Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that the country is preparing documents for a lawsuit against Russia over the shooting down of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane in December 2024.
He said that it may take time, but Azerbaijan is ready to wait ten years, as was the case with the Malaysian Boeing, which Russian forces shot down over the Donetsk region in the summer of 2014.
He said this at the III Shusha Global Forum, writes the Azerbaijani media outlet Report.
According to Aliyev, Azerbaijan has not received a response from Russia for seven months after the disaster. The countryʼs Prosecutor General regularly sends letters to the Russian Investigative Committee, but they are replied that the investigation is ongoing.
"Unfortunately, we have not received any response from Russian officials, although seven months have passed. Everything is clear to us: we know what happened, and we can prove it. And we know that Russian officials know what happened. And the question is why they are not doing what any neighbour would do. Our requests or demands are absolutely natural — to admit this accident as their fault, to punish those who stopped our plane, and to pay compensation to the families of the deceased, those who were injured, and AZAL to compensate for the loss of the plane," Aliyev said.
Aliyev denied that the plane could have shot down the Ukrainian drone, as the entire plane was full of holes and had been attacked twice.
"Can you imagine a Ukrainian drone flying, aiming at an Azerbaijani plane, hitting it, then falling, and then again? So, this is a story for kindergarten. We know what happened," Aliyev said.
What preceded
The plane crash occurred in Kazakhstan on the morning of December 25. The Azerbaijan Airlines plane, which was flying from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to the city of Grozny in Russia, crashed near the Kazakh city of Aktau.
There were 67 people on board the plane, including five crew members. 38 people died in the crash.
According to Euronews sources in the Azerbaijani government, the cause of the plane crash was a Russian surface-to-air missile. The missile was allegedly launched from flight J2-8432 during drone activity over Grozny. The missile exploded during the flight, and its fragments hit the plane.
On December 27, Azerbaijan Airlines stated that, initially, the cause of the crash was "physical and technical external influence".
On December 28, Putin apologized for the "tragic incident" with the Azerbaijan Airlines plane, but did not directly take responsibility for the disaster.
In January, Reuters, citing a source in the Azerbaijani government , wrote that the Azerbaijani side possesses a fragment of the Russian Pantsir-S missile, which was removed from the plane and identified with the help of international expertise.
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