Latest news with #Grozny
The Sun
02-07-2025
- Politics
- The Sun
Chilling audio reveals moment Russians shot down plane on Christmas killing 38… and knew it wasn't a Ukrainian drone
A CHILLING audio clip has emerged revealing the moment Russians shot down a passenger plane on Christmas that left 38 people dead. New evidence suggests the Russians knew the object in the sky they were aiming at was not a Ukrainian drone. 7 7 7 7 Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer E190, carrying 67 passengers from Baku to Grozny in Russia, crashed after crossing the Caspian Sea in Aktau, Kazakhstan. An investigation by the Azerbaijani government found that the plane was hit by a Russian Pantsir-S surface-to-air missile defence system. Russians claimed the city of Grozny was under attack from Ukrainian drones at the time the plane was hit. A chilling voice recording ordering the shooting of the plane was leaked to Azerbaijani media. A person can be heard saying: "Hello! Azimuth 338, range 7,000, altitude 490, speed 118, heading 230." To which a person replies: "Yes, range is now 7. Fire! I said fire!" The first person, understood to be operating the Russian air defence unit, then replies: "Fired!" "Missed… Missed! Again! Fire once more," the other person says "Copy, firing," said the operator before firing the fatal air defence rocket. The voice reporting the coordinates was Captain Dmitry Paladichuk, a Russian air defence officer commanding a missile unit, it has been found. Plane almost tips over as it lands on right-side wheel in rain and heavy wind The devastating exchange was leaked to the Azerbaijan outlet Minval amid deeply strained relations between Moscow and Baku. A leak of handwritten testimony by Captain Paladichuk revealed a gripping account of how he was ordered by an unnamed commander to shoot. In a sworn statement he said: 'I was ordered by phone to destroy the target.' He said: 'At 08:13:30 I ordered the operator to engage. At 08:13:33 the missile cleared the launcher. At 08:13:47 the BM-72V6 [fire] control system reported a miss. "At 08:13:48 I ordered a second engagement…. 'The second missile was launched when the target had the following characteristics: azimuth 311°, distance 8,000 m, altitude 1,300 m, speed 120 m/s.' The plane's speed, around 265 mph, was more than double the speed of most drones. Also, the altitude of the object - between 1,607ft and 4,265ft - indicated it was a plane seeking to land at a nearby airport. 7 7 'This suggests that the military had every indication that the object was a manned aircraft,' said the Insider independent media outlet analysing the leak from media in Azerbaijan. Terrifying footage showed the Embraer aircraft nosediving before smashing into the ground in a fireball. It exploded next to the aircraft, with the shrapnel hitting passengers and cabin crew, the report said. Grozny is the capital of the region of Chechnya, controlled by a close Putin ally and warlord, Ramzan Kadyrov. The use of air defence systems aligned with reports of Ukrainian drone attacks in Chechnya on the morning of Christmas Day. It marked the second time in a decade that Russia has downed a passenger plane after the MH17 crash in Ukraine in 2014. MIRACLE SURVIVORS Dozens of passengers, including children, miraculously survived the horror crash. Around 150 emergency responders rushed to the scene, battling towering flames and thick plumes of black smoke rising ominously into the sky. Meanwhile, an investigative team led by the deputy prosecutor general of Azerbaijan is working at the crash site. They found the black box of the doomed flight which revealed the haunting final words the pilot said just moments before the plane crashed on the ground. Struggling to control the plane, one of the pilots said: "I can't execute, control is lost!" The pilots reportedly tried to take the plane to three different airports but failed to land. But they lost communication with the ground crew before vanishing off the radar for 37 minutes. Footage emerged showing terrified passengers making final video calls and leaving messages as the aircraft began to plunge. Distressed people on board can be seen jumping out of their seats as they try to make sense of the situation. As the oxygen masks dangled in the air, some passengers started to scream in horror, while others called their loved ones and began praying.
