On Dec. 25, an Embraer 190 plane, operating as Azerbaijan Airlines Flight J2-8243 from Baku, Azerbaijan, to Grozny, Russia, crashed near Aktau International Airport in Kazakhstan. The crash claimed 38 lives, leaving 29 survivors among the 62 passengers and 5 crew members on board.
On the same day, Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency stated that the commander of the Baku-Grozny passenger plane decided to divert to the alternate airfield in Aktau after the aircraft collided with birds:
"Preliminary: after a collision with birds, due to an emergency situation on board the aircraft [Baku-Grozny flight of Azerbaijan Airlines], its commander decided to "go" to an alternate airfield — Aktau was chosen."
The claim is false.
Multiple shrapnel holes in the plane’s fuselage and its altitude at the time of incident contradict the bird theory. Azerbaijan accused Russia of hitting the passenger jet with a missile. The pilot did not decide to fly to Aktau — Russian airports denied the airliner an emergency landing.
Four sources familiar with Azerbaijan's investigation into the crash told Reuters that Russian air defenses downed the plane. They said preliminary findings suggest the plane was struck by a Russian Pantsir-S air defense system — a conclusion supported by multiple sources involved in the investigation.
Azerbaijani government sources told Euronews that Russian air defense fired the missile during drone activity over Grozny. Despite pilot requests, the source said, the plane was denied emergency landing at Russian airports and redirected across the Caspian Sea to Aktau.
Various sources, including open-source intelligence, analysts, aviation experts and Azerbaijani government reports, support the theory that Russian air defenses downed the plane.
Bird explanation doesn’t fly
Shortly after the incident, videos from the crash site in Kazakhstan appeared on social media and in the news.
Open-source intelligence, or OSINT, analyst Oliver Alexander wrote on X that the plane's wreckage displays entry holes on the left (port) side and exit holes on the right (starboard) side. He stated that this type of damage could not have resulted from a bird strike or an accident during landing.
Kazakh aviation expert Serik Mukhtybayev, in an interview with the news site Orda.kz, argued that it’s unlikely for birds to simultaneously hit both engines, as flights can continue with one engine. He notes the crew reported technical issues an hour into the flight, and bird collisions typically occur during takeoff or landing, not at higher altitudes, especially in winter when bird migrations are rare.
Aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia dismissed the Russian claim that a bird strike caused the Azerbaijan Airlines plane to fly 450 kilometers across the Caspian Sea, stating that bird strikes typically lead to a glide toward the nearest airfield. "You can lose control of the plane, but you don't fly wildly off course as a consequence," Aboulafia said.
Analysts blame Russian air defenses
Justin Crump from the risk advisory firm Sibylline suggested that the damage pattern inside and outside the plane pointed to a possible Russian air defense missile strike near Grozny, which had been targeted by Ukrainian drone strikes earlier this month. "It looks very much like the detonation of an air defense missile to the rear and to the left of the aircraft, if you look at the pattern of shrapnel that we see," he told BBC Radio 4.
Independent Russian military analysts Yan Matveyev and Ruslan Leviev, who reviewed the video showing holes in the plane's fuselage, deemed it likely that the plane was struck by a Russian air defense missile. Matveyev suggested that the Pantsir-S1 system, used by Russia to counter Ukrainian drone attacks in Chechnya, was most likely responsible.
Andriy Kovalenko, head of Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation, posted on X that a Russian missile shot down the Embraer 190. He accused Russia of failing to close airspace over Grozny and sending the damaged plane to Kazakhstan instead of allowing an emergency landing in Grozny to save lives.
Baku-based news outlet AnewZ, citing Azerbaijani government sources, reported that preliminary findings indicate the plane was attacked by Russia’s Pantsir-S air defense system near Grozny. The outlet said Russian electronic warfare also paralyzed the plane's communication, causing it to disappear from radars until reappearing over the Caspian Sea.
Russia has a history of interfering with the Global Positioning System, or GPS. In May, European countries, including the U.K., Germany, Finland, Poland, the Baltic and Nordic states, accused Russia of intentionally jamming GPS signals, with more than 42,000 aircrafts and hundreds of maritime vessels reporting GPS blackouts at the time.
Retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Robert Hamilton from the Foreign Policy Research Institute told PBS that evidence suggests a Russian air defense system downed the plane. He cited a Ukrainian drone attack over Grozny, Russian GPS jamming, and active air defenses in the area. Hamilton explained that missile proximity caused fuselage and tail damage, supporting the theory of accidental downing by Russian forces.
A U.S. official, speaking anonymously to CBS News, stated that initial indications point to a Russian anti-aircraft system potentially being responsible for striking the plane. The official emphasized that if these findings are confirmed, it would further highlight the dangerous recklessness of Russia's actions in the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed condolences to his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilkham Aliev, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said. Peskov refused to comment on Russia’s potential involvement, describing it as “merely a hypothesis.”
An international investigating panel proved that the Russian army shut down a Malaysian passenger airliner MH-17 over Ukraine on July 14, 2014, killing all 298 people on board. Russia denied involvement, launching instead a yearslong disinformation campaign to distort the investigation.
