Putin admits for the first time that the AZAL plane crash was caused by Russian missiles, but blames Ukraine

The Russian dictator Vladimir Putin for the first time admitted that the crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) plane in December 2024 was caused by Russian air defense missiles, but began to complain about alleged Ukrainian drones and malfunctioning of Russian weapons. He said this in the Tajik capital of Dushanbe at a meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, transmits administration of the latter.

At first, Putin said that a Ukrainian UAV was allegedly in the sky at the time of the crash, and that the occupying armed forces were "guiding" three drones that crossed the Russian border on the night of December 25, 2024.

The second reason was allegedly "technical failures of the Russian air defense system itself".

"And the two missiles that were fired did not hit the plane directly (if they had, it would have crashed on the spot), but exploded, perhaps it was a self-destruct, a few meters away, somewhere around 10 meters away. And that's why the damage occurred, but mainly not by the warheads, but most likely by the debris of the missiles themselves," Putin claimed.

He also promised Aliyev compensation from Russia and a "legal assessment of the actions of all officials".

In turn, the Azerbaijani president thanked the dictator for this information and that he "personally keeps this situation under control."

• AZAL aircraft crashed on December 25, near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan, after it changed its route across the Caspian Sea from southern Russia. The vessel was supposed to travel from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to Grozny, the center of Russian-controlled Chechnya. Known, that 38 people were killed. After the crash, Putin called Aliyev twice to apologize for the "tragic incident" that occurred in Russian airspace.
• In February 2025, Reuters, citing a source in the Azerbaijani government, stated that the plane was shot down by the Russian air defense system Pantsir-S.
• In addition to this disaster, another meeting between Putin and Aliyev took place after deterioration of relations between Baku and Moscow over the deaths of representatives of the Azerbaijani diaspora as a result of the actions of Russian security forces in June, as well as after two Russian attacks on the oil depot of the Azerbaijani state company SOCAR in Ukraine in August.