Vladimir Putin admits Russian Air Defences downed Azerbaijan Airlines flight last year, killing 38.

Oct 2025 : For the first time, Russian President Vladimir Putin has directly acknowledged Russia’s responsibility for the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) passenger jet in December 2024. The Embraer E190, flying from Baku to Grozny, crashed near Aktau after being rerouted over the Caspian Sea into Kazakhstan during a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s North Caucasus regions. Thirty-eight people were killed and 29 survived. Azerbaijan has maintained that the plane was shot down by a Russian air defence missile. Moscow, meanwhile, has long denied any responsibility, sparking a diplomatic scandal between the two countries that has gone on for the better part of a year. On October 9, Putin met with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev for the first time in a year. Here’s what he said about the causes of the Azerbaijan Airlines crash, according to the Kremlin’s official transcript.

I’d like to begin our meeting with the most sensitive subject: the aviation tragedy that occurred in our skies. Even back then, during our first phone conversation, I not only apologised for the fact that the tragedy took place in Russian airspace, but also expressed my deepest condolences to the victims’ families. I’d like to repeat and reaffirm all of that, and say that, as agreed, we are providing every possible form of assistance to the investigation. The investigation is coming to a close, and now we can talk about the causes of this tragedy, this disaster. It was the result of several factors:

First is that, a Ukrainian drone was in the air at the time. We were tracking three such drones, which crossed the Russian Federation’s border on the day of the tragedy.

Second, was technical failures in Russia’s air defence system. The two missiles that were launched did not hit the plane directly, if they had, it would have crashed immediately, instead exploded, possibly through self-destruction, several metres away, roughly 10 metres [32 feet]. As a result, the damage was caused not mainly by the warheads’ fragments, but more likely by debris from the missiles themselves. That’s why the pilot thought he had collided with a flock of birds, which he reported to Russian air traffic controllers, and this was recorded in the so-called black boxes. He was also advised, and this too can be clearly heard in the recordings, an instruction to make an emergency landing in Makhachkala. However, he decided to return to his home base, and then to Kazakhstan. Nevertheless, the fact remains.

Of course, everything that must be done in such tragic cases will be done by the Russian side both in terms of compensation and in providing a legal assessment of the actions of all responsible officials.

Earlier, on February 04, 2025, Kazakhstan’s Transportation Ministry published a preliminary report on the Azerbaijan Airlines crash, which confirmed that the plane was hit by “external objects”. The report didn’t specify what type of weapon shot down the plane, citing plans for “further studies and examinations”. By this point, government sources in Azerbaijan were confidently saying that the plane was hit by a Russian Pantsir-S air defence system.

At the same time, Kazakhstan’s report left no doubt that the pilots were unaware of the closed-skies protocol (Carpet Plan) reportedly in place in Grozny at the time of the incident due to a Ukrainian drone attack. Excerpts from the crew’s communications with dispatchers reveal that the “Carpet Plan” was only announced at 5:21 AM, while the Azerbaijan Airlines plane was damaged at 05:13 AM. Russian aviation experts, such as Aeroflot pilot Andrey Litvinov, also acknowledged that the protocol was announced after the incident.

In a sharp contrast, pro-Kremlin media focused on the following points:

• The pilots themselves decided the flight path;
• Other potential causes such as a bird strike or an oxygen tank explosion weren’t invented by Moscow but rather put forward by the pilots themselves;
• Kazakhstan’s report is just preliminary, and there’s no point in drawing any conclusions from it.

On February 10, Azerbaijan banned Russian State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Valuev from entering the country after he suggested a clampdown on diaspora groups in response to the closure of the Russian House in Baku.

Team Maverick