Azerbaijan Airlines Flight JS-8432 crashed in Kazakhstan Wednesday after being fired upon by a Russian Pantsir S1 short-range air defense system, the head of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Directorate (GUR) told The War Zone, while a U.S. official told us that a Russian anti-aircraft system may have struck the aircraft. These claims line up with video emerging from inside the jet and the crash scene as well as reporting by several news outlets indicating the Russian air defense system caused the crash of the Embraer 190 passenger jet that killed 38. The War Zone cannot independently verify these claims while several investigations are underway and Russian, Azerbainanian and Kazakh officials urge restraint in reaching conclusions about the crash.
Video taken by a passenger before the crash reportedly showed “shrapnel holes in the fuselage, consistent with damage from a Russian surface-to-air missile,” according to the Twitter account of the Azeri Times news outlet. “The footage also shows a woman bleeding from her leg, wounded by shrapnel.”
Another video form inside the plane appeared to show shrapnel damage as well.
In a video recorded after the crash, the tail section appeared to be riddled with shrapnel.
The jet’s final moments can be seen in videos showing its pilots trying to land the aircraft before it crashed. It appeared to pitch upward, then descend at a steep angle several times. On its final approach, the Embraer 190 again descended at a steep angle before banking to the right and crashing near the runway, erupting in a ball of flames.
A separate Tweet showed another view of the crash and its aftermath, with survivors in the rear section of the aircraft which had detached upon impact.
“As far as we know, the jet was shot down by a Russian Pantsir S1 air defense system on Russian terrain,” GUR commander Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov told us. Citing four sources close to the Azerbaijani investigation, Reuters reported that the jet was downed by Russian air defense “after diverting from an area of Russia in which Moscow has used air defense systems against Ukrainian drone strikes in recent months.”
Euronews, citing “Azerbaijani government sources” reported that “a Russian surface-to-air missile caused the Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash in Aktau on Wednesday.”
“According to the sources, the missile was fired at Flight 8432 during drone air activity above Grozny, and the shrapnel hit the passengers and cabin crew as it exploded next to the aircraft mid-flight,” the publication reported. “Government sources have told Euronews that the damaged aircraft was not allowed to land at any Russian airports despite the pilots’ requests for an emergency landing, and it was ordered to fly across the Caspian Sea towards Aktau in Kazakhstan. According to data, the plane’s GPS navigation systems were jammed throughout the flight path above the sea.”
Aktau is nearly 300 miles east of Grozny.
The airliner, with 67 people on board, was due to fly to Grozny in Russia’s Chechen Republic but it was diverted because of fog, the airline said, according to the BBC.
“A surviving passenger told Russian TV he believed the pilot had tried twice to land in dense fog over Grozny before ‘the third time, something exploded… some of the aircraft skin had blown out,’” the network reported.
Kazakhstan’s Minister of Transport, Marat Karabayev, said Thursday that a Kazakh control center received a signal from Russia around 45 minutes before the plane crashed, saying that the flight was being diverted, CNN reported.
“The Russian dispatcher said that the aircraft was experiencing a failure in its control systems and that the crew decided to fly to Aktau after receiving reports of bad weather, Karabayev said,” according to CNN. “The dispatcher later said that an ‘oxygen tank exploded in the passenger cabin, causing passengers to lose consciousness,’ according to Karabayev. While the Azerbaijan Airlines crew made two landing approaches at Aktau airport, the aircraft deviated from its course, and lost communication with Aktau dispatchers when it crashed, Karabayev said.”
The flight-tracking website Flightradar24 reported that the plane set off on Wednesday at 7:55 a.m. Azerbaijan Standard Time (AST) and crashed at 10:28 a.m. AST.
“The aircraft was exposed to strong GPS jamming which made the aircraft transmit bad ADS-B data. At (8:40 a.m. AST) we lost the ADS-B signal,” Flightradar24 concluded. “At (10:07 a.m. AST) we picked up the ADS-B signal again before it crashed at (10:28 a.m. AST).”
Flightradar24 also provided a 3D flight track.
The Azerbaijanian Caliber news outlet concurred with the Flightradar24 assessment about interference from Russian electronic warfare (EW) systems.
After reportedly being damaged by the Russian SAM, the jet’s communications systems were “completely paralyzed” by Russian electronic warfare systems, according to Caliber. “This disruption caused the aircraft to disappear from radar within Russian airspace and only reappeared in the area of the Caspian Sea.”
Caliber added that according to Russian sources, “at the time of the flight over Chechnya, Russian air defense systems were attempting to shoot down Ukrainian drones. The head of the Security Council of the Chechen Republic, Khamzat Kadyrov, confirmed the drone attack on Grozny on the morning of December 25, stating that there were no casualties or damage. In this case, the Russian side should have closed its airspace to civilian aircraft, but this was not done. Why a no-fly zone was not declared over Chechnya remains a significant question.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned against jumping to conclusions that the Russians fired at the jet.
