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MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin told Azerbaijan’s leader that two Russian missiles had detonated beside an Azerbaijan Airlines plane last year after Ukrainian drones entered Russian air space, in an incident that led to the deaths of 38 people.
In what was the Kremlin leader’s most candid admission to date that Moscow was to blame for the deadly incident, he offered his apologies again to President Ilham Aliyev and promised compensation to those affected.
Flight J2-8243, en route from Baku to the Chechen capital Grozny, crash-landed on December 25 near Aktau in Kazakhstan after diverting from southern Russia, where Ukrainian drones were reported to be attacking several targets. At least 38 people were killed.
Video footage on Thursday showed Putin and Aliyev shaking hands and smiling before a bilateral meeting in Tajikistan at which Putin spoke about the plane crash.
Putin last year issued a rare public apology to Aliyev for what the Kremlin called a “tragic incident” over Russia in which the plane crashed after Russian air defenses were deployed against Ukrainian drones.
On Thursday, he went further.
“Of course, everything that is required in such tragic cases will be done by the Russian side on compensation and a legal assessment of all official things will be given,” Putin told Aliyev.
“It is our duty, I repeat once again... to give an objective assessment of everything that happened and to identify the true causes.”

DEBRIS FROM MISSILES
Putin told Aliyev that two Russian air defense missiles had detonated several meters away from the plane after Ukrainian drones entered Russian airspace.
“The two missiles that were launched did not hit the plane directly; if that had happened, it would have crashed on the spot, but they exploded, perhaps as a self-destruction measure, a few meters away, about 10 meters,” Putin said.
“And so the damage was caused, mainly not by the warheads, but most likely by the debris from the missiles themselves. That is why the pilot perceived it as a collision with a flock of birds, which he reported to Russian air traffic controllers, and all this is recorded in the so-called ‘black boxes.’“
The Embraer jet had flown from Azerbaijan’s capital Baku to Grozny, in Russia’s southern republic of Chechnya, where the incident occurred, and had then traveled, badly damaged, another 280 miles (450 km) across the Caspian Sea. Putin cautioned on Thursday that it would “probably take some more time” to fully investigate the crash’s causes.
A preliminary report published on a Kazakh government website in February found that the plane suffered external damage and was riddled with holes in its fuselage.
Aliyev was angry about the crash and has publicly criticized the initial reactions from Moscow which he said sought to cover up the cause of the incident.
On Thursday, he thanked Putin for personally monitoring the progress of the investigation into the deadly incident.
“I would like to express my gratitude once again for the fact that you deemed it necessary to highlight this issue at our meeting,” Aliyev told Putin.

NEW DELHI: UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer met his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, in Mumbai on Thursday, as he brought the largest-ever British business delegation to expand ties under a recently signed free trade agreement.

Starmer arrived in India’s financial capital on Wednesday. It is his first visit since taking office, and he is accompanied by Business and Trade Secretary Peter Kyle, Scotland Secretary Douglas Alexander, Investment Minister Jason Stockwood, and 125 CEOs, entrepreneurs, university vice chancellors and cultural leaders.

The trip follows the signing of the multibillion-dollar UK-India Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement during Modi’s visit to London two months ago.

“India and the UK are natural partners,” the Indian PM said in a joint press briefing at the Raj Bhavan in Mumbai, the official residence of the governor of the state of Maharashtra, where he received Starmer.

“There are immense possibilities in the technology partnership between India and the UK. We are working to connect the UK’s industrial expertise and R&D with India’s talent and scale.”

In a joint statement, India and the UK announced a dozen of tech, innovation, education and trade initiatives and planned investments, including the establishment of an India-UK connectivity and innovation center and a joint center for AI, and a critical minerals guild to strengthen supply chains.

Lancaster University is set to open its campus in Bengaluru, and the University of Surrey in Gujarat’s GIFT City.

“The UK and India stand side by side as global leaders in tech and innovation. And so we’ve also taken the opportunity to deepen our cooperation through our Technology Security initiative with new commitments on AI, advanced communication, defense technologies, and much, much more,” Starmer said.

“More British universities will be setting up campuses right here in India, making Britain, India’s leading international provider of higher education.”

While the UK-India free trade deal is expected to take effect next year, as it is yet to be ratified by both governments in a process that usually takes about 12 months, the British prime minister sought to build on its potential with the Mumbai visit.

“When we leave India later on tonight, I expect that we will have secured major new investments, creating thousands of high-skilled jobs in the sectors of the future for both of our nations,” he said.

Under the new pact, about 99 percent of Indian goods will get duty-free access to the UK market.

It will also halve import duties on UK-produced whiskey and gin from 150 percent, followed by a further decrease to 40 percent in a decade. Tariffs on automobiles will be reduced from 100 percent to 10 percent.

The FTA has been widely estimated to increase bilateral trade by 60 percent. Currently, it stands at about $54 billion, according to UK Department for Business and Trade data, with UK exports to India estimated at $21.7 billion and imports at $32.4 billion.