New evidence suggests Russian forces shot down Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243
Copyright AP PhotoBy EuronewsPublished on 01/07/2025
An Azerbaijani news outlet released evidence Tuesday suggesting the Russian military ordered the 2024 missile strike on Flight 8243, causing a crash in which 38 passengers died and another 29 were injured.
Russian military forces were involved in the missile strike on Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 which crashed on 25 December 2024, a new audio recording and a letter published by an Azerbaijani news website on Tuesday purport to prove.
Azerbaijani news outlet Minval claims it received an “anonymous letter ... containing testimonies, audio clips, and technical details” pointing to “technical deficiencies in the communications equipment used at the time.
Minval claims the letter includes a written statement “allegedly signed by Captain Dmitry Sergeyevich Paladichuk, a Russian air defence officer (who) was acting under direct orders from Russia’s Ministry of Defence when he authorised the missile strike.”
Euronews cannot independently verify the authenticity of the claims in the Azerbaijani news outlet’s report.
Minval’s news report on Tuesday quoted the letter claiming that “Captain Paladichuk was stationed near Grozny on duty from 24 to 25 December. At 05:40 on the day of the incident, his unit was ordered to enter full combat readiness."
"Due to poor mobile reception and a lack of functional wired communication, coordination relied heavily on unstable mobile connections," the letter added.
"A potential target was detected at 08:11 and tracked using radar. Two missiles were reportedly fired at the object after Paladichuk was instructed via phone to destroy it — despite heavy fog obscuring optical confirmation.”
According to the letter, “the coordinates, speeds, and directions of the target at the time of both missile launches were provided in detail in the written explanation. The first missile is said to have missed, while the second one allegedly detonated close enough for shrapnel to strike the aircraft.”
Minval also claimed that it reviewed "three voice messages" believed to support the claims made in the letter. The voices reportedly confirm that operational orders were given, two missiles were fired, and shrapnel from the explosion struck the aircraft, according to the outlet.
The outlet has released one audio recording purporting to depict the sequence in which a voice in Russian gives military directions, orders a missile to be fired, followed by the sound of what appears to be a firing sequence, the same voice saying “target missed”, and allegedly ordering another missile to be fired.
On the day of the tragedy, Azerbaijani government sources told Euronews that a Russian surface-to-air missile was fired at Flight 8243 during drone air activity above Grozny, the flight’s destination. The same sources said that the shrapnel hit the passengers and cabin crew as the missile exploded next to the aircraft mid-flight, disabling it.
The damaged aircraft was not allowed to land at any Russian airports despite the pilots’ requests for an emergency landing, the same sources said, and it was ordered to fly across the Caspian Sea towards Aktau in Kazakhstan, where it crashed while attempting an emergency landing, killing 38 and injuring 29.
Subsequent reports after the tragedy claimed that Flight 8243 was downed by a missile from a Russian Pantsir-S1 system.
Putin calls crash 'tragic incident', stops short of apology
Three days after the crash, in an address to the nation, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said, "we can say with complete clarity that the plane was shot down by Russia (...) We are not saying that it was done intentionally, but it was done.”
At that time, on 29 December, Aliyev stated that Baku had made three demands to Russia in connection with the crash.
“First, the Russian side must apologise to Azerbaijan. Second, it must admit its guilt. Third, punish the guilty, bring them to criminal responsibility and pay compensation to the Azerbaijani state, the injured passengers and crew members,” Aliyev outlined.
Aliyev noted that the first demand was “already fulfilled” when Russian President Vladimir Putin apologised to him on 28 December. Putin called the crash a “tragic incident," though he stopped short of acknowledging Moscow’s responsibility.
The Kremlin said at the time that air defence systems were firing near Grozny, where the plane attempted to land, to deflect Ukrainian drone strikes.
In the days following the tragedy, Russian military bloggers claimed that the said explosion happened over the Naursky District of Chechnya, where several Russian military units were posted at the time, including those with air defence systems, basing their conclusions on open-source data.
The new claims linking the Russian military to the Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 tragedy appear at a time of a fast-moving escalation of judicial measures between Russia and Azerbaijan, as relations between the two countries reach a new low.
Azerbaijan jails Sputnik executives amid escalating tensions with Russia
Azerbaijan and Russia have engaged in a rare escalation of judicial measures against each other over the last days, as relations between the two countries reach a new low.
