Russian President Vladimir Putin has admitted for the first time his country played a role in the 2024 crash of an Azerbaijani passenger plane, describing it as a ‘tragedy’.The Azerbaijan Airlines flight crash landed in Kazakhstan on December 25, killing 38 of the 67 people on board, after being diverted from a scheduled landing in the southern Russian city of Grozny.Last year Putin issued a rare public apology to Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev for what the Kremlin called a ‘tragic incident’ over Russia in which the plane crashed after Russian air defences were deployed against Ukrainian drones.Yesterday he went further. ‘Of course, everything that is required in such tragic cases will be done by the Russian side on compensation and a legal assessment of all official things will be given,’ Putin told Aliyev at a meeting. ‘It is our duty, I repeat once again… to give an objective assessment of everything that happened and to identify the true causes.’Putin said that Russia had deployed two missiles to destroy Ukrainian drones on the morning of the incident, and that they exploded ‘a few metres away’ from the aircraft.’The two missiles that were fired did not directly hit the aircraft. If that had happened, it would have crashed on the spot,’ Putin said.Russian air traffic controllers advised the pilot to attempt a landing in the Russian city of Makhachkala, but he instead attempted to land at his home airport and then in Kazakhstan, where the plane came down, Putin said.’Russia will do everything necessary in such tragic cases to provide compensation, and the actions of all officials will be legally assessed,’ he said.Aliyev previously accused Russia of attempting to conceal the true cause of the crash.Yesterday he thanked Putin for providing ‘detailed information about the tragedy’, the Kremlin said in a readout.’I would like to express my gratitude once again for the fact that you deemed it necessary to highlight this issue at our meeting,’ Aliyev told Putin.Initial statements by Russia's air transport agency suggested that the plane, an Embraer 190, was forced to divert after a bird strike.Russia's handling of the incident dramatically soured relations with Azerbaijan, an oil-rich post-Soviet state with historically close links to Moscow.
