Azerbaijan’s president says the crashed plane was shot at from Russia. Reuters

By Nailia Bagirova and Anton Kolodyazhnyy

BAKU/MOSCOW (Reuters) – Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on Sunday that a passenger plane that crashed in Russia last week, killing 38 people, was damaged by accidental gunfire from the ground, adding that some in Russia were over the cause of the catastrophe would have lied.

Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized to Aliyev on Saturday for Wednesday’s “tragic incident” in Russian airspace with Azerbaijan Airlines flight J2-8243 after Russian air defenses attacked Ukrainian attack drones.

A Kremlin statement did not say that Russia shot down the plane, but simply noted that a criminal case had been opened.

“Our plane was accidentally shot down,” Aliyev said on state television on Sunday, adding that the plane was electronically jammed and then fired upon as it approached the southern Russian city of Grozny.

The pilots who died in the crash were praised in Azerbaijan for their landing, in which 29 people survived.

“Unfortunately, in the first three days we only heard absurd versions from Russia,” Aliyev said, pointing to statements in Russia that attributed the crash to a bird strike or the explosion of a gas cylinder.

“We have seen clear attempts to cover up the matter,” said the Azerbaijani leader, who has close ties with Russia and was educated at one of Moscow’s top universities.

Aliyev said he wanted Russia to acknowledge its guilt in shooting down the plane and punish those responsible.

Putin and Aliyev spoke on the phone again on Sunday, the Kremlin said. No details were given, but it said on Saturday that both civilian and military specialists were being questioned about the incidents.

The head of the Russian Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, assured the Azerbaijani Prosecutor General in a phone call that Moscow had entrusted the investigation to the most experienced experts and that measures were being taken to determine the cause and circumstances of the incident.

According to the Kremlin, the plane crashed on Wednesday near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan after leaving southern Russia, where Ukrainian drones were attacking several cities at the time.

Putin’s extremely rare public apology on Saturday is the closest Moscow has come to accepting blame for the disaster.

Four sources with knowledge of the preliminary findings of Azerbaijan’s investigation into the disaster told Reuters on Thursday that Russian air defenses accidentally shot down the disaster.

BURIALS

Azerbaijan paid tribute to the plane’s pilots and passengers on Sunday.

Captain Igor Kshnyakin and co-pilot Alexander Kalyaninov, both ethnic Russians with Azerbaijani citizenship, as well as Hokuma Aliyeva, a flight attendant, were given full honors at a ceremony in the Alley of Honor in central Baku, attended by Aliyev and his wife Mehriban honored.

“The pilots were experienced and knew they would not survive this crash landing,” Aliyev said, praising them for their self-sacrifice.

“To save the passengers, they acted with great heroism and so there were survivors,” he said.

Aliyev posthumously awarded the crew the title of “National Hero of Azerbaijan.”

Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev also honored citizens who helped rescue survivors, including rescue workers, paramedics, police and employees of the airport and a local energy supplier.

The Embraer E190 passenger plane had flown from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to Grozny in Russia’s southern Chechnya region before turning hundreds of kilometers over the Caspian Sea.

Azerbaijan’s presidential office said the pilots fought for control of the plane and desperately tried to find a place to land.

With holes in the fuselage, some injured crew members and a depressurized cabin, the pilots managed to fly over the Caspian Sea before crash landing.

The Avenue of Honor is Azerbaijan’s holiest modern burial ground – where prominent politicians, poets and scientists are buried, including Heydar Aliyev, the father of the current president.

Captain Kshnyakina’s daughter, Anastasia Kshnyakina, said her father was a dedicated pilot who took his responsibilities towards his passengers extremely seriously.

“My father always said: when I take off, I am responsible not only for my life, but also for the lives of all passengers and crew members,” Kshnyakina said.

“With his last flight he proved what a true hero should be.”