Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev accused Russia on Sunday of firing at an Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet before it crashed and of initially trying to cover up the cause of the fatal disaster, demanding that Moscow admit guilt.

Russians who reviewed the transcript of the crew's conversations from the Baku-Grozny flight themselves admit that the air crash was caused by their air defense systems (ADS), according to Andriy Kovalenko,

The coordinator for Strategic Communications of the US administration, John Kirby, said that the Azerbaijan Airlines plane flying from Baku to Grozny could have been shot down by the Russian air defense.