The crash site of an Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane near Aktau, Kazakhstan, 25 December 2024. Photo: EPA-EFE/AZAMAT SARSENBAYEV
A leaked note allegedly written by a Russian military captain, in which he takes responsibility for transmitting the final order to shoot down a passenger jet that crashed in Kazakhstan last December, has been made public after Minval, an Azerbaijani media outlet, published the letter on Tuesday.
On 25 December, Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243, carrying 67 people on board, was on a scheduled flight from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, to Grozny in the North Caucasus when a Russian surface-to-air missile reportedly struck it. It was denied permission to land in Russia and diverted to Kazakhstan, where the flight later crashed, killing 38 people on board, including both pilots and a flight attendant.
In the note, which Minval obtained from an anonymous source, Russian captain Dmitry Paladichuk states that on the morning of 25 December, he spotted a “potential target” that was difficult to discern due to “very thick fog” amid a Ukrainian drone attack on Grozny. He says he alerted his superior officers and transmitted the object’s coordinates and speed, before receiving the command to destroy the target. He says he then ordered an operator to fire two air defence missiles, shrapnel from the second of which reportedly struck the aircraft.
According to The Insider, a Russian investigative outlet that obtained a recording of a telephone conversation in which Paladichuk appears to confirm writing an explanatory note, the letter is most likely genuine.
In the recording, Paladichuk asserts that he wrote the note to an “army commander” after “shooting at the plane” because “they demanded it” and confirms distinctive features of his handwriting.
The Insider also states that Paladichuk’s voice in the recording matches audio evidence originally published alongside the letter by Minval, which further supports the authenticity of the document.
On 28 December, three days after the crash, Vladimir Putin apologised for what he called a “tragic incident” after an aircraft experienced “external interference” over Russian airspace. However, he did not confirm that the flight had been shot down or admit responsibility. One day later, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev accused Russia of accidentally shooting down Flight 823 and demanded a full admission of guilt.
In February, a preliminary Azerbaijani investigation found that “foreign metal objects” had damaged the plane before it crashed. According to a senior Azerbaijani government official cited in reporting by Reuters, the “object” in question referred to a Russian air defence missile.
The publishing of Paladichuk’s letter comes amid a rapid deterioration in Russian-Azerbaijani relations following the deaths of two Azerbaijani citizens during a police raid in the Russian Urals city of Yekaterinburg on Saturday under unclear circumstances.
Since then, law enforcement authorities in Azerbaijan and Russia have engaged in tit-for-tat arrests in a series of high-profile raids.
On Monday, police in Baku raided the offices of Sputnik Azerbaijan, a Kremlin-backed news agency, detaining seven employees on suspicion of fraud, illegal entrepreneurship, and the laundering of criminal assets. The following day, Azerbaijani security forces announced the detention of eight individuals described as members of a “criminal group,” suspected of involvement in cybercrime and drug trafficking, who later appeared in court with multiple bruises.
In Russia, Azerbaijani entrepreneur and eminent diaspora leader Yusif Khalilov was arrested by FSB agents at his home in Voronezh, in the west of the country, following a raid on a local market he owns on Tuesday. During the operation, Russian security services reportedly detained more than 300 people for alleged violations of migration regulations.