Who is responsible for downing of AZAL's Embraer?

The recent crash of an Embraer-190 aircraft operated by Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL), which was flying from Baku to Grozny and crashed 3 kilometers from Kazakhstan's Aktau airport, has once again brought the issue of flight safety to the forefront.

According to information from Caliber.az, the AZAL Embraer-190, carrying 62 passengers and five crew members, was attacked by a Russian "Pantsir-S" air defense system while approaching Grozny. At the time of the incident, Russian air defenses were attempting to shoot down Ukrainian drones over Chechen territory.

As a result of the crash, 38 people were killed and 29 sustained injuries of varying degrees. This tragedy has raised serious questions about who bears responsibility for the downing of the Azerbaijani airliner.

Modern aviation has reached a high level of development, with hundreds of millions of people using air transport annually. However, no one is immune to tragedies in the skies. According to open sources citing major databases that record accidents and catastrophes in civil aviation, nearly 24,000 various incidents with aircraft have been registered since 1919, which is considered the beginning of regular air traffic in the world.

It is well known that the most common causes of aviation accidents are adverse weather conditions, technical malfunctions, and human factors. When it comes to human factors, it is often assumed to be pilot error, mistakes made by aviation technicians during aircraft preparation, or air traffic controller errors. However, few consider that human factors can also be related to other circumstances, such as the actions of air defense forces or aviation authorities, which can have fatal consequences.

In the history of Azerbaijan's civil aviation, there has not been a single case of an air crash in the last 19 years, which has been made possible by the high professionalism of the flight crew and the regular updating of the aircraft fleet and flight safety systems.

In the first hours after the tragedy in Aktau, various hypotheses were put forward about what had happened, with the most frequently mentioned version being a collision between the airliner and birds. However, several aviation experts who studied the video footage of strange holes on the aircraft's fuselage suggested that the aircraft had been subjected to external impact in Russian airspace. The unexpected change of course due to the refusal of other nearby Russian airports to accept the AZAL aircraft, and its crash near Aktau, spoke in favor of this version.

The investigation into the air crash is at an initial stage, but after reports from both Caliber.az and leading world media outlets (Euronews, Reuters), citing sources in the Azerbaijani government, that the airliner was shot down by a Russian "Pantsir" missile in the airspace of the Chechen Republic of the Russian Federation, the Azerbaijani public no longer has any doubts about the causes of the incident.

Who is to blame?

No one is accusing Russia of intentional actions (air defense operations) against the Azerbaijani aircraft. Russian airports, as well as oil refineries and industrial enterprises in Russia, have recently become targets for Ukrainian drones. In this situation, it is natural for air defense and electronic warfare forces to intensify their activities.

According to open sources, the issue of transferring several air defense systems to Chechnya was raised by Ramzan Kadyrov back in July 2022, but this initiative was rejected at the time. Nevertheless, publications note that separate air defense units were present in Chechnya before and are still present now. They are sufficient to detect and destroy enemy drones not only directly over the city but also on the approach to it.

The Chechen Republic has been part of the Southern Military District of Russia since November 2024, which is designed to defend the southern part of the European part of the country. To protect the southern border of the Russian Federation (the Russian-Georgian section), S-300 and S-400 multi-channel anti-aircraft missile systems are installed in Chechnya. Several anti-aircraft missile and anti-aircraft gun systems ("Tor" and "Pantsir"), which have proven quite successful against drone attacks (for example, in Moscow), are installed in the lowland part of Chechnya. They cover the two most important military facilities in the republic - the main headquarters of the 46th Zhukov Order Separate Operational Purpose Brigade (a tactical unit of the National Guard troops, formerly the internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs) and the Khankala military base of federal significance.

Before the attack on Wednesday, December 25, Chechnya had been subjected to Ukrainian drone raids at least four times since the beginning of the month: in late October, a drone hit the main building of the Special Forces University in Gudermes; on December 4 and 12, drones exploded over the barracks of the Special Purpose Police Regiment in Grozny; and on December 15, the OMON base in the Chechen capital was attacked. At the same time, sources in the investigative bodies and law enforcement agencies of the republic assured that air defense systems were never used during these attacks. If this information is true, it means that on December 25, air defense was used for the first time in Chechnya to combat drones. Moreover, the "Pantsir" anti-aircraft missile and gun system was used to repel the drone attack over Grozny. For reference, it should be noted that "Pantsir" operates at a distance where combat tasks are solved using missile remote control, so its missiles do not need homing heads. In total, "Pantsir" is armed with 12 anti-aircraft guided missiles and two rapid-fire 30 mm guns.

However, why then, when repelling the drone attack, did the Chechen authorities not warn the Azerbaijani aviation authorities and the captain of the Azerbaijani aircraft flying to Grozny in advance? Could the air defense system operators have confused a drone, a light aircraft, and a large airliner with a wingspan of about 30 meters on radars, or did "Pantsir" work automatically, destroying all flying objects in the range without target selection?! It is completely unclear what those who refused to land the Azerbaijani aircraft, which had already received serious damage, at the nearest airports in Russia were counting on. It is also perplexing that the GPS navigation of the crashed aircraft was blocked along the entire route over the sea.

It is precisely because of this course of events that questions are being raised today about the responsibility of a number of services of the Russian Federation that could have prevented the tragedy that claimed the lives of 38 people, including Russian citizens.

The relevant structures of the Chechen Republic, in particular, the Minister of Transport, Communications and Digital Development of the Chechen Republic, Adam Yerkhigov, and the General Director of JSC Vainakhavia, which manages the A.A. Kadyrov International Airport Grozny (North), Alvi Shakhgiriyev, should have announced the closure of Grozny Airport.

Naturally, responsibility for the plane crash also falls on the commander of the Southern Military District, Colonel-General Alexander Sanchik, as well as the commander of the 4th Guards Army of the Air Force and Air Defense, Lieutenant-General Vladimir Kutsenko.

By a strange coincidence, on the day of the crash of Azerbaijani airliner, which miraculously made it to Aktau, the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, awarded the medal "For Merit to the Chechen Republic" to his nephew, Secretary of the Chechen Security Council Khamzat Kadyrov, who reported on his Instagram about the destruction of all drones in the sky over Chechnya on Wednesday morning...

The initial set of facts makes it possible to assert that the AZAL aircraft was shot down by Russian air defense, although we note again that there can be no question of deliberate actions against a civilian vessel of a friendly state. It's most likely an unfortunate combination of circumstances, a fatal mistake that led to casualties. Naturally, the investigation will clarify all the circumstances of the incident. But even after receiving data on the downing of the airliner, the Russian side should have acknowledged responsibility for this fatal mistake and apologized to Azerbaijan. But so far, the Azerbaijani public has not seen such actions, nor promises to punish those responsible. Instead, we hear only some explanations that are hardly logical, allegedly about the airliner colliding with birds, about the explosion of oxygen cylinders on board, etc.

In this regard, the example of Azerbaijan is illustrative, which immediately admitted the mistake with the downed Russian military helicopter on November 9, 2020, which, by the way, was flying on the border of Azerbaijan and Armenia at the height of the Patriotic War. But despite any reasons, the Azerbaijani side promptly apologized and paid compensation to the victims.

We hope that the Russian side, for its part, will take into account the friendly bilateral relations with Azerbaijan and find the courage to admit the mistake that led to human casualties. In the meantime, the aviation authorities of Azerbaijan have decided to suspend flights to 7 cities in Russia - until the primary causes of the plane crash are determined and issues with ensuring flight safety are resolved.