By Nailia Bagirova and Anton Kolodyazhnyy
BAKU/MOSCOW (Reuters) -Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on Sunday that a passenger plane that crashed last week, killing 38 people, had been damaged by accidental shooting from the ground in Russia, adding that some in Russia had lied about the cause of the disaster.
Russian President Vladimir Putin apologised on Saturday to Aliyev for Wednesday’s “tragic incident” in Russian airspace involving Azerbaijan Airlines Flight J2-8243 after Russian air defences engaged Ukrainian attack drones.
A Kremlin statement did not say Russia had shot down the plane, only noting a criminal case had been opened.
“Our plane was shot down by accident,” Aliyev said on state television on Sunday, adding that the plane had come under some sort of electronic jamming and had then been shot at while it was approaching the southern Russian city of Grozny.
The pilots, who died in the crash, have been lauded in Azerbaijan for a landing that allowed 29 people to survive.
“Unfortunately, in the first three days we heard only absurd versions from Russia,” Aliyev said, citing statements in Russia that attributed the crash to a bird strike or the explosion of some sort of gas cylinder.
“We witnessed clear attempts to cover up the matter,” said the Azerbaijani leader, who has close ties to Russia and was educated at one of Moscow’s top universities.
Aliyev said he wanted Russia to accept it was guilty of downing the plane and to punish those responsible.
Putin and Aliyev held another telephone call on Sunday, the Kremlin said. It gave no details but on Saturday it said that both civilian and military specialists were being questioned about what had taken place.
The chief of Russia’s Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, on a phone call assured Azerbaijan’s prosecutor general that Moscow had assigned the investigation to the most experienced experts and that actions were being taken to establish the cause and circumstances of the incident.
The plane crashed on Wednesday near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan after diverting from southern Russia where Ukrainian drones were attacking several cities at the time, according to the Kremlin.
Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency quoted Kazakhstan’s Transport Ministry as saying authorities would send the two black box flight recorders to Brazil, where the Embraer E190 passenger jet was manufactured.
They would be examined by the Aeronautical Accidents Investigation and Prevention Center, which had the technical capabilities to perform the job, the ministry said.
The extremely rare publicised apology from Putin on Saturday is the closest Moscow has come to accepting some 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 defences had mistakenly shot it down.
BURIALS
Azerbaijan paid tribute on Sunday to the pilots and passengers of the plane.
Captain Igor Kshnyakin and co-pilot Alexander Kalyaninov, both ethnic Russians with Azerbaijan citizenship, and Hokuma Aliyeva, a flight attendant, were given full honours at a ceremony at the Alley of Honour in central Baku attended by Aliyev and his wife, Mehriban.
“The pilots were experienced and knew they would not survive this crash landing,” Aliyev said, praising them for sacrificing themselves.
“In order to save the passengers, they acted with great heroism and as a result of this, there were survivors,” he said.
Aliyev awarded the crew posthumously with the titles of National Hero of Azerbaijan.
Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev also awarded citizens who helped rescue the survivors, including emergency workers, medics, police and employees at the airport and a local power company.
The Embraer jet had flown from Azerbaijan’s capital Baku to Grozny, in Russia’s southern Chechnya region, before veering off hundreds of miles across the Caspian Sea.
Azerbaijan’s presidential office said the pilots had battled to control the plane – desperately trying to find a place to land.
With holes in the fuselage, some crew injured, and a de-pressurised cabin, the pilots managed to fly across the Caspian Sea before crash-landing.
The Alley of Honour is Azerbaijan’s most sacred modern burial ground – where prominent politicians, poets and scientists are laid to rest, including Heydar Aliyev, father of the current president.
Captain Kshnyakin’s daughter, Anastasia Kshnyakina, said her father was a dedicated pilot who took his responsibilities to 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.”
(Reporting by Nailia Bagirova in Baku and Anton Kolodyazhnyy; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Sharon Singleton, Gareth Jones, Jason Neely, Ron Popeski and Rod Nickel)
