The plane, an Embraer 190 with 67 people on board that was supposed to fly from Baku to Grozny in the Russian Caucasus, crashed in Kazakhstan on December 25, 2024. Azerbaijan and Russia announced on Wednesday, April 15, that they had reached an agreement regarding the crash of the aircraft.
Baku and Moscow stated on Wednesday, April 15, that they had reached an agreement regarding the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane in 2024, including compensation and acknowledging the role of the Russian anti-aircraft defense in the accident that resulted in 38 deaths.
The aircraft, an Embraer 190 with 67 people on board that was supposed to fly from Baku to Grozny in the Russian Caucasus, had initially tried to land at its final destination before being redirected to Kazakhstan, where it crashed on December 25, 2024.
The foreign ministers of both countries declared on Wednesday in a joint statement that the crash was the result of an “unintentional action” of an anti-aircraft defense system in Russian airspace, and mentioned an agreement on financial compensation, without further details.
The warming of bilateral relations?
This agreement, according to the ministers, following exchanges between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, marks an important step in the warming of bilateral relations.
The relations between this former Soviet republic and Russia had significantly deteriorated after Azerbaijani President demanded that Russia acknowledge its responsibility.
Ilham Aliev accused Moscow of wanting to “cover up the problem.” Vladimir Putin later apologized “for the tragic incident occurring in Russian airspace.”
The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, stated that this crash painfully reminded of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014, which resulted in 298 deaths. According to an international investigation, this plane was shot down by a Russian BUK anti-aircraft missile over an area of Ukraine held by pro-Russian separatist rebels.
/2026/04/15/69dfecae2cf3b867844996.jpg "REPORTAGE. We havent gotten anything from anyone until now: in Lebanon, disaster victims rely on the help of He")
