(The Hill) – Moscow on Thursday warned against speculation that Russian air defenses may have caused the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane in Kazakhstan this week that killed 38 people.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that it was “necessary to wait for the end of this probe” before casting any speculation.
“It would be wrong to build any hypotheses before the panel of inquiry presents its conclusions,” Peskov said, according to the Russian state-run media outlet TASS. “Of course, we cannot do that. No one should do it.”
Embraer-190, a passenger plane of Azerbaijan Airlines, was headed from Baku to the city of Grozny in the Russian republic of Chechnya. It crashed on Wednesday in southwestern Kazakhstan’s city of Aktau on the Caspian Sea.
The plane was carrying 67 people from Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
The flight went down in an area where Russia has frequently activated air defense to take out Ukrainian drones in the war against Kyiv, fueling speculation that Russian forces may have accidentally fired at the plane.
Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Transport said in a Telegram statement that investigators were probing the incident along with officials from Azerbaijan, Brazilian experts, the airline and the Brazilian-owned aircraft manufacturer Embraer.
Azerbaijani news website Caliber reported that a preliminary investigation has found the flight was downed by a Pantsir-S Russian air defense system, while Russia also used electronic warfare on the plane to disable it on the radar.
The outlet also reported that Russian air defense systems were activated at the time of the flight to take out Ukrainian drones.
Global flight tracking service Flightradar24 said in a post on the social media platform X that the plane was exposed to GPS jamming and spoofing near Grozny.
An oxygen cylinder blew up on board the aircraft in the passenger cabin, Kazakhstan media reported, while Russian aviation officials have claimed a bird strike was responsible for the explosion.
