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Russian anti-aircraft fire may have caused a plane crash in Kazakhstan on Christmas Day, according to defense experts and regional officials.

An Azerbaijan Airlines flight was flying from Azerbaijan’s capital Baku to Grozny in Chechnya, southern Russia, when it veered off course and crashed in Kazakhstan, killing 38 people. 29 passengers survived.

Most of those on the plane, an Embraer 190, were citizens of Azerbaijan. There were also 16 Russians on board and several citizens of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

In preliminary official reports on Wednesday, Russia said heavy fog forced the plane to divert from a planned landing in Grozny and attempt to land in Kazakhstan, where it crashed after hitting a crowd. of birds.

On the same day, the president of Azerbaijan said that he was told that the plane was diverted due to bad weather conditions.

But experts and officials in the region and in Ukraine have disputed that, citing evidence that Russian air defenses were operating in Grozny at the time in response to a drone strike in Ukraine. They also cited pictures of what appeared to be shrapnel damage to the interior and tail of the wrecked plane.

Andriy Kovalenko, an official of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, posted on Telegram: “Russia was supposed to close the airspace of Grozny, but it didn’t do it . . . The plane was damaged by the Russians and sent to Kazakhstan, instead of making an emergency landing in Grozny and saving people’s lives.”

Senior Ukrainian officials confirmed to the Financial Times that Kyiv believes the plane may have been hit by Russian air defense systems.

Osprey, an aviation security agency, said: “The follow-on video of the crash and the circumstances surrounding the airspace security environment in southwestern Russia indicate the possibility that the plane was hit by some type of anti-aircraft fire.”

A senior official in the Caucasus region said evidence points to the plane being damaged by air defenses in the Grozny area.

“If (the Russian authorities) are going to (use) jamming systems and anti-aircraft systems, they should close (the airspace),” the official told the FT. “The worst explanation (for why they didn’t do it) is incompetence.”

Cartography by Steven Bernard