The executive director and editor-in-chief of Russia's state-run news agency Sputnik in Azerbaijan have been sentenced to four months in prison on Tuesday, following a Baku police raid of the Russian state media affiliate the day before, in what appears to be a fast-moving escalation between the two countries.
According to Azerbaijan’s authorities, they have been found guilty of fraud, illegal entrepreneurship and legalisation of property obtained by criminal means, Baku-based international news channel AnewZ reported.
Azeri APA agency reported earlier that two employees of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) were among seven people detained after the raid on the offices of Sputnik Azerbaijan, owned by Rossiya Segodnya, which is in turn owned and operated by the Russian government.
Another Russian state-run media outlet, Ruptly, later reported that one of its editors had been detained after attempting to film the police action at the Sputnik offices in Baku.
Azerbaijan's Interior Ministry published a video showing officers leading two men to police vans in handcuffs.
The tensions between Azerbaijan and Russia escalated over the past few days following the detention of over 50 Azerbaijanis in Yekaterinburg in raids by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) last Friday.
Two people — brothers Huseyn and Ziyaddin Safarov — died during the raids, and three others were seriously injured. Russia claimed that the arrests were part of a murder investigation from the early 2000s.
Azerbaijan-based broadcaster AnewZ said the news of deadly raids sparked outrage and calls for justice amid what Azerbaijanis allege as abuse and ethnic profiling.
Some detainees have alleged that confessions were obtained through force, threats, and coercion, including pressure on family members.
Forensic experts have revealed that the Azerbaijani citizens killed during the Russian raids in Yekaterinburg died from blunt force trauma, not gunshot wounds, raising additional questions about the circumstances of the deaths.
Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry condemned the operation as “brutal and unjustified” and called on the Russian authorities to “conduct an urgent investigation into the matter and bring the perpetrators of this unacceptable violence to justice as soon as possible,” according to AnewZ.
In addition, Azerbaijan summoned Russia’s envoy to Baku to protest against the deadly raids and also cancelled all cultural events planned by the Russian state and private institutions in protest against the raid on Russia’s state-run Sputnik agency offices.
"In response to targeted and extrajudicial killings and acts of violence against Azerbaijanis based on their ethnicity, dem onstratively perpetrated by Russian law enforcement agencies in the Yekaterinburg region of the Russian Federation – and considering the systematic nature of such incidents in recent times – all cultural events planned in Azerbaijan involving Russian state and private entities have been cancelled," Azerbaijan’s ministry of Culture said in a statement.
Russia’s state-run agency in Azerbaijan
In February, the Azerbaijani government shut down Russia's state-funded news agency, Sputnik, but it has continued to operate, albeit with reduced staff.
Although the agency’s accreditation was officially revoked in February, the Azerbaijan Interior Ministry stated that its data indicated Sputnik Azerbaijan allegedly continued its activities using illegal funding sources.
The director of Sputnik's parent company Rossiya Segodnya, Dmitry Kiselev — one of the most prominent Russian propagandists, who regularly makes open calls to destroy Ukraine and attack Europe with Russian missiles — said Sputnik and Azerbaijani officials had been trying to find a temporary agreement allowing it to keep working in Baku.
Sputnik, Ruptly, and other affiliates of Rossiya Segodnya are widely regarded as tools for spreading the Kremlin's propaganda outside of Russia.
Kiselev expressed his disconnect over the Monday arrests on Telegram, calling it a “deliberate step aimed at worsening relations between the countries”.
Azerbaijan's parliament has pulled out of planned bilateral talks in Moscow amid the recent escalation and cancelled a visit by a Russian deputy prime minister.
Russian authorities denounced the state-run Sputnik office raid and detention as "unfriendly acts by Baku and the illegal arrest of Russian journalists."
In additional developments on Tuesday, Azerbaijan's Interior Ministry announced that it dismantled two criminal groups in Baku, detaining Russian nationals suspected of trafficking drugs from Iran and conducting cyber fraud operations.
Relations between Moscow and Baku cooled after an Azerbaijani airliner crashed in Kazakhstan in December, killing 38 of 67 people aboard.
As exclusively reported by Euronews, investigations into the incident revealed that the Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 was shot at by Russian air defence over Russia's Grozny and rendered uncontrollable by electronic warfare.
Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev accused Russia of trying to "hush up" the incident for several days. Russian President Vladimir Putin apologised to Aliyev for what he called a "tragic incident" but stopped short of acknowledging responsibility.
In May, Aliyev decided not to attend Russia’s 80th Victory Day celebrations.
