December 28, 2024 - The South Caucasus News - SouthCaucasusNews.com

Ukraine and Russia exchanged accusations of drone attacks as Russia’s full-scale invasion grinds on toward its fourth year and suspicions swirl that a deadly plane crash in Kazakhstan was caused by a Russian air-defense missile.

The Russian military said it fended off what it said were Ukrainian drone attacks on several border regions, and the Ukrainian military said it neutralized 15 Russian drones that targeted the Mykolayiv region in the south.

Russian air defenses destroyed 56 drones overnight, the Defense Ministry said on December 28. It said 28 drones were shot down in the Rostov region, 17 in the Voronezh region, and 11 in the Belgorod region, where local officials reportedly said two residents of a village were injured by shrapnel from a blast. The Russian claims could not be independently verified.

Meanwhile, a Russian occupation official said on Telegram that four people were wounded in what he said was a Ukrainian drone attack that hit a car in the Russian-held city of Nova Kakhovka in Ukraine’s Kherson region early in the morning.

In Mykolayiv, the Ukrainian-held capital of a region adjacent to Kherson, a Russian drone attack early on December 28 caused fires on the roof of a five-story residential building and on the grounds of a commercial enterprise, regional Governor Vitaliy Kim said on Telegram.

The Ukrainian Air Force said it had shot down 15 Russian drones overnight, all of them in the Mykolayiv region, and that one drone launched by Russia was a decoy. Kim and the air force said nobody was hurt.

Russia and Ukraine have used drones regularly since Russia launched the full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022.

There are mounting suspicions that the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet earlier this week near Aqtau, Kazakhstan, that killed 29 of the 67 people aboard was caused by Russian air-defense systems on alert for Ukrainian drone attacks on the Chechnya region, where the jet was due to land in Grozny before it was diverted across the Caspian Sea.

Azerbaijani lawmaker Hikmat Babaoghlu told RFE/RL on December 27 that there is a “very strong” possibility that the plane was damaged by a Russian air-defense missile. He said that the “observations and conclusions drawn so far support the idea that the plane being shot down is the closest to the truth.”

On the same day, White House spokesman John Kirby said U.S. experts “have seen some early indications that would certainly point to the possibility that this jet was brought down by Russian air-defense systems.”

Evidence includes footage from inside the plane before the crash, images of the hole-pocked tail section after the crash, a survivor’s comments, and accounts indicating there was a suspected drone attack around the time the plane apparently tried to land in Grozny.

Reuters quoted an Azerbaijani source familiar with the investigation as saying results indicated the plane was hit by a Pantsir-S air-defense system, a self-propelled antiaircraft gun and missile system designed by Russia.

The crash has disrupted air traffic in the Caucasus and beyond. An Azerbaijan Airlines flight bound for the Russian spa town of Mineranlye Vody, not far from Grozny, took off from Baku on December 27 but then abruptly headed back after receiving a flight information notice that Russian airspace it was due to fly through was closed. Azerbaijan Airlines later said it is suspending flights to several Russian cities, including Mineralnye Vody, Sochi, Volgograd, Ufa, Samara, Grozny, and Makhachkala.

On December 28, Russia’s aviation authority, Rosaviatsia, said that restrictions were briefly placed on the operation of the airport in the Tatarstan regional capital, Kazan, to ensure flight safety, and media reports said that all departures and arrivals had been suspended.

Flights heading to Kazan from the Siberian cities of Tomsk, Surgut, and Kemerovo were redirected to an airfield in Nizhnekamsk, Russian state news agency TASS reported, citing the airport’s press service.

No specific reason was given for the measures, which Rosavaitsia said had been lifted a few hours later. Russia has closed airports at times due to alleged drone attacks.

Also on December 28, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed it had thwarted a plot to kill a high-level Russian military officer and an unnamed Russian “war blogger” who writes about the invasion.

The FSB, whose claim could not be independently verified, said it had arrested a Russian man it said was acting under instructions from Ukrainian military intelligence. It said it had found a cache outside Moscow with an improvised explosive device camouflaged as a stereo speaker.

There was no immediate comment from Ukraine on the FSB claim, which came less than two weeks after the general who headed Russia’s Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Forces (RKhBZ) was killed, along with an assistant, by a bomb concealed in a scooter. A source at Ukraine’s SBU security service told RFE/RL that the blast that killed Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov and his assistant was the result of a special operation by the Ukrainian agency.

With reporting by RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service and Tatar-Bashkir Service

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