Azerbaijan has announced that it has evidence that the Embraer plane was shot down by a Russian missile
Baku has received evidence that the Embraer 190 aircraft of AZAL, which crashed in late December, was shot down by a missile fired by the Russian Pantsir air defense system. This was reported on Tuesday, February 4, by the Reuters news agency, citing sources in the Azerbaijani government.
“The Azerbaijani side has a fragment of the Pantsir-S missile, which was removed from the plane and identified during an international examination,” the agency’s source shared.
At the same time, RT, citing its competent source in Russian aviation circles, reports that the Russian side has not yet received samples of the foreign elements found in the Embraer’s body.
“Therefore, the claims of a number of foreign media outlets about their identification as striking elements of the Pantsir air defense missile system require at least additional study,” the source said.
Recall that yesterday the Ministry of Transport of Kazakhstan published a preliminary report on the investigation into the crash of the Embraer passenger airliner. The document states that as part of the investigation, foreign objects found in the fin and stabilizer area were removed for further analysis. The report does not provide any information on what these “foreign objects” were.
On December 25, an Embraer passenger airliner of Azerbaijan Airlines, flying from Baku to Grozny, crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan. There were 67 people on board, including 42 citizens of Azerbaijan, 16 of Russia, 6 of Kazakhstan and 3 of Kyrgyzstan. 29 passengers survived.
The causes of the crash have not yet been officially announced, but the dominant version is that the plane came under fire from Russian air defense systems during an attack by Ukrainian drones on the territory of Chechnya. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev also shares this opinion, and therefore demands that Russia admit guilt, punish the guilty, and pay compensation. During a telephone conversation with him, Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized, but only because "the tragic incident occurred in Russian airspace."
