"We can clearly say today that the plane was shot down by Russia," President Ilham Aliyev said in a televised statement

The crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane due to Russian air defense systems demonstrates that Russia's war against Ukraine is increasingly affecting innocent people, according to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Twitter (X).

The crash of an Azerbaijani airliner in Kazakhstan has killed 38 of 67 people on board. Azerbaijan Airlines’ Embraer 190 was en route from Azerbaijani capital Baku to the Russian city of Grozny in the North Caucasus on Wednesday when it was diverted for reasons that aren’t fully clear yet.