“It would be wrong to put forward any hypotheses before the investigation’s conclusions,” he argued. “We, of course, will not do this, and no one should do this. We need to wait until the investigation is completed.”
A regional Kazakh official appeared to acknowledge Thursday that the investigation is looking into whether Russian air defenses downed the plane but said it is too soon to offer a definitive assessment.
Mangystau Regional Transport Prosecutor Abylaibek Ordabayev said they have not yet come to any conclusions about whether that played a role, Reuters reported.
Azerbaijanian President Ilham Aliyev said he learned of the crash while he was flying to Russia to attend the informal summit of the heads of state of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) member countries in St. Petersburg on Dec. 25. He promptly ordered his plane to return to Baku and ordered a criminal investigation of the crash. Like the Russians and Kazakhs, he urged caution before determining the cause.
“The commission’s task is to fully investigate the matter, examine the causes of the crash and all its details, and provide information both to me and to the Azerbaijani public,” he said. “According to the information provided to me, the AZAL airline plane, flying on the Baku-Grozny route, changed its course due to worsening weather conditions and began heading toward Aktau airport, where the crash occurred during landing. There are videos of the plane crash available in the media and on social networks, and everyone can watch them. However, the reasons for the crash are not yet known to us. There are various theories, but I believe it is premature to discuss them. The matter must be thoroughly investigated. A criminal case has been launched by the Prosecutor General’s Office, and naturally, the Azerbaijani public will be regularly informed about both the results of the commission’s work and the progress of the criminal case.”
That anyone survived the crash at all is amazing in itself. It speaks volumes about the pilots’ ability to fly the stricken jet for nearly 300 miles, including nearly 190 miles over a large body of water, reportedly with disrupted communications and likely by using thrust to help the flight because the left horizontal stabilizer was reportedly rendered inoperable by the shrapnel.
Captain Igor Kshnyakin, co-pilot Aleksandr Kalyaninov and purser Hokuma Aliyeva were killed in the crash, according to Euronews, while the other two flight attendants, Zulfugar Asadov and Aidan Rahimli, reportedly survived and were being treated in hospital on Thursday.
The crew was hailed as heroes for their ability to maintain flight and keep the passengers relatively calm.
Kshnyakin and Kalyaninov “displayed remarkable airmanship, according to experts, as they managed to fly the stricken plane across the Caspian Sea and crash landing just 3 kilometers short of the Aktau airport runway,” Euronews noted.
In a Tweet, the airline provided a list of the crew and passengers on the aircraft.
This is not the first time Russia has been accused of downing an airliner.
In September 2016, a Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team tasked with figuring out what happened to Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) on July 17th, 2014 concluded that a SA-11 Buk surface-to-air missile system downed the hapless airliner, and that weapon was sent into Ukraine from Russia and removed shortly after the engagement.
The site where the missile was fired has also been officially pinpointed as just outside the village of Pervomaiskyi, which was held by pro-Russian forces at the time. After the shootdown, in which all 298 lives aboard MH17 were lost, the Buk system was quickly moved back into Russian territory the next day, according to the report
“After the BUK missile had been fired, the BUK-TELAR initially drove off under its own power,” the report concluded. “A short time later it was reloaded onto the Volvo truck and transported back to the Russian border. During the night, the convoy crossed the border into the territory of the Russian Federation.”
There have been several relatively recent cases where air defenses, under pressure of an ongoing or possibly impending attack, have taken down the wrong aircraft.
Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752, a Boeing 737-800, crashed shortly after taking off from Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport at approximately 6:12 AM local time on Jan. 8, 2020 after being struck by two Iranian air defense missiles. The flight was heading to the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and had 176 crew and passengers on board, all of whom died in the subsequent crash. Video footage that subsequently emerged showed the plane engulfed in a fireball before it hit the ground. The shootdown immediately followed an unprecedented Iranian missile strike targeting U.S. forces in Iraq and Iranian air defenses were on extreme alert anticipating the country would be hit in retaliation. You can read more about that here.
More recently, a U.S. Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet was accidentally shot down by a missile fired by the U.S. Navy Ticonderoga class cruiser USS Gettysburg over the Red Sea. The jet, downed early on December 22 local time, was returning to the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman during the middle of what a U.S. official told The War Zone was a complex attack.
“After successfully returning from its initial mission, an F/A-18F launched again to provide air defense support from OWAs and ASCMs that were inbound to the force,” a U.S. official told us. “They were shot down while recovery of remaining aircraft was underway.” According to Fox News, a second Super Hornet narrowly avoided being struck by a missile from the Gettysburg.
It may take a while before a definitive conclusion can be reached about what happened to Azerbaijan Airlines Flight JS-8432. However, preliminary reports seem to indicate that once again, neither anti-aircraft systems nor the people operating them, are infallible in the heat of battle.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com