Azerbaijani leader asks Russia to ‘admit guilt’ in plane crash

Ilham Aliyev accuses Russia of firing at the Azerbaijan Airlines aircraft and trying to cover up the cause of the disaster.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has called on Russia to “admit its guilt” for unintentionally shooting down an Azerbaijani airliner, an incident that killed 38 people and injured 29.

Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8432 crashed near the city of Aktau, Kazakhstan, on Wednesday while on its way to Grozny, the capital of the Chechnya region in southern Russia.

“We can say with complete clarity that the plane was shot down by Russia,” Aliyev told Azerbaijani state television on Sunday. “We are not saying that it was done intentionally, but it was done.”

He explained that the airliner was struck by ground fire over Russia and “rendered uncontrollable by electronic warfare”, forcing it off course before it attempted an emergency landing and crashed. Originally, the Kremlin said the crash occurred after the Embraer 190 aircraft hit a flock of birds, but mounting evidence suggested that an antiaircraft missile was the cause.