Russian President Vladimir Putin has called his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, to express condolences for the deadly plane crash that occured in Kazakhstan this week, the Kremlin said on Saturday.
Putin offered an apology for the fact that an incident “took place in Russian airspace,” adding that it occurred during a Ukrainian drone raid, which was being repelled by air defenses.
“The Azerbaijani passenger plane, which arrived on schedule, made repeated attempts to land at the airport in Grozny,” the statement said. The capital of Russia’s Chechen Republic, as well as other cities in the region, “were being attacked by Ukrainian combat drones at the time, and Russian air defences were repelling those attacks.”