The Wednesday crash of an Azerbajian Airlines flight in Kazakhstan that killed 38 people is reported to have been caused by a Russian surface-to-air missile that hit the airliner when it was attempting to land at its original destination.
Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan after apparently diverting from its intended destination of Grozny in Chechnya, coming down on the opposite side of the Caspian Sea.
Azerbaijani officials that spoke to Euronews said they believed that a Russian surface-to-air missile was fired at the airliner during “drone air activity” over Grozny, with shrapnel from the missile hitting passengers and cabin crew.
According to the officials, Russian authorities would not allow the damaged aircraft to land at any Russian airport despite the pilots’ requests for an emergency landing, instead ordering it to fly across the Caspian Sea towards Aktau in Kazakhstan.
Online flight tracking service FlightRadar24 has stated that Russian GPS jamming and spoofing in the region prevented precise tracking of the airliner’s flight path using its Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADS-B) system, the system used by all airliners to broadcast their positions when in flight.
Other Azerbaijani officials that spoke to Reuters said that Baku’s preliminary investigations found that a missile from a Russian Pantsir-S air defense system was responsible for the damage to the aircraft.
Photographs and videos said to be from the crash site and aboard the airliner show what appear to be missile shrapnel damage to the airliners, while some videos show passengers describing injuries caused by shrapnel entering the cabin.
Russia has conducted heavy jamming and spoofing of GPS along its borders in recent months, in an apparent response to Ukraine’s growing use of long range suicide drones in retaliation to Russia’s own campaign of missile and suicide drone attacks. Authorities in Chechnya reported earlier on Wednesday that they had successfully repelled an Ukrainian drone attack around the same time as when Flight 8423 would have been over Grozny.
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Russians as usual.
Russian now shooting down jetliners for sport