Russian Missile Considered Probable Cause of Azerbaijani Plane Crash

There are suggestions that a passenger plane of Azerbaijan Airlines was shot down over Kazakhstan by a Russian air defence missile, Euronews reports.

The news outlet received information from official sources involved in the investigation of the crash that on approach to the Russian city of Grozny, the passengers of the plane heard an explosion, after which something similar to shrapnel hit the aircraft and damaged the fuselage.

The information received by Euronews coincides with a report by the Azerbaijani international news channel AnewZ, which wrote the following: ‘the damage to the aircraft indicates that the plane could have been accidentally hit by an anti-aircraft missile system’.

It is known that Grozny is well protected by Russian air defences, as Chechnya and the militants of its leader Ramzan Kadyrov remain important to the Kremlin in Russia's war against Ukraine. This makes the Chechen capital a potential target for Ukrainian drones.

As The Gaze previously reported, on 25 December, in the morning, an Azerbaijan Airlines plane flying from Baku to Grozny crashed in Kazakhstan with almost 70 passengers on board. Of those, 38 died, while 29 passengers, including three children, survived.