Ukraine says Russia 'must be held responsible' for Azerbaijan plane crash

KIEV

Ukraine's presidency on Friday said Russia should be held accountable for the deadly crash of an Azerbaijani passenger plane, after reports the jet was shot at by a Russian air defense missile.

"Russia must be held responsible for the downing of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane. Condolences to the relatives of the victims," presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak said on social media.

The Kremlin said Friday that it would not comment on the deadly crash of an Azerbaijani passenger plane until an inquiry was completed, after reports the jet was targeted by a Russian air defense missile.

The head of Russia's civil aviation agency on Friday said Ukrainian drones were attacking the city of Grozny as an Azerbaijani Airlines plane which eventually crashed in Kazakhstan was trying to land.

"Ukrainian military drones were carrying out terrorist attacks on civilian infrastructure... at the time," Dmitry Yadrov said on Telegram, adding that the plane made two attempts to land before veering off towards Kazakhstan.

The Azerbaijan Airlines jet crashed near the Kazakh city of Aktau, an oil and gas hub, on Wednesday after going off course for undetermined reasons.

Thirty-eight of the 67 people on board died.

"An investigation is underway, and until the conclusions of the investigation, we do not consider we have the right to make any comments and we will not do so," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

The Embraer 190 aircraft was supposed to fly northwest from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to Grozny in Chechnya, southern Russia, but instead diverted far off course across the Caspian Sea.

An investigation is underway, with the pro-government Azerbaijani website Caliber citing unnamed officials as saying they believed a Russian missile fired from a Pantsir-S air defense system downed the plane.

Azerbaijan Airlines said Friday that it was suspending flights to a total of seven Russian cities, "taking into account flight safety risks", after earlier saying it had stopped flights to Grozny and to Makhachkala in Dagestan, which neighbours Chechnya.

Rasim Musabekov, an Azeri lawmaker, urged Russia to apologise for the incident.

"They have to accept this, punish those to blame, promise that such a thing will not happen again, express regrets and readiness to pay compensation," Musabekov told AFP in an interview. "We are waiting for Russia to do this."

He said the plane "was damaged in the sky over Grozny and asked to make an emergency landing".

"According to all the rules of aviation, they should have allowed this and organised it."

Instead the plane was not allowed to land at Grozny or nearby Russian airports and was "sent far away" across the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan with "GPS switched off", Musabekov said.

If air defenses were operating near Grozny airport, "they should have closed the air space. The plane should have been turned around as it approached Grozny. Why wasn't this done?" he added.

Some aviation and military experts said the plane might have been accidentally shot by Russian air defense systems because it was flying in an area where Ukrainian drone activity had been reported.