International airlines canceled flights to a swath of Russian cities on Thursday in the wake of a deadly passenger plane crash on Dec. 26 thought to have been caused by the accidental launch of a Russian anti-aircraft missile at a civilian airliner.
A statement by Azerbaijan Airlines said the Wednesday destruction of its flight JS-8432 on the shores of the Caspian Sea, which killed at least 38 people, was the result of “external physical and technical interference” hitting the aircraft above Russia’s Chechnya region.
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The airline would halt Baku-originating flights to 10 Russian cities with immediate effect, the statement said.
Russian cities affected by the cut-off included Sochi, Samara, Ufa, Volgograd, Grozny, Mineralnie Vody and Makhachkala, but service to the Russian cities Omsk and Novosibirsk would continue, the statement said.
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The carrier Flydubai, one of the most popular airlines for travelers wanting to leave Russia for international destinations, announced on Thursday that it was canceling flights between Dubai and the Russian Caucasus cities Sochi and Mineralnie Vody from Dec. 28 through Jan. 5, pending a security review.
El Al, Israel’s major carrier, announced on Thursday that it was suspending its five-times-a-week flights between Moscow and Tel Aviv, citing “changes in Russian air space” that could potentially threaten flight safety. The suspension would last at least a week, an airline statement said.
On Thursday, Kazakh carrier Qazaq Air announced it was halting flights between the capital Astana and the Russian central Siberian city Ekaterinburg for one month. Passengers already booked on flights would receive refunds or be assisted in booking alternate routes, the airline’s statement said.
Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence (HUR), in comments published by The War Zone said that his sources showed that the Azerbaijan Airlines jet was hit by a Russian Pantsir S1 air defense system firing a missile from Russian terrain near or inside the Russian region of Chechnya.
On Thursday, Chechnya’s leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, questioned whether forces within the territory had opened fire on the civilian jet and blamed Ukrainian drones above Chechnya’s capital Grozny at the same time.
Kadyrov called for an investigation into the incident outside the public eye and promised his government’s full cooperation.
Following Kadyrov’s comments, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev rejected the proposal on Thursday. He said that the investigation into the crash would be open and transparent. Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan would conduct the investigation, he said.
“A criminal case has been launched by the Prosecutor General’s Office, and naturally, the Azerbaijani public will be regularly informed about both the results of the commission’s work and the progress of the criminal case,” Aliyev said.
Other Baku officials said that if Moscow’s complicity were determined, that would also be made public.
Rasim Musabekov, a member of the International Relations Committee of the Mejlis of Azerbaijan, called on the Kremlin to take responsibility for the crash and apologize.
“The plane was shot down on Russian territory, in the sky of Grozny. It is impossible to deny this. Those who did this must be held criminally liable, and compensation must be paid. If this does not happen, then, of course, relations will move to another level,” news agencies cited Musabekov on Thursday.
Video recorded by a passenger aboard the ill-fated flight en route to Grozny and images recorded from the crash site near the Kazakhstan city Aktau showed the tail end of the aircraft peppered with punctures similar to shrapnel dispersed by a near-detonation of an anti-aircraft missile. Other images showed passengers inside a damaged cabin bleeding from puncture wounds.
Flight crew recordings published on aviation information networks, if authentic, showed the aircraft losing its aft stabilizer and rudder control while in airspace over southern Russia and then making an emergency flight across the Caspian Sea in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to land at an airport near the Kazakhstan city Aktau. Reportedly, 29 people survived the crash.
According to unconfirmed reports, the plane’s pilots asked for permission to land at Grozny when the aircraft became difficult to control, but airport ground controllers denied landing permission.
The last confirmed accident shootdown of a civilian airliner by Russia’s military took place on July 17, 2014, when elements of a Russian army air defense battery supporting Moscow-financed militants in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region shot down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17), killing all 298 people on board.
The Kremlin denied responsibility, but a Dutch-led forensic investigation identified the Russian unit that fired the SA-11 missile that shot down the plane and some of the battery’s operators by name.
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