The EU called for the suspension of flights in the airspace of the Russian Federation after the incident with Embraer
The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) recommends that airlines refrain from flights to five Russian cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Rostov-on-Don and Samara. The organization explains such a call as a high risk to flight safety, referring to the recent crash of an Azerbaijani plane.
"The majority of incidents occurred in airspace not closed by Russia during drone attacks or the activation of air defense systems. This creates a high risk for flights, as evidenced by the incident with the AZAL airline flight on December 25, 2024," the organization said in a statement.
On December 25, an Embraer 190 passenger airliner of the AZAL airline, following a flight from Baku to Grozny, crashed in the Kazakh city of Aktau. The results of the official investigation have not yet been announced, but the dominant version is that the plane was hit by a missile fired by a Russian anti-aircraft missile system. The President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, also holds this opinion, which is why he demands from the Russian Federation an admission of guilt, punishment of the guilty and payment of compensation. During a telephone conversation with him, Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized, but only for the fact that "a tragic incident occurred in the airspace of Russia."
In the speech, the head of state mentioned the work of Russian air defense equipment, but did not admit that it was precisely this that caused the plane to crash. However, Aliyev apparently considered even these apologies to be late, since in his subsequent statement he recalled that initially the Russian official structures put forward the version about the explosion of a gas cylinder, which showed their intentions to cover up the issue, and this, in his opinion, "doesn't matter to anyone does honors."
