Azerbaijan says Russia pledged to punish those responsible for plane crash

Azerbaijan demands Russia take responsibility for downing AZAL plane, as Moscow promises to punish those responsible.

Azerbaijan said on Monday (December 30, 2024) that Moscow had promised to punish those responsible for the downing of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane that Baku says was shot at by Russian air defences.

The AZAL Embraer 190 jet crash-landed in Kazakhstan on December 25, killing 38 of the 67 people on board.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has demanded that Moscow accept responsibility for mistakenly firing on the plane as it tried to make a scheduled landing at Grozny airport in south Russia.

Russia has not confirmed that one of its air-defence missiles hit the plane, though President Vladimir Putin told Mr. Aliyev in a phone call over the weekend that the systems were active at the time and that he was sorry the incident took place in Russian airspace.

Azerbaijan’s prosecutor general reported on Monday (December 30, 2024) that the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee had told Baku: “Intensive measures are being carried out to identify the guilty people and bring them to criminal responsibility.”

Russia has opened a criminal enquiry into the incident.

But it has not said whether it agrees that the plane was hit by one of its air-defence missiles and has not itself said anything about finding or bringing any perpetrators to justice.