President Vladimir Putin on Saturday apologised to Azerbaijan’s leader for what the Kremlin called a “tragic incident” over Russia in which an Azerbaijan Airlines plane crashed after Russian air defences were fired against Ukrainian drones.

Russians who reviewed the transcript of the crew's conversations from the Baku-Grozny flight themselves admit that the air crash was caused by their air defense systems (ADS), according to Andriy Kovalenko,

The coordinator for Strategic Communications of the US administration, John Kirby, said that the Azerbaijan Airlines plane flying from Baku to Grozny could have been shot down by the Russian air defense.