The crash of the Azerbaijani Airlines Flight 8243 on December 25, which took 38 lives from the 67 people onboard has not only shaken the international community and become one of the most widely discussed news at the end of the year. The initial reports and then the proof on the external interference left no room about the fault of the Russian side: the mid-flight damage came from a Chechnya-based Pantsir-S1 air defense system during the alleged assault of Ukrainian UAVs over the Grozny airspace.

The first reaction regarding the incident came from Azerbaijan`s President Ilham Aliyev, who was on his way to the CIS summit in Saint Petersburg. His U-turn mid-flight and return to Baku enables us to speculate that he might have been informed about the Russian involvement from the beginning and given the Kremlin some time for face-saving through formal acknowledgement. As it did not come out as the time went, the Azerbaijani side first leaked the available information on the external interference to international media and then started publicly blaming the Russian side.

Over the time, the position of the Baku-based government became even tougher: it rejected the offer of compensation by Chechnya`s leader Ramzan Kadyrov by pointing out to the Kremlin as an equal interlocutor and turned down the Russian proposal on the investigation at the level of CIS International Aviation Committee. As Azerbaijan called on Russia to recognize the attack and issue an official apology, President Vladimir Putin finally broke his silence on December 28. In a phone call with Aliyev, Putin expressed condolences and apologized… for the "tragic incident in Russian airspace" (sic) but stopped short of taking responsibility.

Such a Schrödingerian apology apparently did not satisfy the President of Azerbaijan, who went public the next day and used even a tougher language against Russia, by openly accusing the latter of shooting down the Azerbaijani plane and attempting to cover up the incident. The harshest sentence he used in native Azerbaijani “Unfortunately, for the first three days we heard nothing but nonsense from Russia” was translated by the official presidential webpage into Russian also in a harsher manner: not as “из России” which could be interpreted as “from anyone in Russia” but as “от России” – “from Russia.”

Aliyev also outlined his demands from Moscow: an official apology, an admission of guilt, and accountability for those responsible. He also called for compensation to the Azerbaijani state, the passengers, and the crew.

The airliner crash has long received a geopolitical dimension. Not only did it make Russian airspace unsafe for many commercial planes (as some companies have suspended their Russia-bound flights) but can further shape the Azerbaijani-Russian relations. While officials and experts interviewed for this article insisted that the incident would not deteriorate the bilateral relations between the countries, things may be more complicated. 

President Aliyev himself who has recently been known for his tough language against regional, big and even super powers, such as France, Iran and the United States, utilizes quite bellicose rhetoric this time against Russia, particularly after the telephone conversation with Putin by embarrassing the latter even further. This rhetoric was picked by the Azerbaijani media, including the government`s mouthpieces, which toned up their verbal attack on Russia: Caliber.az, usually known for its insights and exclusive information, shared details about the deployment of the Pantsir-S1 air defense system, which was allegedly brought back from Syria before it hit the Flight 8243 and announced it had acquired the names of all the people involved. In the same statement – by the way in the Russian language – the media outlet denounced the behavior of the Kremlin as “dishonest, petty and downright shameful,” and by referring to the informed sources, notified the Baku would go to international legal bodies and Azerbaijani-Russian relations would be harmed if the latter continue to cover up the story and refuse to admit the responsibility. Another scandalous reportage referred to the Russian House, a decades-old cultural center in Baku, as “the house of Russian intelligence” and “the nest of Russians spies.” In the meantime, Aliyev himself, publicly met with Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in Davos, perhaps in what could also be interpreted as an anti-Russian démarche.

Perhaps such rhetoric and actions should not come as a surprise if we analyze the actions of Baku in the past few years, who has been repeatedly humiliating the Russians in the post-Soviet space, by beating a Russia ally, Armenia, and Russian weapons during the Second Karabakh War in 2020; paralyzing the post-war-deployed Russian contingent in Karabakh during the Lachin standoff; sidelining them during the September 2023 operation, which fully restored Azerbaijan`s sovereignty over the afore-mentioned region, and finally kicking them out in 2024, a year before their mandate was to expire and breaking the “Russians never leave” myth. Add to these actions Baku`s consistent aid, including free gasoline, to Ukraine since the Russian invasion.

Unfortunately, the Azerbaijani Airlines Flight 8243 became included in the infamous list of civilian aircraft shot down by the Russians: other most notable incidents happened with the Korean airliners in 1983 and Malaysian Airlines MH17 flight in 2014, which was followed by no admission of guilt whatsoever. The Russians could not fully continue this pattern as Putin – who never apologized for the Kursk submarine disaster – still made some sort of apology, the first in the Russian history, which still could not satisfy the Azerbaijani party.

Currently, the Azerbaijani-Russian relations, including trade and transport communication, are still underway: the same Azerbaijani Airlines still fly to different destinations within Russia, also to serve the big Azerbaijani diaspora, over 3 million people. At the same time, Azerbaijan has not developed economic dependence – like the neighboring Armenia for instance – from Russia, which also provides Baku with a lot of political independence and bigger room for maneuver. In fact, as many experts believe in Baku, Russia currently needs Azerbaijan more than the latter needs the former: isolated and in need of communications, the Russians are in need of reaching Iran and Turkey: viable access to both goes via Azerbaijan.  

However, how these relations will further develop will be up to the Russian side: on the one side, it seems uneasy for the Kremlin regime, who is built on the tough image of the siloviki faction, to eat humble pie and accept an own blunder. On the other side, the post-2022 Russia does not have a luxury of affording more hostile countries, such as Azerbaijan in the close neighborhood. It is pretty possible that the authorities in Moscow may concede to Azerbaijan by punishing some officials – either true perpetrators or simply scapegoats – for the sake of rapprochement. 

In this context, it may not matter too much whether the Russian side assumes the responsibility, makes an official and unambiguous apology, and agrees to pay compensation for the plane crash as Azerbaijan has already won this standoff against a big and, softly speaking, not-so-polite neighbor by making a lot of noise, not pulling back, and standing its ground.

Original and Russian version published here.