Azerbaijan’s pro-government media outlet on Tuesday released audio recordings purportedly proving that Russia deliberately downed AZAL passenger plane back in December, killing 38 people.
The audio recordings released by Minval, features a Russian officer Dmitry Paliduchuk purportedly receiving orders to open fire on the e Embraer 190 plane bound to Chechnya and is the clearest evidence made public so far of Russia’s involvement in the AZAL plane’s crash. The audio recordings were accompanied with a handwritten letter supposedly from Paliduchuk. AZAL plane bound to Checnya crashed over Kazakhstan on December 25 after foreign metal objects penetrated the structure. It's believed the plane was hit by missiles. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said the plane had been accidentally shot by Russia and demanded an open apology from Moscow. Russian leader Vladimir Putin expressed apologized to Aliyev for what he called a “tragic incident”, however stopped short of claiming responsibility.
The surfacing of the audio recordings came amid the soaring of tensions between Baku and Moscow following the killings of two ethnic Azerbaijanis in a police raid in Russia’s Yekaterinburg city on Friday. Azerbaijan’s Persecutors Office on Tuesday launched an investigation into the Azerbaijani nationals’ deaths, which it attributed to “post-traumatic shock caused by multiple injuries.” Six more Azerbaijani nationals were injured and nine were detained during the overnight raid by Russian law-enforcers.
Tension quickly escalated the following days, with Baku calling off Russian cultural events organized privately and by the government, cancelled the scheduled trip to Moscow by government officials, as well as a visit to Baku by a Russian deputy prime minister. In yet another response to the extra-judiciary killings of Ziyaddin and Huseyn Safarov, Azerbaijani law-enforcers raided the office of pro-Kremlin media outlet Sputnik Azerbaijan and detained five individuals linked to it. Kremlin Spokesperson called for the release of Russian nationals.