Yahoo
01-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
New evidence suggests Russian forces shot down Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243
Russian military forces were involved in the missile strike on Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 which crashed on 25 December 2024, a new audio recording and a letter published by an Azerbaijani news website on Tuesday purport to prove. Azerbaijani news outlet Minval claims it received an 'anonymous letter ... containing testimonies, audio clips, and technical details' pointing to 'technical deficiencies in the communications equipment used at the time. Minval claims the letter includes a written statement 'allegedly signed by Captain Dmitry Sergeyevich Paladichuk, a Russian air defence officer (who) was acting under direct orders from Russia's Ministry of Defence when he authorised the missile strike.' Euronews cannot independently verify the authenticity of the claims in the Azerbaijani news outlet's report. Minval's news report on Tuesday quoted the letter claiming that 'Captain Paladichuk was stationed near Grozny on duty from 24 to 25 December. At 05:40 on the day of the incident, his unit was ordered to enter full combat readiness." "Due to poor mobile reception and a lack of functional wired communication, coordination relied heavily on unstable mobile connections," the letter added. "A potential target was detected at 08:11 and tracked using radar. Two missiles were reportedly fired at the object after Paladichuk was instructed via phone to destroy it — despite heavy fog obscuring optical confirmation.' According to the letter, 'the coordinates, speeds, and directions of the target at the time of both missile launches were provided in detail in the written explanation. The first missile is said to have missed, while the second one allegedly detonated close enough for shrapnel to strike the aircraft.' Minval also claimed that it reviewed "three voice messages" believed to support the claims made in the letter. The voices reportedly confirm that operational orders were given, two missiles were fired, and shrapnel from the explosion struck the aircraft, according to the outlet. The outlet has released one audio recording purporting to depict the sequence in which a voice in Russian gives military directions, orders a missile to be fired, followed by the sound of what appears to be a firing sequence, the same voice saying 'target missed', and allegedly ordering another missile to be fired. On the day of the tragedy, Azerbaijani government sources told Euronews that a Russian surface-to-air missile was fired at Flight 8243 during drone air activity above Grozny, the flight's destination. The same sources said that the shrapnel hit the passengers and cabin crew as the missile exploded next to the aircraft mid-flight, disabling it. Related Azerbaijan Airlines crash caused by foreign object damage, official report shows Russian air defence missile incident emerges as likely cause of Azerbaijan Airlines crash The damaged aircraft was not allowed to land at any Russian airports despite the pilots' requests for an emergency landing, the same sources said, and it was ordered to fly across the Caspian Sea towards Aktau in Kazakhstan, where it crashed while attempting an emergency landing, killing 38 and injuring 29. Subsequent reports after the tragedy claimed that Flight 8243 was downed by a missile from a Russian Pantsir-S1 system. Three days after the crash, in an address to the nation, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said, "we can say with complete clarity that the plane was shot down by Russia (...) We are not saying that it was done intentionally, but it was done.' At that time, on 29 December, Aliyev stated that Baku had made three demands to Russia in connection with the crash. 'First, the Russian side must apologise to Azerbaijan. Second, it must admit its guilt. Third, punish the guilty, bring them to criminal responsibility and pay compensation to the Azerbaijani state, the injured passengers and crew members,' Aliyev outlined. Aliyev noted that the first demand was 'already fulfilled' when Russian President Vladimir Putin apologised to him on 28 December. Putin called the crash a 'tragic incident," though he stopped short of acknowledging Moscow's responsibility. The Kremlin said at the time that air defence systems were firing near Grozny, where the plane attempted to land, to deflect Ukrainian drone strikes. In the days following the tragedy, Russian military bloggers claimed that the said explosion happened over the Naursky District of Chechnya, where several Russian military units were posted at the time, including those with air defence systems, basing their conclusions on open-source data. The new claims linking the Russian military to the Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 tragedy appear at a time of a fast-moving escalation of judicial measures between Russia and Azerbaijan, as relations between the two countries reach a new low.
