Israel’s flagship carrier El Al said Thursday that it was suspending all of its flights from Tel Aviv to Moscow for the coming week, as Azeri officials said a passenger jet that crashed in Kazakhstan Wednesday had been downed by Russian air defenses.
The Kan public broadcaster said the decision also stemmed from Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian airports. Earlier on Wednesday, the Russian defense ministry had reported the downing of 59 Ukrainian drones over several regions, it said.
Citing “developments in Russia’s airspace,” El Al said it would assess over the next week whether to resume the route and would soon update passengers on developments.
The airline, which flies the route five times a week, is one of the last Western airlines to fly to Moscow following sanctions over Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, Israel is home to about 1.3 million Russian speakers — about 13 percent of the general population — many of whom are Russian citizens and have family in Russia.
Azerbaijan Airlines flight J2-8243 came down near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, killing 38 of some 70 people on board.
The Embraer passenger jet had flown hundreds of miles off its scheduled route from Azerbaijan’s Baku to Grozny, in Russia’s southern Chechnya region, when it crashed on the opposite shore of the Caspian Sea.
Videos of the crash site posted on social media and verified by Reuters showed what appeared to be shrapnel damage to the wreckage of the tail section of the plane.
The plane had diverted from an area of Russia in which Moscow has used air defense systems against Ukrainian drone strikes in recent months.
Aviation security firm Osprey Flight Solutions said in an alert to airlines on Wednesday that footage of the wreckage and the circumstances around the airspace in southwest Russia indicated the possibility that the airliner was hit by some form of anti-aircraft fire.
Russia’s civil aviation authority, Rosaviatsia, said that preliminary information indicated that the pilots diverted to Aktau after a bird strike led to an emergency on board.
However, Reuters on Thursday cited four sources in Azerbaijan with knowledge of the investigation as saying the plane was shot down by Russia’s air defenses.
One of the Azerbaijani sources said preliminary results showed the plane was struck by a Russian Pantsir-S air defense system, and its communications were paralyzed by electronic warfare systems on the approach into Grozny.
“No one claims that it was done on purpose. However, taking into account the established facts, Baku expects the Russian side to confess to the shooting down of the Azerbaijani aircraft,” the source said.
Moscow pushed back as experts claimed that evidence pointed to the plane having been hit by air defenses.
“It would be wrong to make any hypotheses before the investigation’s conclusions,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.