Azerbaijan says Kazakhstan plane crash could have been prevented with ‘proper coordination’

ISTANBUL

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on Monday said that coordination between Russia’s military and civilian services could have prevented the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines flight near the Kazakh city of Aktau late last month.

“Had proper measures been taken to close the Russian airspace near the city of Grozny, and had ground services followed all the necessary protocols with proper coordination between the armed forces of Russia and civilian services, this tragedy could have been prevented,” Aliyev said in a meeting with the surviving crew members of the plane crash, as well as the families of the crew members killed, according to an Azerbaijani presidential statement.

Expressing that he does not want to disclose all the materials that are part of the investigation into the crash, Aliyev said that the initial investigation and its results have been reported to him.

In light of the report, Aliyev said he could say with “full certainty” that the responsibility for the deaths of Azerbaijani citizens in the crash lies with Russia’s representatives.

“We demand justice, we demand the punishment of those responsible, and we insist on full transparency and accountability in this matter. Human decency and ethical conduct must prevail,” Aliyev further said.

He also said the transfer of the black boxes recovered at the crash site to Brazil underscores their demand for objectivity.

Aliyev further expressed that they would have agreed on the decoding of the black boxes by the Commonwealth of Independent States’ Interstate Aviation Committee if they had seen “attempts by the official circles of the Russian Federation to objectively investigate this tragedy from the very beginning.”

“When we witnessed attempts to downplay the severity of the case -- attributing the incident to mere birds or a gas cylinder explosion -- both I and the Azerbaijani public began to seriously question the objectivity of the investigation,” he went on to say.

“The black boxes are currently being decoded, and I am confident that the preliminary results will emerge soon, shedding light on the full details of this tragedy,” he added.

On Dec. 25, an Azerbaijan Airlines plane, en route from Azerbaijan’s capital Baku to Grozny in Russia's Chechen Republic, crashed 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from the Kazakh city of Aktau on the Caspian Sea coast, killing 38 out of 67 people on board.

Initial statements said a bird collision might have caused the Embraer 190 aircraft to crash, though footage from the site revealed large holes in the tail section of the aircraft, leading to speculation of a possible attack.

A day after the incident, senior Azerbaijani officials confirmed to Anadolu reports suggesting the plane crash was caused by a Russian missile system.

Later in the month, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a phone conversation with Aliyev, during which he apologized for the incident that took place over Russian airspace and offered his condolences.

A day later, Aliyev said the crashed plane’s tail was severely damaged as a result of “weapons fire from the ground,” demanding that Moscow issue an “acknowledgment of guilt, punishment of those responsible, and payment of compensation.”