New York Times
25-06-2025
- New York Times
A Film About a Murdered Russian Activist Takes Its Own Risks
For a decade, Natalya Estemirova documented brutal human rights abuses in Chechnya. Her work led to her becoming one of the most prominent and respected human rights defenders working in that small predominantly Muslim region of Russia. But on the morning of July 15, 2009, as she was leaving her apartment, she was abducted and murdered, crimes for which no one has been charged but are viewed by many as precipitated by her work. Years later, filmmakers and former colleagues trying to tell her story encountered their own set of risks as they endeavored to draw attention to her heroism and the conditions that provoked it. The resulting short 35-minute documentary, 'Natasha,' as Natalya was known, premiered this month at the Tribeca Film Festival. Andrew Meier, one of the two producers and directors of the film, said he does not imagine it will be shown in Russia anytime soon. 'Even revisiting Natasha's work and Natasha's murder is a taboo, to put it mildly,' he said in an interview. 'It's one of the big cases you just don't talk about in Chechnya.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Telegraph
10-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Putin terrorised this writer's childhood – her memoir is chilling
If a single set of events stands out as a primer to understand everything happening in Ukraine today, it is Russia's wars against Chechnya. In autumn 1999, even before he succeeded Boris Yeltsin as president, Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin decided to retake control of the newly sovereign republic, squeezed into the north Caucasus between the Caspian and Black Seas. He ordered murderous air strikes on civilian targets and a ground offensive to do so. The most infamous attack hit the capital Grozny's bustling market on October 21 that year, killing 118 people. In her vivid memoir of growing up during the Chechen wars, Please Live, Lana Estemirova recalls her mother's rage at how the attacks were smoothly reported on Russian TV as 'targeted military strikes' to eliminate rebels. The West's depressing readiness to swallow such narratives have ensured the success of Russia's playbook for more than two decades in Chechnya; following years of hostilities, Putin proclaimed the wars over in 2017, and Chechnya has stayed a Russian republic ever since. Estemirova's story of her childhood deserves to be told, not just because her mother was the prominent human rights activist Natalya Estemirova, who was kidnapped and assassinated on July 15 2009 by men loyal to Chechnya's pro-Putin leader, Ramzan Kadyrov. During the first Chechen war (1994–96), Natalya had documented the torture in Russian filtration camps of Chechens arrested for 'rebel activities'. It was the first time many of us became aware of the Russian military's capacity for sadism. In 2000, she joined the civil rights organisation Memorial, in Grozny, to help investigate the increasing detentions, savage violence and disappearances that accompanied Russia's second invasion of Chechnya. (The echoes of its invasion of Ukraine keep on coming.) Natalya received frequent death threats; it was probably because of her investigations into brutal murders by police working under Kadyrov's direction that she was dragged into a white Lada in July 2009, driven out of Grozny and executed on a country road. Her killers have never faced justice. Her daughter's book, with its domestic details – such as living in an apartment with no glass in the windows – conveys the poignant, brooding ambience of a country subject to what must have felt like a forever war. There are snapshots of school and birthdays and soft toys, but Lana's childhood was still heavily disrupted: she and Natalya often had to change flats, and, aged 14, she was moved to live with her aunt in Yekaterinburg for safety. Her mother meanwhile led a double life, devoted to her daughter and risking thuggish violence daily. Even amid lulls in the violence, Lana's home life was still subject to shocks and was rarely a refuge. At school in Yekaterinburg, she was bullied for being Chechen. 'Escalate, always escalate,' was her mantra for dealing with her bullies (a motto the US would have been well advised to adopt with Putin, instead of its opposite). Back in Grozny, she and her mother were swindled out of their flat. Moving to another, they found Kadyrov's men living next door. The men were using the shared attic as a toilet, and liquid excrement was dripping through the Estemirovas' ceiling. Visions of those murdered by Russia's extrajudicial repression stalk these pages: the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, gunned down on Putin's birthday in 2006, visits the Estemirovas, as do the prominent human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov ('he was incredibly funny') and opposition politician and critic of Putin, Boris Nemtsov, shot dead near the Kremlin in 2015. Natalya was a vital member of their struggle: a Memorial colleague described her as Politkovskaya's 'Virgil [in Chechnya], taking her through all the circles of hell.' Now living in Lisbon, working with the British-based charity Justice for Journalists, and with a daughter of her own, Lana recognises that her childhood made her a difficult girl. 'My pouting expressions, extreme defensiveness and sarcasm would have driven anyone up the wall.' But she has kept her fierce promise to her mother, who died when she was 15, that 'one day, when I'm ready, I will write a book about us. She will be remembered and her killers will fade like ghosts.' That promise rings particularly true in the heart-wrenching final quarter of Please Live, which culminates with the story of her mother's assassination and Lana's grief. These passages are painful to read. But if one lesson we have learnt from Russia's barbarism in Ukraine is the importance of empathy, another is that our empathy has limits: far from the front line, we're unlikely to find ourselves feeling the howling anguish, despair and disbelief of someone who has lost loved ones to war. We need accounts like this haunting, compelling book to show us what that feels like, and to understand. When Putin first set out on his highway of violence in 1999, calls for Western intervention in Chechnya fell on deaf ears. The British reaction was captured, in a weirdly perfect way, by the first Bridget Jones film in 2001. 'So what do you think of the situation in Chechnya?' Bridget asks her boss, Daniel Cleaver. He replies simply: 'I couldn't give a f--k, Jones.' If Britain's response had been more engaged than Cleaver's, not just Chechnya's future but Georgia's after 2008 and Ukraine's after 2014 and 2022 – and even the US's and Europe's – might look considerably different today.
