“Our ideas and prayers are with the households and victims of Azerbaijan Airways flight J28243,” NATO spokesperson Farah Dakhlallah stated in a publish on X Thursday. “We want these injured within the crash a speedy restoration and name for a full investigation.”
The Kremlin has cautioned in opposition to drawing any untimely conclusions, with spokesperson Dmitry Peskov saying Thursday: “We have to await the investigation to conclude.”
The official rationalization from Russia’s aviation watchdog was that the aircraft was redirected to Aktau after it struck a flock of birds.
That model has drawn skepticism, nonetheless, as photographs of the shattered fuselage seem to point out it was pierced by shrapnel.
A number of media studies, together with by Russian unbiased information outlet Meduza, Reuters and Azerbaijan’s Caliber, declare the passenger jet was broken by a Russian air protection missile in an space the place Moscow has been concentrating on Ukrainian drones in current weeks.
Caliber, citing Azerbaijani officers, stated the plane was refused permission to land at three close by Russian airports regardless of submitting an emergency request, and was as a substitute ordered to fly throughout the Caspian Sea.
The idea that Russia shot the aircraft down after mistaking it for a Ukrainian drone has been bolstered by studies of a simultaneous drone assault on Grozny. Chechnya’s Safety Council Secretary Khamzat Kadyrov, a nephew of Ramzan, claimed in an Instagram publish — which was later deleted — {that a} drone assault on Grozny had been efficiently neutralized.
Andrii Kovalenko, head of an anti-disinformation unit at Ukraine’s Nationwide Safety and Protection Council, stated in a publish on Telegram that Russia had been supposed to shut the airspace over Grozny, however failed to take action.
“The aircraft was broken by the Russians and was despatched to Kazakhstan, as a substitute of constructing an emergency touchdown in Grozny and saving folks’s lives. In a single phrase — Russia,” Kovalenko wrote.
Whether it is confirmed that the aircraft was mistakenly downed by Russia, the incident will echo the Malaysia Airways catastrophe of 2014 by which a aircraft flying over the Donbas area of Ukraine was shot down by a Russian missile, killing all 298 folks on board. A Dutch court docket discovered two Russian brokers and a separatist chief responsible of the crime in absentia.
