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The Russian president is said to have blamed the crash of an Azerbaijani plane on December 25 on Ukrainian birds or a drone. Azerbaijan claims Russian air defense is to blame.
By Anton Troianovski
Reporting from Baku, Azerbaijan
It is a tense verbal exchange between two authoritarian leaders accustomed to getting what they want.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was offering explanations for the Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash that had killed 38 people days earlier. Perhaps it was a flock of birds, Mr. Putin said, or an exploding gas canister. Maybe a Ukrainian drone.
But Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev did not, according to two other people familiar with the phone call last December. A few hours after the crash it became clear that the plane had been shot down through Russian air defenses, giving the impression that it was a fatal mistake. It left shrapnel lodged in a passenger’s leg and pierced the fuselage.
On Dec. 29, Mr. Aliyev went public with his anger without mentioning the Russian president by name. “Attempts to deny obvious facts,” he said, “are both nonsensical and absurd.”
The other people who described the phone call insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic communications. The Kremlin did not respond to a request for comment.
The furor over the plane crash – and Aliyev’s willingness to challenge Putin in public – revealed a notable rift between two post-Soviet leaders who had become close during more than two decades in power. Putin attempted to recruit Aliyev in an obvious attempt to conceal the cause of the accident; Aliyev, emboldened by Russia’s weakened influence in countries it once dominated, insisted that Russia publicly acknowledge its guilt.
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