caused death of 38 people.
Plane crash in Kazakhstan.
Flight J2-8243, flying from Baku to Grozny, the Chechen capital, crashed on December 25 near Aktau, Kazakhstan, after diverting from southern Russia, where Ukrainian drones were attacking several targets. After being damaged, The plane traveled, badly damaged, another 450 kilometers across the Caspian Sea.
“The two missiles launched did not directly hit the plane; if that had happened, it would have crashed on the spot, but They exploded, perhaps as a measure of self-destruction, a few meters away, about 10 meters,” Putin explained. According to this version, the damage to the aircraft was caused mainly not by the warheads, but probably by the remains of the missiles themselves.
The pilot perceived it as a collision with a flock of birds, which is what moved the Russian air traffic controllers. All this was recorded in the “black boxes” of the damaged aircraft.
Last year, Putin issued a rare public apology to Aliyev for what the Kremlin called a “tragic incident.”
The president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, with his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, this Thursday.
Reuters
The Azerbaijani president was angry about the accident and publicly criticized Moscow’s initial reactions, which, according to him, They sought to cover up the cause of the incident.
“I would like to express once again my gratitude for having considered it necessary to highlight this issue in our meeting,” Aliyev told Putin this Thursday.