Russia shoots down passenger plane over Grozny

BBC finally catching up with what most of the internet had worked out by lunchtime yesterday (and, crucially, Russia is in the early stages of issuing denials, which pretty much clinches it).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgp3qx0q7wo

The Russian government has cautioned against promoting "hypotheses" about the cause of the crash of a Russia-bound passenger plane that killed 38 people in Kazakhstan on Wednesday.

For those who have had more interesting things to do over the past 24 hours, there are clear signs of a near-miss by an air defence missile on the surviving tail section of the aircraft after its crash-landing in Aktau, Khazakstan. Unlike MH117 which was intercepted near enough on the nose and disintegrated mid-air (so the shrapnel impacts could only clearly be seen when the wreckage was reassembled), this appears to have been an ‘almost’ hit, with the shrapnel going through the rear part of the fuselage and tail, causing a significant loss of flight control.

Tellingly, Russian authorities refused permission for an emergency landing at any of the 3 airports near Grozny, forcing it to fly over the Caspian Sea towards Khazakstan. A cynic might think they were hoping it would crash into the sea where its wreckage might never be found.

[Pierre]

Truly heartbreaking, from the footage I’ve seen the pilots did a valient job and very nearly got it back down again, but the damage appeared to be to the rear elevators which would make controlling the pitch of the plane very difficult.

At least some made it out.

Some pundits yesterday were saying the climbing and falling seen on the video is characteristic of pilots attempting to control pitch by increasing/decreasing speed. It’s a miracle they even reached Aktau; some sources are claiming the Russians jammed GPS across the entire Caspian Sea. They really, really didn’t want it to land where anyone could examine it.

Putin apologises for plane crash, without saying Russia at fault

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqx8l1533j5o

Russia's President Vladimir Putin has apologised to the president of neighbouring Azerbaijan for the downing of a commercial airliner in Russian airspace, in which 38 people were killed - but stopped short of saying Russia was responsible.

In his first comments on the Christmas day crash, Putin said the "tragic incident" had occurred when Russian air defence systems were actively repelling Ukrainian drones.

It had been reported the plane came under fire from Russian air defence systems as it tried to land in Chechnya - forcing it to divert across the Caspian Sea.

It crash-landed in Kazakhstan, killing 38 of the 67 on board.