Moscow’s Misdirection on Azeri Plane Crash

The pattern is old and dates back to the days of party dictatorship before it was replaced by personal dictatorship. Someone takes a wrong call somewhere or makes a deliberate ‘mistake’. The action itself is always deliberate since it’s preceded by a decision. When the stuff hits the ceiling, there is denial, followed by obfuscation and protests, then threats, then the story is changed, available or captured evidence is hidden, and then there’s more denial. When independent or international investigations establish the facts to the extent possible, but well enough to point the finger in the right direction, there is grudging acknowledgement that stops short of apology and acceptance of blame.

NOW…

Vladimir Putin has changed the pattern somewhat by offering an early apology to Azerbaijan but stopped well short of accepting blame for the fate of the Embracer 190 aircraft operated by Azerbaijan Airlines that was forced to divert from a landing approach to Grozny in Chechnya and crashed on the shore of the Caspian Sea in Aktau in Kazakhstan last week. Of the 67 people on board, 38 died. Azerbaijan—keen not to disrupt improved relations with Russia and growing trade and which had quickly apologised to Moscow and accepted responsibility for the erroneous targeting and downing of a Russian military helicopter in 2020—is understandably not happy.

Moscow first asked everybody not to speculate till the investigation was over even as Russian state media went to town with the bird-hit theory—before it ventured to say a Ukrainian drone had hit the plane. As experts and defence establishments in the US and Europe, Azeri authorities, Ukrainians operating drones near Grozny, the media, et al analysed the images and data from flight tracking service Flightradar24, it emerged that the plane had been subjected to GPS jamming near Grozny, its erratic speed oscillations over the Caspian were attributed to the flight becoming uncontrollable because of damage to its electrical and hydraulic systems, and most importantly, the holes in its tail and the pattern of damage to the fuselage meant shrapnel damage from an exploding projectile. Late on Sunday, December 29, Azerbaijan officially blamed Russia for causing the crash and asked Moscow to pay compensation for the victims.

A flock of birds couldn’t have done all that. A typical bird hit can lead to engine failure with loss of power but the plane can still be controlled and landed safely as had happened over the Hudson on January 15, 2009 when Flight 1549 was hit by a flock of birds during take-off from LaGuardia but the experienced pilot had saved everybody on board by landing the plane on the river.

The Kremlin narrative about birds and bad weather couldn’t be sustained beyond 48 hours as Azeri investigators came to believe a Russian Pantsir-S1 air defence system had damaged the plane. Thus, Putin took the call to cut the diplomatic fallout by apologising, admitting that Russian air defence systems were in operation around Grozny at the time of the incident. Survivor testimonies also mentioned an explosion. Putin apologised but did not take responsibility. While it’s true that all facts are far from being established and the Russian, Kazakh and Azeri authorities are conducting a tripartite investigation, this wouldn’t be the first time Moscow’s hand has been seen behind the downing of a civilian airliner.

…AND THEN

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was hit by a Russian surface-to-air (STA) missile on July 17, 2014. It crashed in eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board. Although the plane was flying over the conflict zone at 33,000 feet because of a minimum-altitude restriction put in place by the Ukrainian government and there were other civilian aircraft in the same radar sector, it was not safe from radar-guided missiles fired from a Buk (SA-11) STA. One such missile fired by separatists—or Russian soldiers and/or agents in false colours—detonated its warhead close to the cockpit, with shrapnel flying into the fuselage. Despite denials from Russia, intercepted radio transmissions of separatists talking about shooting down a plane, and then video evidence of them checking out the wreckage, gave the game away. Moreover, the system that fired the missile and the key personnel involved were quickly moved across the border to Russia.

In 2019, the Dutch brought charges against four individuals. One of them, Igor Girkin aka Igor Strelkov, was a former colonel with the FSB. He was running the separatists in eastern Ukraine but was back in Russia soon after the crash. In 2022, the Dutch courts pronounced Girkin and others guilty of murder, also drawing the conclusion that the missile was Russian and fired by Russian-led separatists in territory controlled by Russia.

