Azerbaijan’s national carrier announced Friday that it will suspend flights to several Russian airports, citing possible flight safety risks after a crash of one of its planes that many experts say was blamed on Russian air defense fire.
Azerbaijan Airlines’ Embraer 190 was flying from Azerbaijan’s capital Baku to the Russian North Caucasus city of Grozny on Wednesday when it was diverted for reasons still unclear and crashed while attempting to land in Aktau, Kazakhstan, after flying east over the Caspian Sea had flown Sea. The crash killed 38 people and injured all 29 survivors.
Authorities in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Russia remained tight-lipped on a possible cause of the crash pending an official investigation, but a lawmaker in Azerbaijan blamed Moscow. Rasim Musabekov told Azerbaijani news agency Turan on Thursday that the plane was shot at while in the sky over Grozny, and urged Russia to officially apologize.
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Asked about Musabekov’s statement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment, saying it was up to investigators to determine the cause of the crash.
“The aerial incident is under investigation and we do not believe we have the right to make any assessment until the conclusions are drawn as a result of the investigation,” Peskov said in a conference call with reporters.
Investigators from Azerbaijan are working in Grozny as part of the crash investigation, the Azerbaijani Attorney General’s office said in a statement.
As the official crash investigation began, some aviation experts pointed out that holes in the plane’s tail section suggested it could have come under fire from Russian air defense systems fending off a Ukrainian drone attack.
Ukrainian drones had previously attacked Grozny, the capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, and other regions in the North Caucasus. An official in Chechnya said on Wednesday that a new drone attack on the region had been repelled, although federal authorities did not report it.
FlightRadar24 said in an online post that the plane had experienced “strong GPS interference” that disrupted flight tracking data. Russia has made extensive use of sophisticated jamming equipment to deter drone attacks.
After suspending flights from Baku to Grozy and Makhachkala on Wednesday, Azerbaiajan Airlines also suspended flights to more Russian cities on Friday, cutting air connections to Mineralnye Vody, Sochi, Volgograd, Ufa and Samara.
A statement said the flights will be suspended “following the preliminary results of the investigation into the crash of the Embraer 190 aircraft operating flight J2-8243 from Baku to Grozny, caused by physical and technical interference, and taking into account possible risks for the flight. safety.”
The company will continue to operate flights to six other Russian cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kazan. These cities have also been repeatedly targeted by Ukrainian drone strikes in the past.
Kazakh Qazaq Air also announced on Friday that it is suspending flights from Astana to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains for a month.
The day before, Israel’s El Al suspended flights from Tel Aviv to Moscow citing “developments in Russian airspace.” The airline said it would reassess the situation next week to decide whether to resume flights.
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Associated Press writer Aida Sultanova contributed to this report from London.
