Russia won't say if it mistakenly downed an Azerbaijani plane on Christmas. But it acknowledges the crash came amid a Ukrainian drone attack in its republic of Chechnya.

The cause of the crash of Azerbaijan Airlines flight J2-8243 near the city of Aktau, Kazakhstan, is still unknown. The Kremlin has so far been tight-lipped, prompting questions over its messaging.

Azerbaijan Airlines, the carrier of the passenger jet that crashed in Kazakhstan on Christmas Day, said preliminary investigations have found the disaster occurred “as a result of physical and technical external interference,

The Azerbaijan Airlines crash, moreover, must be understood in the context of a war of aggression that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin launched against Ukraine — while pretending, for the ...

Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 was scheduled to travel from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, to Grozny, a city in the Russian region of Chechnya, on Wednesday, but was diverted and ultimately crashed on the other side of the Caspian Sea, less than two miles from the airport in Aktau, Kazakhstan.

On 25 December, 38 people died when an Azerbaijan Airlines flight, which had been due to land in Russia, crash-landed in Kazakhstan. The circumstances around the crash remain unclear, but limited evidence so far suggests it may have been damaged by missiles fired by a Russian air-defence system as it tried to land in Chechnya.

In our news wrap Wednesday, at least 38 are dead after an Azerbaijan Airlines flight crashed in Kazakhstan, Ukraine says Russia launched an extensive missile and drone attack on the country’s energy and fuel infrastructure,

Ukraine for months has been using domestically ... most likely by an air defense system. Azerbaijan Airlines blamed the crash on unspecified “physical and technical interference.”

In the crash’s aftermath, Azerbaijan has unleashed rare and stinging criticism of Russia, with the country’s president saying Moscow’s response has caused “surprise, regret and rightful indignation.”

The humanitarian aid dispatched by Azerbaijan on December 30, under the instruction of the President Ilham Aliyev, has reached Syria. A convoy of 1

Last year saw more airline fatal accidents and fatalities worldwide than any 12-month period since 2018, raising the question as to whether a decade or so of safety performance improvement has begun to reverse.