Russian President Vladimir Putin took the unusual step of acknowledging that Russian missiles downed an Azerbaijani Airlines Embraer E190 on Christmas Day 2024, killing 38 of the 67 people on board. The plane was on a flight from Baku in Azerbaijan to Grozny in Chechnya. Putin admitted defense forces mistakenly targeted the airliner during an attack by Ukrainian drones. Putin also promised redress for the tragedy. “Of course, everything that is required in such tragic cases will be done by the Russian side on compensation and a legal assessment of all official things will be given,” Putin told Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev on Wednesday during a meeting in Tajikistan. “It is our duty, I repeat once again … to give an objective assessment of everything that happened and to identify the true causes.”
Putin’s admission didn’t shed any new light on the incident. Russian missiles were immediately suspected by investigators, and there was plenty of evidence to support that. At the time, Putin lamented the “tragic incident” but didn’t take responsibility. He’s also never apologized for his forces refusing to allow the crew of the stricken airliner to make an emergency landing in Russian territory. The crew coaxed the aircraft across the Caspian Sea but fell short of an airport in Kazakhstan and crashed near Aktau. Putin’s admission is being characterized as fence-mending with strategically important Azerbaijan after relations between the two countries cooled after the crash.
