A view shows the wreckage of an Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane at the crash site near the city of Aktau, Kazakhstan December 25, 2024 [Source: Reuters]

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that a passenger plane that crashed last week, killing 38 people, had been damaged by accidental shooting from the ground in Russia, adding that some in Russia had lied about the cause of the disaster.

Russian President Vladimir Putin apologised on Saturday to Aliyev for Wednesday’s “tragic incident” in Russian airspace involving Azerbaijan Airlines Flight J2-8243 after Russian air defences engaged Ukrainian attack drones.

A Kremlin statement did not say Russia had shot down the plane, only noting a criminal case had been opened.

The pilots, who died in the crash, have been lauded in Azerbaijan for a landing that allowed 29 people to survive.

Aliyev said he wanted Russia to accept it was guilty of downing the plane and to punish those responsible.

Putin and Aliyev held another telephone call on Sunday, the Kremlin said. It gave no details but on Saturday it said that both civilian and military specialists were being questioned about what had taken place.

The chief of Russia’s Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, on a phone call assured Azerbaijan’s prosecutor general that Moscow had assigned the investigation to the most experienced experts and that actions were being taken to establish the cause and circumstances of the incident.

The plane crashed on Wednesday near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan after diverting from southern Russia where Ukrainian drones were attacking several cities at the time, according to the Kremlin.

Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency quoted Kazakhstan’s Transport Ministry as saying authorities would send the two black box flight recorders to Brazil, where the Embraer (EMBR3.SA), opens new tab E190 passenger jet was manufactured.

They would be examined by the Aeronautical Accidents Investigation and Prevention Center, which had the technical capabilities to perform the job, the ministry said.

The extremely rare publicised apology from Putin on Saturday is the closest Moscow has come to accepting some blame for the disaster.

Four sources with knowledge of the preliminary findings of Azerbaijan’s investigation into the disaster told Reuters on Thursday that Russian air defences had mistakenly shot it down.