AZAL plane shot down by Russian air defense, the question now is who ordered the strike, expert says

The AZAL passenger aircraft on the Baku-Grozny route that crashed near Aktau on December 25 last year was definitely hit by Russian air defense systems, Talgat Kaliyev, director of the Institute of Applied Ethnopolitical Research LLP, said in an interview with Report.

Today, one of the main questions in the joint investigation is who made the decision to open fire on a civilian aircraft and how could it have been mistaken for a UAV?

The investigation itself will take considerable time, Kaliyev noted. But preliminary results will be announced soon.

“Both Azerbaijani and Russian sides are actively participating in the process. Kazakhstan’s task is to coordinate the investigation and preserve all elements of the crashed aircraft’s fuselage, which has been ensured,” Kaliyev noted.

He reminded that Russia does not deny the fact that the airliner was hit by air defense systems.

“Specifically hit, not shot down. There was no malicious intent. The question is who failed to distinguish between a UAV and a civilian aircraft, and who made the decision to open fire on a passenger plane,” the agency’s interviewee said.

“Kazakhstan, as the head of the international state commission investigating the air crash near Aktau, is behaving as professionally and correctly as possible. This is expressed in its impartiality and transparency of all activities,” Kaliyev said.

The political scientist recalled that the main evidence of this is Kazakhstan’s decision to transfer the flight recorders to Brazil – the manufacturer country of the crashed Embraer aircraft – for decoding. Representatives from both Azerbaijan and Russia are participating in the decoding of the records.