It was a tense conversation between two authoritarian leaders who are used to getting their own way.
Russian President Vladimir V. Putin explained about the accident of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane 38 days ago. Maybe it was a flock of birds, Mr. Putin said, or a burst gas cylinder. Maybe a Ukrainian drone.
According to two people familiar with the telephone conversation in late December, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev was not receiving it. Hours after the crash, it was revealed that the plane had been shot down by Russian air defense forces in what appeared to be a fatal mistake. It left a shrapnel lodged in the leg of a passenger and tore holes in the fuselage.
On December 29, Mr. Aliyev went public with his anger without mentioning the name of the Russian president. “Attempts to deny the obvious facts,” he said, “are both nonsense and absurd.”
The people describing the phone call insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic ties. The Kremlin did not respond to a request for comment.
The furore over the plane crash – and Mr Aliyev’s willingness to publicly challenge Mr Putin – has revealed a marked contrast between the two post-Soviet rulers who have grown closer in more than two decades in power. Mr. Putin tried to involve Mr. Aliyev to cover up the cause of the accident; Mr. Aliyev, emboldened by Russia’s weakening influence in the lands he once dominated, insisted that Russia publicly acknowledge its guilt.
Interviews with Azerbaijani officials and people close to the government last week showed how the December 25 crash of an Embraer 190 with 67 people on board became a geopolitical event for the former Soviet Union. Rather than allow Mr. Putin to dictate his response to the tragedy, Mr. Aliyev has repeatedly criticized Russia for not taking responsibility.
Rasim Musabekov, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Azerbaijan Milli Majlis, assessed Russia’s reaction to the accident as an “absurd attitude”.
“Azerbaijan will not accept such a chauvinist attitude,” he added.
Behind the scenes, interviews showed that the tension flared directly between Mr. Aliyev and Mr. Putin, although the two autocrats often found themselves on speaking terms. On Dec. 28 and the next day, people familiar with the calls said Mr. Putin urged Mr. Aliyev to agree to a Moscow-based aviation agency investigating the crash. Mr. Aliyev has adamantly denied that the plane’s black boxes were deciphered in Brazil, where the jet is manufactured, in a glaring display of distrust of the Russian leader.
Officials in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku arranged interviews with The New York Times with three survivors, who said it was clear to some passengers that they were under attack after at least two mid-air explosions.
After the second explosion, a girl started screaming. When 28-year-old Leyla Omarova looked to the other side from her window seat, she saw that the girl’s seats were covered in blood.
71-year-old Nurullah Sirajov, standing three rows behind them, was trying to console his wife. He told her that the first impact was the landing gear. They have never flown before.
Then came the second blast, blowing wind from the back of the plane and shouting from other passengers: “We’ve been hit,” he said.
As the plane swung about 100 feet into the Caspian Sea, Mr. Siracov thought that at least his and his wife’s dispute over who would die first would finally be resolved: They would die together. But after the front part of the plane was torn apart by the impact, the tail part broke off, flipped over and slid hundreds of meters through the sandy soil.
“Is anyone alive?” Mr. Siracov remembers screaming into the sudden silence as he dangled upside down from his seat belt.
As Europe closed its airspace to Russia after Mr. Putin’s attack on Ukraine, many Russians flying west now connect in Azerbaijan, an oil- and gas-rich former Soviet republic of 10 million people sandwiched between Russia and Iran. Russia also sees Azerbaijan as the main link of the union expanded the southern trade route Iran, India and the Persian Gulf.
Its role as a transit point for sanctions-hit Russia is just one way Azerbaijan’s leverage against its larger northern neighbor has risen. Mr. Aliyev also took advantage of the distraction of the Russian military in Ukraine to withdraw Russian peacekeeping troops from the Armenian-controlled Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, which Azerbaijan took back in 2023.
Mr. Aliyev strengthened his country’s alliance with Turkey and armed Azerbaijan with high-tech weapons bought from Israel. He, a violent repression against activists and independent journalistshowever, it has maintained its relations with Europe, which sees Azerbaijan as the main alternative to Russian oil and gas.
Farhad Mammadov, a political scientist from Baku, said that Russia’s political and economic “leverages of pressure” on Azerbaijan have dropped to the level of “practically non-existent”. Aykhan Hajizadeh, the head of the press service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan, said frankly: “They don’t want to lose Azerbaijan either.”
The noise related to the plane crash was a test. A high-ranking American diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly, assessed the results of the accident as “proof of concept” of Azerbaijan’s ability to sustain itself. Other post-Soviet countries, such as Kazakhstan, which are trying to build closer relations with Russia, are watching this closely.
“If you behave like this with Azerbaijan in this case, what will the Uzbeks, Kazakhs and the rest of Russia’s partners think about you?” asked Mr. Musabeyov, a member of the Milli Majlis. “Russia as a state is a very, very toxic partner, and you should minimize relations with it.”
Mr. Aliyev, who was educated in Moscow and succeeded his father as the ruler of Azerbaijan in 2003, learned about the accident while on his way to a summit of post-Soviet leaders in St. Petersburg. He called Mr. Putin from the plane and said that he would not come.
A few hours later, Azerbaijani officials landed at Kazakhstan’s Aktau airport, where the Embraer 190 plane attempted to make an emergency landing. At the nearby crash site, officials immediately realized that the theories they had heard from Russia about a bird strike or an oxygen cylinder exploding were wrong.
Rinat Huseynov, security director of “Azerbaijan Airlines” CJSC, said in an interview: “When I saw the plane, there were holes on it. “We never imagined this was possible.”
Mr. Aliyev and Mr. Putin spoke twice again a few days after the accident. Mr Putin apologized for the “tragic incident” in Russian airspace, but did not admit Russia had shot down the plane. The day after the apology, on December 29, Mr. Aliyev went public to accuse Russia of a cover-up.
“Unfortunately, in the first three days, we heard nothing from Russia except some absurd theories,” said Mr. Aliyev. he said.
The officials said that they expect preliminary results from the investigation by the end of January. Mr. Aliyev reiterated last week that Russia should take responsibility and pay compensation, while the Kremlin said it was cooperating with the investigation.
Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry S. Peskov, told reporters last week: “We are interested in conducting a completely objective and impartial investigation.”
The working theory of the Azerbaijanis is that shrapnel from the exploding missiles of the Russian “Pantsir” air defense system damaged the plane. Metal pieces four inches long were found at the crash site.
Flight data and cockpit voice recorders may help explain why the pilots chose to cross the Caspian Sea to land in Kazakhstan rather than a closer Russian airport, officials said; The airline’s security director, Mr. Huseynov, said that the decision seemed logical given the cloudy weather conditions in southern Russia at the time.
In the cabin, flight attendants tried to calm the panic. Mrs. Omarova, who went to Russia to meet her family, said that she lost consciousness. Mr. Siracov, who was collecting New Year’s gifts for his grandchildren in Grozny, said that all he was thinking about was comforting his wife.
Flight information shows that after crossing the Caspian Sea, more than an hour after the pilots reported the bird strike, the plane crashed during its second landing attempt at Aktau airport. All the survivors were seated in about the rear third of the plane, according to a person close to the investigation.
After the tail stopped, Mr. Siracov tried to unbuckle his seat belt in the dark, unable to tell his wife what had happened. Only later did he learn that she too had survived.
Finally, Mr. Siracov unbuckled his belt and fell to the ceiling of the cabin. “Go that way, go that way,” he remembers hearing someone push him toward the light strip.