But the most infamous case of military downing of a civilian aircraft, one which laid to changes in international law, is that of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 which was shot down by Soviet air-to-air (ATA) missiles off Sakhalin Island on September 1, 1983. Korea has just suffered what is probably its deadliest air crash in history with a Jeju Air plane crashing earlier today with 181 people on board (and 177 confirmed dead at the time of writing), but Flight 007 still looms over civil aviation as an extension of the Cold War’s penumbra.

Flying from a stopover in Anchorage in Alaska to Seoul, the plane had inexplicably deviated—it still hasn’t been explained why—from its path, crossing over Soviet airspace twice. Moscow claimed it was a spy plane on a reconnaissance mission for the Americans but there has never been any evidence to support that claim. Yet, what the Soviets did to Flight 007 is beyond doubt. Soviet jets had been scrambled the first time the aircraft crossed into Soviet airspace but it had quickly flown out over international waters. When it re-entered Soviet airspace near Sakhalin, the jets tailed it and, in fact, reported that its strobe lights were flashing and its navigation beacons were on. A spy plane wouldn’t do that, of course. They reportedly fired warning shots which were ignored or missed by the pilots of Flight 007. As the plane was about to climb higher and cross into international airspace, two ATAs were fired by a Soviet fighter, at least one of which hit the civilian plane. After staying airborne for a few minutes, it crashed into the Sea of Japan, killing on 269 people on board.

Ronald Reagan called the Soviet action an act of barbarism. The Soviets denied everything—till intercepted radio communications nailed their lie. That’s when they changed the narrative to Flight 007 conducting a spying mission for Washington, going to the extent of claiming that the whole incident was a CIA special operation that had tricked Moscow into downing a civilian plane. The accusations and denials fed the Cold War tension and gave the Kremlin a lot of bad press internationally since this was not the first time the Soviets had targeted a civilian aircraft. In 1978, another Korean Air Lines flight had been attacked but with only two casualties as the pilots made an emergency landing.

Soviet obfuscation didn’t end there. As it happened, they were the ones who found the black box in late 1983. But they did not disclose that discovery. It stayed secret for a decade. It was only after the fall of the Soviet Union that the cockpit voice and flight data recorders landed in the hands of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in 1992. The ICAO offered closest possible technical and human reasons why the flight had deviated from its path but there has been no conclusive answer to that question. What it did establish beyond reasonable doubt is that the flight was not on a recce mission, notwithstanding conspiracy theories that have continued to date and Soviet/Russian insistence. One more thing that the ICAO did was bring changes to the Convention on International Civil Aviation, making it illegal to fire military weapons at civilian aircraft. The amended regulations came into effect in 1998.

BLAME IT ON POLITICAL CULTURE

Totalitarian or strong-man paranoia has contradictory effects. It makes everybody reluctant to act, not wanting to take the blame for things going wrong. Conversely, it makes people edgy, too willing to err on the side of catastrophe. Because they fear the consequences of being charged with treason for not acting more. Or because they come to the conclusion that they have little to lose at that stage. Or because they are ideological fanatics. One or more of these reasons could have explained the near-firing of a nuclear missile by a Soviet submarine at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962—a fact that came to light as recently as the first decade of this century, changing earlier notions of how close the world had come to nuclear war during the Cold War.

Totalitarian states and dictatorships naturally have little or no respect for international law and humanitarian safeguards. That’s a no-brainer for they wouldn’t be what they are otherwise. The Soviet Union and the KGB, through the Cold War, had far less regard for international law and global well-being (read survival) than their adversaries. That’s documented history verifiable (and quantifiable) by evidence. Russia inherited that political culture and everything points to the likelihood of its having got worse since. There is lack of accountability within and without, a callousness with violence (and weapons) of all kinds, and it permeates everything in politics, warfare, society at large. If Russia downed the Azerbaijan Airlines plane, it wouldn’t be its first. Unfortunately, it is unlikely to be its last either.

Azerbaijan AirlinesdeathsEmbracer 190GroznyRussiaVladimir PutinWeb Exclusive