According to the Russian presidential website, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Azerbaijani President Aliyev met in the capital of Tajikistan, Dushanbe, on 9 local time.

During the meeting, Putin for the first time mentioned the crash of Azerbaijan Airlines flight J28243 on December 25, 2024, and for the first time admitted that the crash was caused by a faulty accident and injury to Azerbaijani passenger aircraft caused by the Russian landing system deployed in Grodno.

According to President Putin, the flight J28243 was accidentally hit by Russian air defense systems when it flew from Baku to the Chechen capital Grozny and approached the Grozny airport.

At that time, the Russian army discovered three Ukraine drones flying across the border towards Grozny, and the air defense system was organizing interception. At the same time, the air defense system itself also suffered a technical failure, mistaking the E190 regional passenger plane of Flight J28243 for a Ukraine drone.

At the time, the Russian ground guided commander launched two ground guided interceptors, the missile exploded 10 meters away from the passenger plane, causing the passenger plane to lose control.

After the incident, the Azerbaijan pilot told Russia that "the plane may have been hit by a bird." Russian air traffic controllers initially suggested that Flight J28243 fly to Makhachkala Airport in the Republic of Dagestan for alternate landing, but the Azerbaijan pilot said he could return to Baku.

But after half the flight, it was decided to fly back to Kazakhstan.Maybe the aircraft's control system did not listen to the call, and eventually the aircraft crashed in Akkuta, west of Kazakhstan.

The crash killed more than half of the people on board the plane. Putin told Aliyev that the Russian side apologized for the missile attack on the Azerbaijani passenger plane and expressed sincere condolences to the families of the victims. As the investigation approached the end, the truth has been revealed and the Russian side is willing to compensate for the related losses.

How to view Putin's statement

Our first reaction was to the J28243 flight crash on December 25, 2024, which eventually stumbled out. And the truth is almost entirely consistent with the speculation we wrote the following day after the crash, ¡°Russian missile shot down a passenger plane? Azerbaijan Airlines J28243 crashed, there was a broken bullet hole on the plane?¡±

The weather was too bad and did not meet the conditions for blind landing, Azerbaijan Airlines' J28243 flight appeared to be a Russian pilot, whether the back landing or return flight would make the flight missing, so it was all around near the Grozny airport, trying to find a chance to land.

The Ukrainian drone is currently defending towards Grodno, the Russian geo-guided system is tightly organizing the interception, the Azerbaijani airline's E190 aircraft has been circling near the Grodno airport, may be mistakenly judged by the Russian military camp commander as a missing, re-calibrating Ukrainian drone GPS.

The Russian military's ground-guided IFF staff pressed the IFF button to perform IFF. However, since the E190 aircraft could not be equipped with an IFF transponder, there was no response on the IFF channel. Obviously, Ukraine drones responded the same way. The commander of the Russian army's ground guide asked his superiors, but it may be that the communication was disturbed by the weather and the Russian army's ground guide had no backup means of communication, and the superior command post did not respond, or he asked the commander of the ground guide to make his own determination to fire.

So under the circumstances of coincidence and combination of so many factors, the Russian ground guidance battalion commander decided to fight it down first, regardless of the matter. According to the standard engagement procedure, two ground guides hit one target. The missile hit immediately and killed the Azerbaijani passenger plane. This is how an air crash tragedy was staged.

Of course, the so-called President Putin's original words,"It was not a missile that shot down the passenger plane, but a fragment of the missile that exploded in proximity", which is more or less a bit of avoiding the important point and covering up the fault, which can be called Slavic black humor. Obviously, the missiles fired were either the Armor-S1 57E1 missile or the "Beech" 9M317 missile. Neither of these things was direct kinetic energy to kill the warhead. They both relied on the ground or bomb guidance to guide the missile to a place close to the target and then detonated the warhead to kill the target.

According to Putin, saying that the missile exploded ten meters away from the passenger plane just shows that the Russian ground guide's marksmanship is accurate, and the final miss range is only 10 meters. For a missile warhead weighing more than ten kilograms or even tens of kilograms, is there any difference between a 10-meter-away detonation and a 1-meter-away detonation? It can only confirm the fact that flight J28243 was accidentally hit by a Russian missile.

Picture of J28243 when it crashed

However, in fact, whether it was during the Cold War or after the Cold War, the USSR and other countries had a large number of cases of land-led or fighter aircraft that shot down civil aircraft.

For example, in the late Cold War, two famous Soviet air defense air force Su-15 interceptors successively shot down Korean Air passenger aircraft, even Soviet pilots saw contact with the civil aircraft, even saw the windshield lights on the civil aircraft, or ordered by the ground command to shoot down the aircraft.

