When Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized to his Azerbaijani counterpart over the crash of a passenger jet that was damaged in the sky above Chechnya, it was an extremely rare if not unprecedented occurrence in his 25 years in power.
What we see is recognition of the incident without admission of guilt, which seems to have left Baku and its allies dissatisfied,” Baunov wrote.
Declining Regional Clout He also said Azerbaijan had “categorically” rejected Russia’s proposal that the Moscow-based Interstate Aviation Committee investigate the crash.
“The reason is clear: because it is no secret that this organization consists mostly of Russian officials and is headed by Russian citizens.
Russia’s neighbors are not enthusiastic about the war, but it has handed some of them levers over Moscow.
In his 25 years in power, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s apology to his Azerbaijani counterpart for the damage to a passenger jet that crashed in the sky above Chechnya was a very uncommon, if not unprecedented, event.
Additionally, it was not complete: in a readout of a phone conversation with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on December 28, three days after the Embraer-190 crashed in Kazakhstan, across the Caspian Sea from Chechnya, killing 38 of the 67 people on board, the Kremlin said that Putin apologized for “the fact that the tragic incident occurred in Russian airspace.”.
Putin refused to acknowledge Russia’s involvement in the crash and refrained from acknowledging what several pieces of evidence indicate: that the catastrophe may have been caused by a Russian missile fired during what Moscow claimed was a Ukrainian drone attack on Grozny.
The limited nature of the rare apology suggests that the Kremlin is trying to avoid seriously harming ties with Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and other nations in the region while simultaneously denying that Russia was at fault.
In a thread on X, formerly Twitter, Alexander Baunov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, wrote, “On the one hand, this is perhaps the first time Putin has apologized to a foreign state for Russia’s actions in real time, not for some historical guilt of previous authorities — a watershed moment in Russian foreign policy.”.
However, the wording steers clear of a direct admission of fault. Baunov wrote, “What we see is acknowledgment of the incident without admission of guilt, which seems to have left Baku and its allies unhappy.”. The absence of accountability in the Kremlin’s statement is still a point of contention for Azerbaijan. “”.
Aliyev’s public remarks were scathing, regardless of what he and Putin discussed behind closed doors. In a December 29 interview, he claimed that the plane’s tail section had been badly damaged “by fire from the ground,” charged that Russia was attempting to “cover up” the incident, and advocated for an earlier apology. He didn’t bring up the discussion with Putin.
According to Aliyev, the versions reported by Russian officials and media that attributed the crash to a bird strike or the explosion of a gas canister on board were “both stupid and dishonest.”. In an attempt to conceal evidence of an external explosion, he hinted that Russian authorities might have diverted the damaged jet to Aqtau, Kazakhstan, with the intention that it would crash into the Caspian.
Regional Claout is declining.
He added that Russia had suggested that the crash be looked into by the Moscow-based Interstate Aviation Committee, but Azerbaijan had “categorically” rejected the idea. Since it is well known that this organization is led by Russian citizens and is primarily composed of Russian officials, the explanation is straightforward. Here, the elements of objectivity could not be completely guaranteed. “.”.
The back and forth appears to highlight Russia’s waning regional influence, from Putin’s only partial and tardy apology to the tone and substance of Aliyev’s comments.
Russia’s “near abroad” refers to the nations that were formerly a part of or occupied by the United States. S. . S. R. Ruth Deyermond, senior lecturer in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, wrote in an end-of-year thread on the social media platform Bluesky that “things are not looking good” for Moscow in the area that Russia has considered its area of interest since 1992.
Deyermond wrote, “A reprimand from the president of Azerbaijan would be terrible enough on its own, but the tragedy has also brought the embarrassing cause of the incident—Russia having to defend itself from Ukrainian drones over Chechnya—to the attention of the world.”.
One of the things that has damaged Moscow’s influence in the South Caucasus and Central Asia is Putin’s emphasis on the war against Ukraine and his attempt to impose his will on the nation through military means. Despite their distaste for the war, Russia has given some of its neighbors leverage over Moscow.
