President of Russia: The cause of the AZAL airplane disaster is linked to several circumstances

Russian President Vladimir Putin, during a meeting with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev, named a number of circumstances that led to the crash of the AZAL aircraft.

As reported by BAKU.WS, the head of state said: "The first is that there was specifically a Ukrainian drone in the sky. We were tracking three drones at once that crossed the border of the Russian Federation at night on the day of the tragedy. The second reason lies in technical failures of Russia's air defense system itself."

According to him, the two missiles that were fired did not directly hit the aircraft - if that had happened, the plane would have crashed on the spot.

He emphasized that the damage was caused not by combat strike elements, but most likely by fragments of the missiles themselves.