The same is the case with the American Navy Vansons cruiser that shot down Iran's Airbus A300 passenger aircraft, the US military believes that the A300 passenger aircraft's route and radar signal characteristics are similar to the Iranian Air Force's F-14A type fighter, asking in case of no response, no matter what, first hit down and then say.

For example, Iran¡¯s retaliatory action against the U.S. military base in the Middle East after the assassination of General Soleimani in 2021, resulting in the deployment of the Tor-M1 system near the airport in Tehran to shoot down one of the Boeing 737-800s of Ukrainian Airlines. That¡¯s purely because the Revolutionary Guard and the Iranian Air Force, the Army¡¯s air defense system is not common, the air situation perception is not interoperable, and all are the tragedies caused by each other.

Overall, in the end, air defense operations, as an extremely complex form of combat so far, proved its complexity and difficulty in this incident.

Why did Russia "surrender"?

But in the final analysis, compared with last year's time when the accident of Azerbaijan Airlines flight J28243 first came out, Russia was self-conscious and said it wanted to investigate. Why did the investigation go on for a year, and now I suddenly told Aliyev that I expressed my condolences to the families of the victims and expressed my willingness to pay compensation? What's going on? In the final analysis, Russia is now a bit "soft" to Azerbaijan:

On the one hand, Azerbaijan¡¯s attitude toward Russia suddenly turned to a very tough one during the previous period. The relationship between the two sides, in fact, from the beginning of this year had a slightly decreasing momentum, but stillined a clear appearance of hospitality. Until the end of June of this year, the Russian Federation law enforcement agencies in Yekaterinburg undertook a ¡°black wash¡± operation, arrested six Azerbaijani ¡°fruit traders¡±.

Everyone knows that the Russian police were black-handed. As a result, two Azerbaijan people and two brothers died in the police station for some unknown reason. The Azerbaijan ambassador rushed to the scene to visit and found that both men were covered with bruises from being beaten. After being sent back to Baku, an unprecedented anti-Russian storm was triggered.

Azerbaijan has closed the ¡°Russian House of Culture¡±, even arrested satellite news agency reporters in Baku on charges of espionage and illegal operations, and also exposed the J28243 flight incident again. It is obvious that it is a bit uncomfortable, and it is just about to end with Russia. Russia facing Azerbaijan¡¯s tough attitude, although it has also been counter-repressed, but the relationship between the two sides is so stiff and there is no way.

Therefore, Russia is now loosening its mouth and apologizing to Azerbaijan, which is also a step down first. President Aliyev is a very flexible person. Seeing that Russia had given him a way out, he naturally slipped down. He immediately expressed his position and wished the Russian people all the best and hoped that the relations between Russia and Azerbaijan would gradually develop for the better.

On the other hand, it is clear that Aliyev is tough on Russia for no reason. After all, with Aliyev's savvy level, how could he be tough or soft on Russia for no reason? The biggest problem, as we have mentioned before, is the Zangzur Corridor issue.

This means that Azerbaijan appears to have been out of Russia¡¯s sphere of influence and transferred to the United States, and at least the U.S. share in the southern Caucasus mountains is growing rapidly, which will have a significant negative impact on geosecurity in southern Russia.

The first is to crack down on Azerbaijan's exports of Caspian oil and gas resources to Europe through the Zangezur Corridor and then through Ukraine, blocking Azerbaijan's wishful thinking to replace Russia in oil and gas exports. During this period, Russia has been bombing a number of natural gas transfer stations in Ukraine, which is actually this intention.

The second is to pull the countries around the Caspian Sea to collectively put pressure on Azerbaijan, forcing everyone to sign an agreement that does not allow any external military forces to enter the areas around the Caspian Sea. Behind this, strategic pressure may be exerted on Azerbaijan on the division of Caspian Sea resources. At present, Azerbaijan has agreed to sign this agreement, and Russia is trying to block the momentum of the United States and Turkey penetrating into Central Asia.

The third is to further strengthen cooperation with the CSTO, increase troops at the Gyumri military base in Armenia, and form a hedge against the forces of the United States and Turkey entering the south of the Caucasus Mountains. To be honest, this is still somewhat useful. Pasini Armenia still has some concerns about this agreement signed by Nyan, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs can see the problem without even issuing a diplomatic communique.

The fourth is that after all the above mattresses have been completed, Russia has turned back and apologized to Azerbaijan for the passenger aircraft being moderately shot down, trying to repair relations with Azerbaijan.

So, how do you describe this thing in a word, the gold cup of you drink, and the white blade does not forgive each other.