It was a tense conversation between two authoritarian leaders accustomed to getting their way.
Russian President Vladimir V. Putin was briefing on the Azerbaijani plane crash that killed 38 people a few days ago. Perhaps it was a flock of birds or an exploding gas can, Putin said. Probably a Ukrainian drone.
But Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev did not agree to this, according to two people familiar with the phone call in late December. Within hours of the crash, it was revealed that the plane had been shot down by Russian air defenses in what appeared to be a fatal mistake. Fragments from the explosion stuck one passenger in the leg, and the plane was riddled with holes.
On December 29, Aliyev made his anger public without mentioning the Russian president by name. “Any attempt to deny the obvious facts is nonsense and absurd,” he said.
The people briefed on the call requested anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic communications. The Kremlin did not respond to requests for comment.
The uproar over the plane crash and Mr. Aliyev’s willingness to publicly challenge Mr. Putin are the latest in a notable rift between the two former Soviet rulers, who have grown close over more than two decades in power. revealed. Mr. Putin apparently sought Mr. Aliyev’s cooperation in an attempt to silence the cause of the crash. Mr. Aliyev, emboldened by Russia’s weakening influence in the regions it once controlled, insisted that Russia publicly admit its crimes.
Interviews last week with Azerbaijani officials and people close to the government revealed how the Dec. 25 crash of an Embraer 190 plane with 67 people on board marked a geopolitical milestone for the former Soviet Union. Mr. Aliyev has repeatedly criticized Russia for not accepting responsibility, rather than letting Mr. Putin decide its response to the tragedy.
Rasim Musabekov, head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Azerbaijan’s parliament, called Russia’s response to the crash a “ridiculous attitude.”
“Azerbaijan will not tolerate such xenophobic attitudes,” he added.
The interviews revealed that behind the scenes, these tensions directly flared between Mr. Aliyev and Mr. Putin, even though the two dictators have often found common ground. In phone conversations on Dec. 28 and the next day, Putin urged Aliyev to agree to let the Moscow-based aviation agency investigate the crash, the people said. Mr. Aliyev refused, insisting that the plane’s black boxes be decrypted in Brazil, where it was manufactured, a clear sign of his distrust of the Russian leader.
Officials in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, arranged interviews with three survivors and told The New York Times that some passengers had not heard of the attacks shortly after at least two explosions rocked the plane in the air. It has become clear that there is.
After the second explosion, the girl started screaming. Leila Omarova, 28, looked across the aisle from her window seat and saw the girl’s tights stained with blood.
Three rows behind them, 71-year-old Nurula Silayov tried to console his wife. He told her that the first impact must have been the landing gear. They had never flown before.
A second explosion then sent a gust of wind from the back of the plane, prompting screams from other passengers: “They hit us.”
As the jet bobbed and came within 100 feet of the Caspian Sea, Mr. Silayov thought at least the couple’s dispute over who would die first would finally be resolved. They will die together. But after the front of the plane disintegrated on impact, the tail section broke off and it flipped over, sending it sliding hundreds of yards into the sand.
“Is anyone alive?” Shirajov remembers shouting, hanging upside down from his seatbelt in the sudden silence.
With Europe closing its airspace to Russia after President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, many Russians heading west are now heading to Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic of 10 million people sandwiched between Russia and Iran that is rich in oil and gas. I’m transiting. Russia also views Azerbaijan as an important transit point in expanding trade routes south to Iran, India and the Persian Gulf.
Its role as a transit point for sanctions-stricken Russia is just one example of Azerbaijan’s growing influence over its much larger northern neighbor. Aliyev also used the Russian military’s distraction in Ukraine to drive Russian peacekeepers out of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-controlled enclave that Azerbaijan recaptured in 2023.
Aliyev strengthened his alliance with Türkiye and armed Azerbaijan with high-tech weapons purchased from Israel. Although he has waged a fierce crackdown on activists and independent journalists, he has maintained ties with Europe, which sees Azerbaijan as an important alternative to Russian oil and gas.
Baku-based political analyst Farhad Mammadov said Russia’s political and economic “instruments of pressure” against Azerbaijan had been reduced to “virtually zero.” Ayhan Hajizada, a spokesman for Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry, bluntly asserted that the country has influence over Russia, saying: “They also don’t want to lose Azerbaijan.”
The uproar surrounding a plane crash has emerged as a test case. A senior American diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly, said the aftermath of the crash was a “proof of concept” of Azerbaijan’s ability to fend for itself. Other former Soviet states, such as Kazakhstan, which are seeking more arms-length relations with Russia, are also watching closely.
“What will Uzbeks, Kazakhs and the rest of Russia’s partners think of you if you behave like that in this incident with Azerbaijan?” asked Member of Parliament Musabekov. “Russia, as a nation, is a very toxic partner and we need to minimize our relationship.”
Aliyev, who studied in Moscow and took over as ruler of Azerbaijan from his father in 2003, learned of the accident on his way to a post-Soviet summit in St. Petersburg. He called Mr. Putin from the plane and told him he would not be coming.
Hours later, Azerbaijani authorities landed at Kazakhstan’s Aktau airport, where the Embraer 190 plane attempted an emergency landing. Officials at the nearby crash site quickly realized that the theories they had heard from Russia, including a bird strike and an oxygen tank exploding, were false.
“When we saw the plane, it was full of holes,” Rinat Huseynov, head of safety for Azerbaijan Airlines, said in an interview. “We never imagined something like this would be possible.”
Mr. Aliyev and Mr. Putin met again twice in the days following the accident. President Putin apologized for the “tragic incident” that occurred in Russian airspace, but did not admit that Russia shot down the plane. On December 29, the day after his apology, Aliyev publicly accused Russia of a cover-up.
“Unfortunately, for the first three days, we did not hear anything from Russia, except for absurd theories,” Aliyev said.
Officials said they expected preliminary results from the investigation to be available by the end of January. Aliyev reiterated last week that Russia must admit responsibility and pay reparations, but said the Kremlin was cooperating with the investigation.
“We are interested in an absolutely objective and impartial investigation,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov told reporters last week.
The leading Azerbaijani theory is that debris from an exploding missile of Russia’s Pantsir air defense system damaged the aircraft. A piece of metal about 4 inches long was found at the crash site.
Officials said flight data and cockpit voice recorders could help explain why the pilots chose to cross the Caspian Sea and land in Kazakhstan rather than at a nearby Russian airport. Ta. Aviation Safety Director Huseynov said that the decision seemed logical, considering that the weather in southern Russia at that time was cloudy.
Inside the cabin, flight attendants were trying to quell the panic. Omarova reportedly lost consciousness while on her way to visit her family in Russia. Silayov, who was in Grozny preparing New Year’s gifts for his grandchildren, said all he could think about was comforting his wife.
The plane crashed on its second attempt to land at Aktau airport, more than an hour after pilots reported what they believed to be a bird strike after crossing the Caspian Sea, flight data showed. . All survivors were seated in about the back third of the plane, investigators said.
After the tail stopped, Silayov, unsure of what happened to his wife, fumbled in the darkness to open her seatbelt. It was only later that I learned that she too had survived.
Finally, Mr. Shirajov pulled the belt open and tumbled to the ceiling of the cabin. “Go away, go away,” he remembers hearing someone push him toward the light.
