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Russian anti-aircraft hearth could have precipitated a airplane to crash in Kazakhstan on Christmas Day, based on defence specialists and officers within the area.
The Azerbaijan Airways 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 individuals. Twenty-nine passengers survived.
Most of these on the airplane, an Embraer 190, had been Azerbaijani residents. There have been additionally 16 Russians onboard and a number of other residents of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
In preliminary official stories on Wednesday, Russia stated that heavy fog had pressured the airplane to divert from its deliberate touchdown in Grozny and search to land in Kazakhstan, the place it crashed after hitting a flock of birds.
On the identical day, Azerbaijan’s president stated he had been advised the airplane had been diverted on account of poor climate situations.
However that was contradicted by specialists and officers within the area and in Ukraine, who cited proof that Russian air defences had been working over Grozny on the time in response to a Ukrainian drone strike. Additionally they cited photos of what seemed to be shrapnel injury on the within and tail of the wrecked airplane.
Andriy Kovalenko, a Ukrainian Nationwide Safety and Defence Council official, posted on Telegram: “Russia was supposed to shut the airspace over Grozny, however didn’t achieve this . . . The airplane was broken by the Russians and despatched to Kazakhstan, as a substitute of creating an emergency touchdown in Grozny and saving individuals’s lives.”
Senior Ukrainian officers confirmed to the Monetary Occasions that Kyiv believed the airplane was likely hit by Russia air defence programs.
Osprey, an aviation safety company, stated: “Comply with-on video of the wreckage and the circumstances across the airspace safety surroundings in south-west Russia point out the chance the plane was hit by some type of anti-aircraft hearth.”
A senior official within the Caucasus area stated proof pointed to the airplane being broken by air defences over the Grozny space.
“If [Russian authorities are] going to [use] jamming programs and anti-aircraft programs, they need to have closed [the airspace],” the official advised the FT. “Probably the most benign clarification [for why they did not do so] is incompetence.”
Cartography by Steven Bernard
