Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Kudos to the pilots. Allegedly russian ground directed the plane over the caspian sea, where if it had crashed there would have been no immediate evidence of the AA.
Yes, they have been denied emergency landing in every Russian airport.
The reason why it has been shot is likely that when it was about to land in Grozny, there was an attack by Ukrainian drones (not on the civilian airport itself, AFAIK, and Ukrainians probably had no idea what if anything was flying there). Since the previous drone attack on Grozny, which infuriated Russians and Chechens beyond description, they installed a number of air-defense systems, and they were running them in the "shoot everything in sight" mode once they learned about the new attack. Of course, they neglected to warn the civilian dispatchers in advance, because nobody bothered to think about it, so when the plane has been about to land, there was a kind of "oh shit!" moment, and they denied landing to it at the last moment, but it was too late, the plane already have been hit. Since it was an anti-drone missile, it did not destroy the plane, so if they shot the system down and allowed it to land right there it likely would have survived. But they did not, since nobody ordered that. And then they switched into the common Russian coverup mode, in which dropping the plane into the sea and claiming it probably hit some birds or Ukrainian drone destroyed it would be the best solution. Unfortunately, the pilots managed to land it - so there's an proof it has been hit by a Russian missile.
I wonder what Azerbaijanis are going to do about it? Are they going to just say "shit happens" and let it go, or there would be some consequences to their relations with Russia?
Could go either way; it would be an incredible own-goal by Russia to have pushed away Armenia and then also push away Azerbaijan. I could see Russia making at least a token effort to smooth things over instead of doubling down on denial.
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