Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has publicly called on the Russian government to acknowledge responsibility for the downing of Azerbaijan Airlines Flight J2-8243 in December 2024, an incident in which 38 people were killed.
Speaking at the Global Media Forum in Khankendi on Saturday, Aliyev pressed Moscow for a formal admission, compensation for victims’ families, and accountability for those involved.
The incident, which took place amid ongoing Russian air defence activity against Ukrainian drones, saw the Baku–Grozny flight crash near Aktau in western Kazakhstan after being diverted from its intended route. While the Kremlin had at the time described the crash as a “tragic incident” and President Vladimir Putin reportedly apologised to Aliyev, there has been no official statement from Russia confirming that its forces shot down the aircraft.
Aliyev signalled that Azerbaijan was no longer prepared to accept Russia’s silence on the matter. “We know exactly what happened — and we can prove it. Moreover, we are confident that Russian officials also know what happened,” he said.
“The real question is: why didn’t they do what any responsible neighbour should do?”
Aliyev outlined a series of expectations from Moscow, citing international legal norms and the standards of good-neighbourly relations. These included: a formal acknowledgement of culpability; the identification and punishment of those responsible; financial compensation for the families of the deceased and injured; and reimbursement for the destroyed aircraft.
“These are standard expectations within the framework of international law,” he added.
The flight, which was en route from the Azerbaijani capital to Grozny, the capital of Russia’s Chechen Republic, crashed on 28 December 2024 after diverting from southern Russia. The region had at the time come under attack from Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles, prompting Russian air defences to respond. According to Azerbaijani officials, the aircraft may have been mistaken for a hostile target. Thirty-eight of the 67 people on board were killed; 29 survived.
Concerns Over Aviation Safety Following Azerbaijan Airlines Incident in Kazakhstan
The demand for a Russian admission of responsibility comes amid wider deterioration in Azerbaijani-Russian relations. In recent months, Baku has voiced concern over the detention by Russian police of ethnic Azerbaijanis residing in Russia, accused of historical offences. These developments have added tension to a relationship already strained by geopolitical pressures in the South Caucasus.
During the same event in Khankendi, Aliyev addressed another longstanding regional issue: the establishment of a transit corridor between Azerbaijan and its exclave of Nakhchivan, a territory separated from the rest of the country by southern Armenia. He reiterated his government’s call for a secure and unrestricted transport route, underlining that Azerbaijan sought only sovereign access between two parts of its own territory.
“We are talking about unimpeded state access from Azerbaijan to Azerbaijan. And we understand this literally — we are talking about a connection between parts of one country,” Aliyev said.
He added that any agreement must include guarantees for the safety of passengers, citing historical concerns about attacks on trains passing through Armenian territory during the Soviet era. “This is an absolutely legal and fair demand,” he said, calling for “reliable and verifiable” security measures to be implemented.
The proposed route would cross Armenia’s Syunik province, covering approximately 32 kilometres, and link the main territory of Azerbaijan with Nakhchivan, which borders Turkey. The corridor is regarded by Baku as strategically important, both for national cohesion and regional trade.
However, the proposal remains a point of contention in peace negotiations between Azerbaijan and Armenia. While the two countries announced in March that they had finalised a draft peace agreement following years of intermittent conflict, several key issues — including the status of transport corridors — remain unresolved.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on 16 July that the United States had offered to facilitate and manage the proposed corridor, though the specifics of any such arrangement have not yet been made public.
The broader context includes decades of rivalry and armed conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, most notably over the now-defunct Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous region. While Baku re-established control over the territory in 2023 following a short military campaign, relations between the two neighbours remain fragile.
The call by President Aliyev for Russian accountability adds a new dimension to the region’s complex political landscape. How Moscow responds — if at all — may have implications not only for bilateral ties with Azerbaijan but also for Russia’s broader role in the South Caucasus, where it has traditionally acted as both a regional power and a mediator.
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