1)Azerbaijani Crash: Putin apologizes for ‘tragic incident’ but stops short of saying Azerbaijani plane was shot down

Courtesy Barrie360 and The Associated Press

By Canadian Press, December 28, 2024

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday apologized to his Azerbaijani counterpart for what he called a “tragic incident” following the crash of an Azerbaijani airliner in Kazakhstan that killed 38 people, but stopped short of acknowledging that Moscow was responsible.

Putin’s apology came as allegations mounted that the plane had been shot down by Russian air defences attempting to deflect a Ukrainian drone strike near Grozny, the regional capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya.

An official Kremlin statement issued Saturday said that air defence systems were firing near Grozny airport as the airliner “repeatedly” attempted to land there on Wednesday. It did not explicitly say one of these hit the plane.

The statement said Putin apologized to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev “for the fact that the tragic incident occurred in Russian airspace.”

The readout said Russia has launched a criminal probe into the incident, and Azerbaijani state prosecutors have arrived in Grozny to participate. The Kremlin also said that “relevant services” from Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are jointly investigating the crash site near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan.

The plane was flying from Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, to Grozny when it turned toward Kazakhstan, hundreds of kilometres (miles) across the Caspian Sea from its intended destination, and crashed while making an attempt to land. There were 29 survivors.

According to a readout of the call provided by Aliyev’s press office, the Azerbaijani president told Putin that the plane was subject to “external physical and technical interference,” although he also stopped short of blaming Russian air defences.

Aliyev noted that the plane had multiple holes in its fuselage and that the occupants had sustained injuries “due to foreign particles penetrating the cabin mid-flight.”

He said that a team of international experts had begun probing the incident at Azerbaijan’s initiative, but provided no details. Earlier this week, the Azerbaijani Prosecutor General’s office confirmed that investigators from Azerbaijan are working in Grozny.

On Friday, a U.S. official and an Azerbaijani minister made separate statements blaming the crash on an external weapon, echoing those made by aviation experts who blamed the crash on Russian air defence systems responding to a Ukrainian attack.

Passengers and crew who survived the crash told Azerbaijani media that they heard loud noises on the aircraft as it was circling over Grozny.

Dmitry Yadrov, head of Russia’s civil aviation authority Rosaviatsia, said Friday that as the plane was preparing to land in Grozny in deep fog, Ukrainian drones were targeting the city, prompting authorities to close the area to air traffic.

Yadrov said that after the captain made two unsuccessful attempts to land, he was offered other airports but decided to fly to Aktau.

Earlier in the week, Rosaviatsia had cited unspecified early evidence as showing that a bird strike led to an emergency on board.

In the days following the crash, Azerbaijan Airlines blamed “physical and technical interference” and announced the suspension of flights to several Russian airports. It didn’t say where the interference came from or provide any further details.

If proven that the plane crashed after being hit by Russian fire, it would be the second deadly civil aviation accident linked to fighting in Ukraine. Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was downed with a Russian surface-to-air missile, killing all 298 people aboard, as it flew over the area in eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed separatists in 2014.

Russia has denied responsibility, but a Dutch court in 2022 convicted two Russians and a pro-Russia Ukrainian man for their role in downing the plane with an air defence system brought into Ukraine from a Russian military base.

Following Wednesday’s suspension of flights from Baku to Grozny and nearby Makhachkala, Azerbaijan Airlines announced Friday that it would also halt service to eight more Russian cities.

Several other airlines have made similar announcements since the crash. Kazakhstan’s Qazaq Air on Friday said it would stop flying from Astana to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains for a month.

Turkmenistan Airlines, the Central Asian country’s flagship carrier, on Saturday halted flights to Moscow for at least a month, citing safety concerns. Earlier this week, Israel’s El Al carrier suspended service from Tel Aviv to the Russian capital, citing “developments in Russia’s airspace.”

2) Chinese-Russian air co-operation has Norad’s ‘full attention’

Courtesy Barrie360.com and  Canadian Press

By Kyle Duggan, Dec. 28, 2024

The head of the North American Aerospace Defence Command says Chinese and Russian air co-operation in the Arctic has Norad’s “full attention.”

Those two countries for the first time staged a joint patrol in the Arctic near the coast of Alaska last July.

U.S. Gen. Gregory Guillot told The Canadian Press in a year-end interview that it potentially takes decades for two nations’ militaries to reach “full integration” at a level like the U.S. and Canada.

“We see it right now as co-ordinated, meaning that they can safely operate in the same area (but) not near the level of integration that the Canadian Forces and the U.S. Forces have,” he said. “As they continue to operate up there more, it certainly has our attention and it’s something we watched very closely.”

Norad’s strategic competitors — Russia, China, North Korea and Iran — have had an “unprecedented level of transactional coordination back and forth between them really for the first time,” he noted. 

Canada has been on the outs politically over the past year with U.S. officials for falling behind its NATO pledge on defence spending. While that’s a conflict that will only ratchet up in 2025 as Donald Trump assumes the presidency, Guillot said this incident highlighted the deep ties between the two militaries.

“2024 has been an outstanding year for Canada to U.S. military-to-military relationships,” he said, pointing to how CF-18s and the U.S.’s F-16s and F-35s co-ordinated to deal with the July incident.

“The Canadians just happened to be operating out of Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska, and were able to switch to the Norad role and respond with us. That you can only do if you have years and years of fully integrated training.”

He said there was a slight uptick this past year in Russian activity alone, with one notable incident in late September when Russian bombers were spotted off Alaska, though not into American or Canadian sovereign airspace.

When an F-16 fighter moved to intercept one of the bombers, it manoeuvred too close to the U.S. aircraft.

“One of the fighters acted in a very unsafe and unprofessional manner, which to me was surprising because that is not what you would expect from a professional air force,” he said.

But he said despite that, the challenge Norad faces with Russia is that the country is increasingly able to threaten America from further and further away, which has Norad focused on building out its ability to detect threats.

Gen. Guillot, who hails from Arizona and assumed his role at the top of Norad this year, said the two nations need to beef up their Arctic presence through more exercising and campaigning.

That’s because forces that rotate into the cold north need to become accustomed to the challenging and frigid conditions for times of crisis.

Weeks ago, he travelled to Cold Lake, Alta. — which he joked “lives up to its name” — where he flew in a CF-18, an RCAF aircraft being modernized as a bridge for Canada to transition to the F-35.

But he still hasn’t been to the high north, and is arranging a trip to Inuvik, N.W.T., likely in February, to better familiarize himself with the operations there. 

His arctic trips have consisted of the Alaska-side so far, where he’s been surprised by the harsh conditions. The vast space there makes up more than half of Norad’s area of responsibility, and the large distance between bases makes it a “challenging environment” for aircrew responding to Russian aircraft.

He said the U.S. and Canadian Forces are eyeing spending more time operating at the far extremes of the Arctic come 2025.

He also noted that the U.S. is hosting Canadian pilots who will eventually fly the F-35s at Eielson Air Force Base outside of Fairbanks, Alaska for training. The plan is to show them that “operating and maintaining a fifth-gen fighter, especially in the Arctic region, is very different from a fourth-gen fighter that we have with the F-15s and F-16s and Canadians have with F-18s,” he said.

“We’re already starting that now to help speed up the transition.”