Euronews reports citing a source in the Azerbaijani government that the damaged plane of the Baku-Grozny flight was not allowed to land at Russian airports.

A Russian surface-to-air missile caused the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane in Aktau on December 25, the media reports citing a source in the Azerbaijani government.

The airliner was on a flight from Baku to Grozny. According to the media interlocutor, “the missile was fired at the moment of drone activity in the sky above the capital of Chechnya, its fragments exploded next to the aircraft, damaging its plating and affecting passengers and crew members”.

According to a source in the Azerbaijani Cabinet of Ministers, the pilots requested an emergency landing, but were not allowed to land at any of the Russian airports, sending them across the Caspian Sea in the direction of Aktau. At the same time, the source specified that the plane's GPS navigation systems were jammed on this section of the route.