Kazakh President Kassym Jomart-Tokayev has ordered the formation of a commission to investigate Wednesday’s Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash that killed at least 38 people.
The plane’s black box was also located by Kazakh authorities on Wednesday.
Azerbaijan, whose citizens formed the bulk of those killed in the crash, also announced its own criminal investigation into the incident.
Out of the 38 people confirmed to have been killed, 26 were Azerbaijani citizens, seven were Russian nationals, and six were from Kazakhstan.
Three of the five crew members also reportedly survived the crash. The 29 survivors of the crash received injuries of varying severity, with at least 11 in serious condition.
Yesterday, a flight from Baku to Grozny crash-landed near the Kazakh city of Aktau after having been rerouted across the Caspian Sea under mysterious circumstances.
According to Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency and the press service of the Grozny airport, the plane reportedly experienced an emergency situation after striking birds while in flight, and due to foggy conditions in Grozny, was rerouted first to Makhachkala, and then across the Caspian Sea to Aktau.
Was the plane struck by air defence projectiles?
At the same time, suspicions about the veracity of the official narrative have grown as footage and images of the plane and the crash site have spread.
The plane’s fuselage showed damage that appears to be consistent with shrapnel from air defence systems, and videos taken from inside the cabin while en route to Aktau also showed internal damage.
Drones again struck Chechnya on Wednesday, which led to the closure of the Grozny airport, contradicting the official story that the plane was denied access to the airport because of heavy fog.
Andrii Kovalenko, Head of the Centre for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, shared a video on Telegram before the crash was announced purporting to show the drone attack. Alongside the video was the caption, ‘Grozny under attack. [Ramzan] Kadyrov is humiliated again’.
The post was later edited, with the caption changed to ‘Grozny. Unknown drones’.
Chechnya and other republics in the North Caucasus have been targeted by drones with increasing frequency in recent weeks, likely contributing to a heightened alert from air defence systems in the region.
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Since July, multiple republics in the North Caucasus have been subjected to multiple drone attacks.
After the crash, Azerbaijan Airlines suspended flights to Grozny and Makhachkala pending the findings of the investigation — a move that would be unlikely if the company believed the plane had struck a flock of birds.
On Wednesday, Ukraine’s Centre for Strategic Communication and Information Security shared footage of the crash site, which clearly showed holes in the plane’s fuselage, saying that it was ‘damage consistent with anti-aircraft fire’.
‘Yet another MH17’, the centre said, referring to the Malaysian Airlines jet that was shot down by Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine in 2014, killing all 298 people on board.
Later, the centre shared another post castigating international media for citing explanations from Russian media organisations.
‘Why would the media shamelessly cite the Kremlin’s version of events that are trying to cover-up Russia’s intentional downing of a civilian airliner?’, the centre said.
While Russian state media has largely stuck to the official narrative — the crash was caused by birds — there have been growing signs of dissent from officials connected to the government, as well as high profile Telegram accounts.
Sergei Markov, a former advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, claimed that Ukraine was responsible for the crash, suggesting that either a Ukrainian drone had directly struck the plane or that it had been hit by air defence in Chechnya responding to Ukrainian drone strikes in the area.
The Russian state-run media outlet RT shared an interview with one of the survivors of the crash, quoting him saying that there was an explosion outside the plane as it tried to land in Grozny. The man also said that ‘shrapnel’ had pierced the plane.
The influential pro-war blogger Rybar echoed the sentiments, also referencing concurrent drone strikes and saying that the damage to the plane’s fuselage was ‘visually reminiscent’ of shrapnel from air defence.
It is unclear when the findings of either the Kazakh or Azerbaijani investigations will be released.