Azerbaijani government sources have confirmed to Euronews that the cause of the downing of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane in Aktau was a Russian anti-aircraft missile.
According to the sources, the missile was launched in the direction of flight 8432, trying to hit the drone in the Grozny sky. However, during the air operation, debris hit the Azerbaijan Airlines plane, exploding near the plane mid-flight.
Azerbaijani sources also said that despite the pilots' pleas, Russian airports refused to make an emergency landing of the damaged plane, instead directing the crew to fly across the Caspian Sea to the Kazakh city of Aktau.
According to the data, the plane's GPS navigation was silenced on the entire route over the sea.
Notably, the Azerbaijani Caliber.Az reported that the attack was carried out with the help of the Russian "Pantsir-S" air defense system. It is precisely because of this circumstance that the plane disappeared from radars in Russian airspace and was recovered only in the waters of the Caspian Sea.
