Azerbaijan<\/a> Airlines plane flying from Baku as it was preparing to land in Grozny, the regional capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, on 25 December 2024. Ukrainian drones have regularly struck deep inside Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSpeaking at a meeting with Azerbaijan\u2019s president Ilham Aliyev in Tajikistan\u2019s capital of Dushanbe, where both were attending a summit of the former Soviet nations, Putin pledged to punish those responsible and provide compensation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Azerbaijani authorities had said the Embraer 190 jet was hit accidentally by Russian fire, then tried to land in western Kazakhstan, where it crashed and killed 38 of 67 people onboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Days after the crash, Putin apologized to Aliyev for what he called a \u201ctragic incident\u201d but stopped short of acknowledging responsibility. Aliyev, meanwhile, criticised Moscow for trying to \u201chush up\u201d the incident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The controversy over the crash has roiled the previously warm ties between Moscow and Baku. Their relations were further destabilised by deaths of ethnic Azerbaijanis rounded up by police in a Russian city in June and a series of arrests of Russians in Azerbaijan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking to Aliyev on Thursday, Putin said Russian air defences that had been targeting a Ukrainian drone fired on the Azerbaijani airliner because of a \u201ctechnical malfunction\u201d, adding that two missiles exploded just 10 metres (33 feet) away from the passenger jet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said: \u201cThe Russian side will obviously do everything to provide compensation and give legal assessment to all responsible officials\u2019 action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOf course, these words related to this tragedy, aimed at supporting \u2013 morally supporting \u2013 the families do not solve the main problem: we can\u2019t bring back to life those who died as a result of the tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Russian president voiced hope for overcoming the strain between the countries and fully rebuilding the ties. \u201cI hope that our cooperation not only will be restored, but continue in the spirit of our relations, the spirit of our alliance,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aliyev, for his part, thanked Putin for investigating the cause of the plane\u2019s downing. \u201cI would like to thank you for keeping the situation under your personal control,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Azerbaijani leader said they had a chance to discuss a \u201cbroad and positive\u201d bilateral agenda, voicing hope that \u201cthe messages we are sending today to our societies will meet a positive response\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Vladimir Putin has said that Russia\u2019s air defences were to blame for\u00a0downing an Azerbaijani jetliner in December\u00a0that killed 38 people, his first admission of responsibility for the crash. Putin said on Thursday that the missiles fired by Russia to target a Ukrainian drone exploded near the Azerbaijan Airlines plane flying from Baku as it was preparing to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":46841,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[12487,11353,6728,12157,11967,11583,8924,9331,7593,8193,9109,5241,6718,9506,7445,6738,6159,7547,12158,9515,8029,9833,12985,5340,12085,6830,421,3805,71,13209,3457,5217,3852,6262,5555,694,594],"class_list":["post-46840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-agenda","tag-airlines","tag-alliance","tag-azerbaijani","tag-bilateral","tag-capital","tag-chance","tag-city","tag-controversy","tag-crash","tag-crashed","tag-died","tag-downing","tag-drone","tag-drones","tag-families","tag-fire","tag-jet","tag-jet-crashed","tag-killed","tag-land","tag-meeting","tag-missiles","tag-moscow","tag-nations","tag-plane","tag-police","tag-president","tag-putin","tag-rebuilding","tag-russia","tag-russian","tag-russians","tag-tragedy","tag-ukrainian","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46840"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46842,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46840\/revisions\/46842"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}