Aliyev directly accused Russia of shooting down the Azerbaijan Airlines plane.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev stated that the 'Azerbaijan Airlines' plane, which crashed in Kazakhstan, was damaged 'as a result of ground fire' near the city of Grozny and nearly lost control.

He reported this in an interview with local television.

According to him, it is known that the plane was incapacitated by electronic warfare means, and as a result of ground fire, the tail section of the aircraft was severely damaged.

Final version of the crash

The final version of the crash will be known after the decoding of the 'black boxes'. At the same Time, preliminary versions are based on facts.

'Once again, I say, after the disclosure of the 'black boxes' and obtaining more detailed information, all details will be revealed, and many questions that remain unknown today will be clarified. For example, why could the plane not land in Grozny? Did the effects of electronic warfare affect the control of the aircraft? Attempts to deny this obvious fact and hide it here are senseless and unreasonable,' said the President of Azerbaijan.

Pilots showed heroism

He also emphasized that the pilots demonstrated professionalism and heroism.

'Although, of course, the pilots were experienced and knew that they would not survive an emergency landing. However, to save the passengers, they showed the utmost heroism, and as a result of the plane crash, there are those who survived. That is why part of the fuselage did not burn, and that is why today we can clearly say that the plane was shot down by Russia,' said Aliyev.

He noted that the tail section of the plane was severely damaged as a result of ground fire.

Attempts to hush the issue

Aliyev also expressed the opinion that some circles in Russia wanted to hush this issue up.

'One of the moments that saddened and surprised us was that Russian official structures put forward versions about an explosion of some gas cylinder. This openly showed that the Russian side wanted to cover up this issue, and this, of course, adds no honor to anyone,' he said.

According to him, in the first three days in Baku, 'we heard nothing from Russia except absurd versions.'

Recall that the passenger plane of Azerbaijan Airlines, which was heading from Baku to Grozny, crashed on December 25 near Kazakhstan's Aktau. As Kazinform wrote, due to fog in Grozny, it was redirected to Makhachkala (RF) and then to Aktau.