The shooting down of an Azerbaijani civilian plane by Russia, and the reaction of Russian officials to that, created a very big frustration and disappointment in Azerbaijan, said the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev in an interview to Saudi Arabia’s Al Arabiya TV channel, APA reports.
"First, this shooting shouldn't have happened in the first place, because when there are drone attacks on Russian airports, they announce a special regime. They call it "carpet" in Russian (“kover”), and all the planes get a signal that there is a drone attack, and they turn back. Two weeks before this crash, the same happened with our plane, which was flying to the same Russian city, and it got the signal, so it turned back. This time they did not give this signal. They gave the signal after the plane was already shot down. They did it in order just to mislead those who would investigate. They shot it twice. O nly the professionalism and courage of the pilots made it possible for the plane to land, and fortunately it landed in Kazakhstan, not in Russia. It landed in Kazakhstan, and there was a crash. Some people survived, and we have those who gave evidence. We have two people who were in the plane who were injured by the shrapnel, which penetrated the fuselage. We have the remains of the plane, and immediately I sent the team. It's not far away. It's only a 40-minute flight. Immediately, our team was there on site, and they filmed everything, so you can find it on the Internet. All the fuselage was full of holes from shrapnel. It was damaged by a Russian air defense system. So shooting down the plane should not have happened in the first place, but it was a tragic mistake," - President Ilham Aliyev noted.
