After months of collaborating with an investigation led by Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan now also plans to seek redress in international courts over the Dec. 25, 2024, crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane that it says was hit by Russian ground fire before diverting to the western Kazakh city of Aktau.
Azerbaijan’s turn to international institutions reflects frustration with what it views as Russian intransigence in the investigation of what happened to Flight 8243, as well as the sensitivities for Kazakhstan as it leads a probe that could implicate Russia, its powerful neighbor and key trading partner. In a sense, Kazakhstan is caught in the middle, unable so far to satisfy Azerbaijan’s push for accountability for the crash and apparently unable to get full cooperation from Russia in the investigation.
Unlike Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan has refrained from criticism of Russia, even though six Kazakhstanis were among those who died in the plane crash, and Kazakh emergency crews went into potential danger after rushing to pull survivors from the wreckage. Kazakhstan’s low-key approach is possibly an outcome of its efforts to appear impartial during the inquiry as well as its policy of maintaining smooth diplomatic ties, despite any disagreements or tension with major regional players, including Russia and China.
Flush with military victories over Armenia and buoyed by close ties with allies such as Türkiye, Azerbaijan feels less constrained to nurture its traditional relationship with Moscow, its ruler during Soviet and Russian colonial times.
On Saturday, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan referred to years of international investigations and inquiries that found Russia-backed separatist rebels had shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014, and that Russia bore responsibility – a conclusion rejected by Moscow. Aliyev said Azerbaijan was prepared to wait just as long to clear up the case of the Azerbaijan Airlines crash, in which 38 of 67 people on board died.
“We will not forget,” Aliyev said, according to Minval Politika, an Azerbaijani news outlet. “We are currently preparing, and we have already informed the Russian side that we are preparing a dossier for submission to international courts on this matter. We understand that this may take time. In the case of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing, it took more than ten years. We are ready to wait ten years, but justice must prevail.”
The remarks by Azerbaijan’s leader at a media forum in the Azerbaijani city of Shusha show that ties between the two nations face protracted tension as long as the dispute persists, though there are other sources of friction between them, including detentions of each other’s citizens. Russian President Vladimir Putin has apologized for the crash without taking responsibility or providing details about what happened at a time when, according to Russia, the area around Grozny was under attack from Ukrainian drones.
Azerbaijan also wants those responsible to be punished, compensation to be paid to families of the victims, and Azerbaijan Airlines to be compensated for the loss of the Embraer 190 plane that crashed.
The aircraft had taken off from Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, and its destination was Grozny in Russia-controlled Chechnya. However, the flight diverted and crashed near Aktau in western Kazakhstan after suffering fuselage damage that appeared consistent with shrapnel strikes. A preliminary report released by Kazakhstan in February did not clear up whether Russia had fired on the plane, saying only that metal objects had struck the plane, causing damage.
“Unfortunately, we didn’t get any answer from Russian officials about that, though seven months have passed,” Aliyev said, according to AZERTAC, Azerbaijan’s state news agency. “For us, everything is clear. We know what happened, and we can prove it, and we know that Russian officials know what happened, and it’s a question of why they do not just do what any neighbor would have done.”
Azerbaijan has not specified which international courts it plans to petition, but the United Nations could be one channel for its efforts to hold Russia to account.
