An Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet flying over the Caspian Sea crash-landed at an airport in Kazakhstan on Christmas Day 2025, killing 38 of the 67 people on board.
The plane was far off its planned flight path from Baku in Azerbeijan to Grozny in Chehnya (see map here). The airline said the plane diverted because of fog in Grozny, but Reuters said “the crash came after Ukrainian drone strikes this month hit the Chechnya region” (see story here).
News reports say the pilots reported a “bird strike” (see, e.g., BBC News report here), and that’s what it may have felt like to them, but video and photos of the wreckage show the tail section of the plane is peppered with shrapnel (watch video below). Now the question is, who shot it down, and why?
So who cooked up the “bird strike” story? Russia’s civil aviation authority, Huffington Post says (in story here). The next question is, why would Russia put out a cover story, and a clumsy one at that? Hmm.