Kazakhstan is emphasizing that the reason for the incident is still unclear, despite reports suggesting that Russian air defense fire might have caused the deadly crash.
Russia and Kazakhstan are trying to calm the chatter about what caused the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane, with the Kremlin asking everyone to hold off on jumping to conclusions until the investigation wraps up.
A Ukrainian national security official has suggested that Russian air defense fire was responsible for the tragic incident that took 38 lives on Christmas Day. The flight, which was headed from Baku, Azerbaijan, to Grozny in Chechnya, ended up crashing into a field near Aktau in Kazakhstan after straying far off its intended path.
Thankfully, 29 people managed to survive. Footage of the crash showed the aircraft falling rapidly and bursting into flames upon impact, sending thick black smoke into the air.
On Thursday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov mentioned that they’re currently looking into what happened and stressed it would be premature to speculate before they have all the facts.
Meanwhile, a top official from Kazakhstan’s senate also pointed out that they still don’t know what caused it. Ashimbayev Maulen reassured everyone that neither Azerbaijan nor Russia nor Kazakhstan is trying to hide anything; all details will eventually be shared with the public.
These statements followed a post by Andriy Kovalenko from Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council’s Center for Countering Disinformation on X (formerly Twitter), claiming that a Russian air defense system shot down an Embraer 190 aircraft flying from Baku to Grozny earlier in the day. He even referenced video evidence showing life vests with punctures inside the plane.
There’s been some buzz in Russian media suggesting that the plane might have been accidentally taken down by Russia’s air defenses, which could have confused it for a Ukrainian drone.
A Telegram channel called Fighterbomber, thought to be operated by Ilya Tumanov, a captain in the Russian army, shared a video showing damage to the wreckage that looked like it could have come from shelling or shrapnel explosions. They argued that it’s unlikely those holes were made by a bird strike.
Kazakh aviation expert Serik Mukhtybayev told Orda news that a bird hitting the plane was almost impossible considering how high it was flying when things went wrong.
He suggested that some kind of external impact was more likely responsible for the crash. Flight-tracking data from Flightradar24.com indicated that the aircraft was making erratic movements—almost like a figure-eight—while approaching Aktau airport, with its altitude fluctuating dramatically just before it went down.
On top of that, FlightRadar24 mentioned online that the plane experienced significant GPS jamming, which caused it to send out inaccurate ADS-B data—basically the info needed for tracking flights online.
Russia has been accused before of jamming GPS signals in this area. They’ve used this technology to fend off drone attacks in the past, and there are reports suggesting Chechnya faced such an attack right before this incident happened.
Meanwhile, Khamzat Kadyrov, who is both a local security official and related to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, posted on Instagram Wednesday morning claiming all drones had been successfully shot down.
Lately, Ukrainian drones have been striking various locations in Chechnya, one of which is a police facility. A well-known Russian pro-war blogger, Yuri Podolyaka, pointed out that the damage on the wrecked plane looked a lot like what you’d expect from an anti-aircraft missile system, saying it all seems to indicate that.
Meanwhile, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev mentioned it’s too early to jump to conclusions about why the crash happened, but he noted that bad weather forced the plane off its intended path.
According to Russia’s civil aviation authority, initial reports suggest that the pilots had to divert to Aktau because of an emergency caused by a bird strike. Azerbaijan’s prosecutor general has launched a criminal investigation into the incident.
The state news agency Azertac reported that an official team—including the emergency situations minister and other high-ranking officials—has been dispatched to Aktau for an on-the-ground inquiry.
Timur Suleimenov, Kazakhstan’s main transport prosecutor, shared at a briefing in Astana that they’ve located the plane’s black box, which will help figure out what went wrong. A spokesperson from Kazakhstan’s emergencies ministry mentioned that teams are currently working on identifying those who lost their lives in the crash.
As for survivors, 11 are still in intensive care according to reports. On Thursday morning, Russia’s emergencies ministry announced they had flown nine survivors—including one child—from Aktau back to Moscow on a special flight.