Unlock the Editor’s Digest at no cost
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories on this weekly newsletter.
Russian anti-aircraft fire could have caused a plane to crash in Kazakhstan on Christmas Day, in response to US and regional officials.
The Azerbaijan Airlines flight was en route from Azerbaijan’s capital Baku to Grozny in Chechnya, southern Russia, when it diverted and crash-landed in Kazakhstan, killing 38 people. Twenty-nine passengers survived.
Most of those on the plane, an Embraer 190, were Azerbaijani residents. There have been also 16 Russians onboard and a number of other residents of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
In preliminary official reports on Wednesday, Russia said that heavy fog had forced the plane to divert from its planned landing in Grozny and seek to land in Kazakhstan, where it crashed after probably hitting a flock of birds. On the identical day, Azerbaijan’s president said he had been told the plane had been diverted resulting from poor weather conditions.
But that was questioned by experts and officials within the US, the region and Ukraine, who cited evidence that Russian air defences were operating over Grozny on the time in response to a Ukrainian drone strike. In addition they cited images of what gave the impression to be shrapnel damage on the within and tail of the wrecked plane.
A US official said there have been early indications that a Russian anti-aircraft system may need struck the plane. If this was the case, the incident would further underscore Moscow’s recklessness since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the official added.
Andriy Kovalenko, a Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council official, posted on Telegram: “Russia was presupposed to close the airspace over Grozny, but didn’t accomplish that . . . The plane was damaged by the Russians and sent to Kazakhstan, as an alternative of creating an emergency landing in Grozny and saving people’s lives.”
Senior Ukrainian officials confirmed to the Financial Times that Kyiv believed the plane was most likely hit by Russia air defence systems.
Osprey, an aviation security agency, said: “Follow-on video of the wreckage and the circumstances across the airspace security environment in south-west Russia indicate the likelihood the aircraft was hit by some type of anti-aircraft fire.”
A senior official within the Caucasus region said evidence pointed to the plane being damaged by air defences over the Grozny area.
“If [Russian authorities are] going to make use of jamming systems and anti-aircraft systems, they need to have closed the airspace,” the official told the FT. “Essentially the most benign explanation for why they didn’t accomplish that is incompetence.”
If the investigation, which is being led by Kazakhstan officials, finds the plane was hit by air defence systems, the incident would recall the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014. The crash, which killed 298 people, was attributable to a missile launched by Russian-controlled proxy fighters in eastern Ukraine, an investigation concluded.
Data from the Flightradar24 tracking service shows that the Azerbaijan plane stopped registering its position repeatedly once it reached the north Caucasus area, suggesting that GPS was being jammed.
Nevertheless, Flightradar24 found some identifying information was available that showed the plane had made it so far as Grozny before changing course for Kazakhstan.
Images from the crash site show much of the plane’s front was half destroyed, but a big a part of the tail remained intact. The tail appears to be covered with impact marks and small punctures that may very well be consistent with a strike by a surface-to-air missile defence system, in response to military experts.
“The holes within the fuselage are very just like the impact of the form of projectiles that air-to-air missiles are inclined to be equipped [with], in addition to the anti-aircraft missiles launched by air defence systems resembling the Pantsir-S1,” said Ruslan Leviev, a military analyst and head of the Conflict Intelligence Team, an open-source investigations group.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said it was premature to invest on the causes of the crash. Authorities in Kazakhstan said it was “unethical” responsible missile fire before the investigation had concluded.
A National Security Council spokesperson said the US has seen the reports but referred reporters to Azerbaijani and Kazakhstani officials because the investigation continued.
Additional reporting by Steff Chávez in Recent York
Cartography by Steven Bernard
