On Saturday, December 28, the Russian President admitted that Russian air defense was indeed in action when the Azerbaijan Airlines plane attempted to land in Grozny, before crashing.
The aircraft, an Embraer 190 belonging to Azerbaijan Airlines, crashed on Wednesday on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, in western Kazakhstan. In all, 38 of the 67 people on board lost their lives in the crash.
While the head of the Kremlin didn’t recognize the responsibility of the Russian defense, he did apologize to the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliev. He also called for an investigation.
“The Kazakh government commission charged with investigating all the details of the incident will call on Russian, Azerbaijani and Brazilian experts […] This work, carried out on the territory of Kazakhstan, will be objective and transparent,” Vladimir Putin stressed.
