Canada said Thursday it was deeply concerned about information that the Russian air defense could have attacked the Azerbaijan Airlines flight that crashed on Wednesday and called on Moscow to allow an open and transparent investigation into the incident.
“Canada is deeply concerned by reports that the Russian Air Defense Force may have fired a missile at Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 causing it to crash land,” the Canadian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on X.
“We call Russia allow an open and transparent investigation into the incident and accept its conclusions,” the ministry said.
Four sources with knowledge of the preliminary conclusions of Azerbaijan’s investigation into the disaster told Reuters on Thursday that Russian air defenses shot down an Azerbaijan Airlines plane. that crashed in Kazakhstan, killing 38 people.
Flight J2-8243 crashed Wednesday in a fireball near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan after diverting from an area of southern Russia where Moscow has repeatedly used air defense systems against Ukrainian drone attacks.
The Embraer passenger plane had flown from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, to Grozny in the Chechnya region of southern Russia before diverting hundreds of miles across the Caspian Sea.
It crashed on the opposite bank of the Caspian after what Russia’s aviation watchdog said was an emergency that may have been caused by a bird strike.
The authorities did not explain why he had crossed the sea. The Russian airport closest to the plane’s route, Makhachkala, was closed Wednesday morning.
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One of the Azerbaijani sources familiar with Azerbaijan’s investigation into the crash told Reuters that preliminary results showed the plane was hit by a Russian Pantsir-S air defense system. Their communications were paralyzed by electronic warfare systems as they approached Grozny, the source said.
“No one claims it was done on purpose. However, taking into account the established facts, Baku expects the Russian side to confess to the downing of the Azerbaijani plane,” the source said.
Three other sources confirmed that the Azeri investigation had reached the same preliminary conclusion. Russia’s Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
A U.S. official told Reuters on Thursday there were early indications that a Russian anti-aircraft system may have hit the plane.
Kazakh Deputy Prime Minister Qanat Bozymbaev said he could neither confirm nor deny the thesis that Russian air defenses shot down the plane.
Asked about the possibility that Russian air defenses fired on the plane, the Kazakh transport prosecutor for the region where the plane went down said the investigation had not yet reached a firm conclusion.
The Kremlin, asked before the Reuters report about the idea that Russian air defenses had fired on the plane, said it would be inappropriate to comment until the investigation was concluded.
“It is a mistake to formulate hypotheses before the conclusions of the investigation,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
Images taken by passengers on the plane before it crashed showed oxygen masks lowered and people wearing life jackets. Later images showed bloodied and bruised passengers exiting the plane. There were 29 survivors.
Photographs of the plane’s wreckage showed what appeared to be shrapnel damage to the tail section of the plane.
Aviation safety firm Osprey Flight Solutions said in an alert to airlines on Wednesday that images of the wreckage and circumstances around the airspace in southwestern Russia indicated the possibility that the plane was hit by some type of flak.
Ukrainian military drones have repeatedly attacked Russia’s southern regions in recent months, activating Russian air defenses. Russia and Ukraine have been at war since the capture of Moscow. invasion from your neighbor in February 2022.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Russian Defense Ministry had reported the downing of 59 Ukrainian drones in several regions.
Some were reportedly shot down in closed airspace over regions bordering Ukraine, including the Sea of Azov. Flight operations were reportedly temporarily suspended at Russia’s Kazan airport due to the activity.
Additionally, publicly available ADS-B flight tracking data shows that the Azerbaijani aircraft experienced GPS interference during its flight over southwestern Russia, the alert said.
Russia uses advanced electronic jamming equipment to confuse the communication and location systems of Ukrainian drones and a large number of air defense systems have been deployed to shoot down the drones.
