A person claiming to be a Russian officer said he had received an order to open fire at an aerial target last December that turned out to be an Azerbaijani airliner, Azerbaijani news outlet Minval reported on July 1, citing audio and a written statement it had received.

An Embraer 190AR plane operated by Azarbaijan Airlines crashed in Kazakhstan on Dec. 25, 2024, after coming under fire over Grozny, Chechnya. Thirty-eight people were killed.

Azerbaijani authorities laid blame on Russia, with an investigation pointing to a Russian Pantsir-S1 air defense system mistakenly targeting the plane amid a reported Ukrainian drone attack.

Minval wrote it had received three audio recordings, an anonymous letter, and an explanatory note by a man signed as Captain Dmitry Paladichuk, a Russian air defense crew captain who claims to have relayed the order to shoot down the plane.

In the purported explanatory note, Paladichuk said he had no reliable means of communication with the Russian military command other than a cell connection. A radar detected a target at 8:11 a.m. local time, after which Paladichuk was reportedly ordered to destroy the aircraft — which was not visible due to thick fog — over the phone.

The captain claimed that after the first projectile missed the target, he had given the order to fire again. Paladichuk did not explicitly name the Azerbaijani flight in his explanatory letter.

Minval wrote that it could not confirm the authenticity of the written statement but could do so for the three leaked voice messages, which also confirmed the command to shoot down the plane and the subsequent damage.

Russian independent news outlets Agentstvo and the Insider confirmed Paladichuk's identity as an air defense officer who served in various units, including the 14th Army of the Air Force and Air Defense in Novosibirsk.

The Insider also wrote that the note appears to be authentic, and pointed out that the speed of the plane, revealed in the leaked materials, shows that the Russian command must have known the target was not a drone.

The incident led to a public clash between Azerbaijan and Russia, otherwise close political and economic partners. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev accused Moscow of suppressing evidence and criticized his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, for not openly admitting guilt.

Putin offered condolences for the incident taking place in the Russian airspace, but stopped short of admitting Russian responsibility.

New details of the case emerge just as Russian-Azerbaijani relations sour yet again. Over 50 Azerbaijanis were detained as part of a murder investigation in Yekaterinburg on June 27, two of whom died in custody.

Baku called their deaths "ethnically motivated" and "unlawful" killings. A few days later, Azerbaijani authorities raided an office of the Russian propaganda outlet Sputnik in Baku, detaining who they say are Russian spies.

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Editor's note: The story was updated after the Sputnik news agency disclosed the names of those detained in Baku.

Azerbaijani police detained two alleged agents of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) on June 30 following searches at the Baku office of the Russian state-controlled news agency Sputnik, the Azerbaijani news outlet Apa.az reported.

Sputnik later elaborated that Igor Kartavykh, chief editor of Sputnik Azerbaijan, and Yevgeniy Belousov, managing editor, had been detained in Baku. The agency called the allegations that the detainees were FSB agents "absurd."

The move comes amid a major deterioration in Russian-Azerbaijani relations that followed the detention of over 50 Azerbaijanis as part of a murder investigation in Yekaterinburg on June 27. Two people died during the detentions, and three others were seriously injured.

The searches in the office of the Russian propaganda media outlet, which operates as a local branch of Russian state news agency Russia Today (RT), began on June 30.

The Russian propagandist Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of Russia Today, said that representatives of the Russian embassy in Baku were on their way to Sputnik's office. Sputnik employees were offline and probably did not have access to phones, she added.

According to Simonyan, some of Sputnik's employees were Russian citizens.

The Azerbaijani government ordered in February that the activities of Sputnik's Azerbaijani office be suspended.

The authorities said that the move was intended to ensure parity in the activities of Azerbaijan's state media abroad and foreign journalists in the country. This meant that the number of Sputnik Azerbaijan journalists working in Baku was to be equal to the number of journalists of the Azerbaijani news agency Azertadzh in Russia.

As a result, Sputnik Azerbaijan had to reduce its staff from 40 people to one but refused to do so and continued to operate despite the Azerbaijani government's decision, according to Apa.az.

As the Russian-Azerbaijani relations deteriorate, Azerbaijan has cancelled all planned cultural events hosted alongside Russian state and private organizations, the country's Culture Ministry announced on June 29.

The announcement followed the deaths of two Azerbaijani citizens during police raids in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg.

Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry said on June 28 that Ziyaddin and Huseyn Safarov had died during a raid carried out by Russian authorities. Azerbaijan called the killings "ethnically motivated" and "unlawful" actions.

Baku called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice and said it expected Moscow to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the incident.

In the meantime, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that the detentions were carried out as part of an investigation into serious crimes. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova claimed that these were cases related to murders committed in 2001, 2010, and 2011.

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Azerbaijan has cancelled all planned cultural events hosted alongside Russian state and private organizations, the country's Culture Ministry announced on June 29, over the deaths of two Azerbaijani citizens during police raids in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg.

Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry said on June 28 that Ziyaddin and Huseyn Safarov died during a raid carried out by Russian authorities. Azerbaijan called the killings "ethnically motivated public and deliberate unlawful actions" and said that Russia's action have "recently taken on a systematic nature."

The raid was reportedly conducted amid an investigation into an unsolved 2001 murder. Several other people were injured in the raid and a total of nine individuals were detained.

In a comment to Azerbaijani public broadcaster ITV, Sayfaddin Huseynli, the brother of the deceased, claimed that the two men were tortured to death "without any trial or investigation, despite their innocence."

The official cause of death was not immediately known.

As a result of the incident, Azerbaijani state media also reported that the government had cancelled a planned visit by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexey Overchuk, stating that the country "does not consider it appropriate under the current circumstances for Overchuk or any other official representative of Russia to visit."

Tensions between Baku and Moscow have continued to sour in recent months since Russia's downing of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane that killed 67 passengers. Since then, Azerbaijani lawmaker have blamed Russia for February cyberattack, and the country's President Ilham Aliyev skipped out on attending Russia’s Victory Day parade in Moscow in May.

As relations dwindle, Ukraine has sought to build relations with Baku. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha also visited Azerbaijan in May.

In February, Aliyev's office announced it was delivering $1 million in humanitarian aid to Ukraine in the form of electrical equipment to support the country's energy grid amid Russian attacks.

Azerbaijan's primary regional foe, Armenia, also a historic ally of Moscow, has also effectively severed relations with the Kremlin.

Earlier this year, Yerevan formally signed a law to begin Armenia's accession process to the European Union. The decision comes growing rift with Russia accelerated after the Kremlin failed to prevent Azerbaijan's September 2023 offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, leading to the mass exodus of the region's Armenian population.

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