EGN NEWS DESK
“Our ideas and prayers are with the households and victims of Azerbaijan Airlines flight J28243,” NATO spokesperson Farah Dakhlallah stated in a put up on X on 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, and Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated Thursday: “We want to attend for 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.
This model has sparked skepticism, nevertheless, notably given footage of the shattered fuselage pierced by what seems to be shrapnel.
Several media experiences, 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 latest weeks.
Caliber, citing Azerbaijani officers, stated the plane was not allowed to land at three close by Russian airports regardless of the emergency request, and was as a substitute ordered to fly throughout the Caspian Sea.
The concept that Russia shot down the aircraft as a substitute of a Ukrainian drone is boosted by experiences of a simultaneous drone assault on Grozny. Chechnya’s Security Council Secretary Khamzat Kadyrov, nephew of Ramzan, confirmed in an Instagram put up — which he later deleted — {that a} drone assault on Grozny had been efficiently neutralized.
The head of the Center for Countering Disinformation below Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Andrii Kovalenko, stated in a put up on Telegram that Russia was supposed to shut the airspace over Grozny, however didn’t accomplish that.
“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 one phrase — Russia,” Kovalenko wrote.
If the aircraft had been mistakenly downed by Russia, it should echo the Malaysia Airlines catastrophe of 2014 when a aircraft flying over the Donbas area of Ukraine was shot down by a Russian surface-to-air missile system, killing all 298 folks on board. A Dutch courtroom discovered two Russian brokers and a separatist chief responsible in absentia.
