The downing of an Azerbaijani civilian aircraft by Russian forces is disappointing and upsetting. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said this in an interview with Al Arabiya TV channel.
First of all, this should not have happened, because in the event of a drone attack on Russian airports, a special regime is declared. In Russia, this regime is called “Gorg”, and if it is declared, all aircraft receive a signal about a drone attack and turn around. Two weeks before the crash, the same thing happened to our aircraft, which was flying to the same Russian city. The pilots received a signal and turned around. This time, they did not give such a signal. They gave a signal after the plane was shot down. That is, they did it simply to mislead investigators. “They shot down the plane twice,” Aliyev noted.
According to him, only the professionalism and courage of the pilots allowed the plane to land, and fortunately, it landed in Kazakhstan, not Russia: “It landed in Kazakhstan, there was an accident there. Some survived, there are their testimonies. Two people on board the plane were injured by shrapnel that pierced the fuselage. There are fragments of the plane. I immediately sent a team there. The entire fuselage was covered in shrapnel. It was damaged by the Russian air defense system. The plane should not have been shot down in the first place. But it was a tragic mistake.”