The president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, has demanded this Sunday that Russia finish assuming its responsibility, in whole or in part, for this week’s accident of the Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer 190 plane after ensuring that the device lost control while flying over the Russian region of Grozny and that it received fire from the ground when the Russian air defense was repelling a Ukrainian air attack in the area.
Aliyev made these statements a day after having a telephone conversation with Vladimir Putin in which the Russian president apologized after admitting that the accident began in Russian airspace — the plane ended up crashing in Kazakhstan three kilometers from the city’s airport. Aktau, leaving 38 dead and 29 injured, most of them seriously—although He did not take responsibility for what happened.
“The facts are as follows: that an Azerbaijani civil aircraft was shot from outside when flying over Russian territory, near the city of Grozny; that it almost lost control then and that it ended up losing it due to electronic warfare systems, and that, at the same time, its tail was seriously damaged by shots from the ground,” he said in an interview with public television AZTV.
The president of Azerbaijan has been even more forceful when he assured that “thanks to the fact that the fuselage did not burntoday we can openly say that Russia opened fire on the plane; not intentionally, but we can say that he did it.
The president has reiterated that his country has presented three fundamental demands. First, some apologies from Russia “that were presented” in Saturday’s conversation. Secondly and thirdly, he warned, “the Russian side must confess its guilt and must punish the guilty, hold them criminally responsible and pay compensation to the State of Azerbaijan already.” the injured passengers and crew.”
“I hope our other conditions are accepted. All these conditions are fair. “There is no extraordinary demand or problem here and it is based on international experience and normal human behavior,” said the president, who expressed confidence that “the plane was not shot down intentionally.”
“Nonsense” versions of Russia
Aliyev has also criticized the initial reactions of the Russian Government to the plane crash, which occurred on Christmas Day. “During the first three days we heard nothing but meaningless versions from Russia,” he lamented before recalling that “The fuselage was full of holeswith which the initial theory that it collided with a flock of birds was completely discarded but, despite everything, some Russian official circles decided to promote this hypothesis anyway.”
“One of the things that saddened and surprised us was that official Russian organizations presented versions related to the explosion of a gas cylinder, making it very clear that They wanted to cover up the matter“, denounced the president.
Aliyev has attributed the bird theory to the fact that “when the plane began to receive the impacts,” The pilot “probably interpreted it as a collision with a flock” because “no one would ever think that a friendly country of ours fired at the device from the ground.”
The enormous dissatisfaction with the Russian reaction has led the Azeri president to reject an investigation of the Interstate Aviation Committee. “We categorically reject it for one clear reason: this institution is composed mainly of Russian officials, so our requests for objectivity could never have been fully satisfied,” he said.
The outraged Azeri leader has nevertheless asked for patience while waiting to learn all the details of what happened. There remain unknowns, he explained, such as the decision of the pilots and crew—whom he praised for their “maximum heroism, professionalism and composure—to try to reach Kazakhstan, perhaps at their own risk or perhaps by land order from Grozny.
“There is still no answer to all these questions. We, the Azeri side and I personally have tried to be as fair as possible. But on the issues that seem obvious to us, we must say, and we will say, our opinion with total determination,” he concluded.
Putin calls Aliyev again
The Russian Government has not yet reacted to these statements but the Kremlin has confirmed that Putin and Aliyev They held a conversation again this Saturday about the incident.
“Putin and Aliyev today, in a telephone conversation, continued to discuss various issues related to the crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane,” explained the Press Secretary of the Russian Presidency, Dimitri Peskovin statements collected by the Russian agency TASS.
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