White House spokesman John Kirby said the United States saw “early indications” that Russia may have been responsible for the downing of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed on December 25, killing 38 people.
Kirby did not go into further details, but told reporters that the United States had offered to help investigate the incident.
The plane is believed to have come under fire from Russian air defense systems as it attempted to land in Chechnya before being diverted across the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan, where it crashed.
The Kremlin declined to comment, but the head of Russia's Civil Aviation Agency said the situation in Chechnya was “very complicated” due to Ukrainian drone strikes in the region.
The Washington Post quoted Kirby as saying that the indicators that the United States saw went beyond the widely circulated photos of the damaged plane.
Aviation experts and others in Azerbaijan believe the plane's GPS systems were affected by electronic jamming and then damaged by shrapnel from Russian air defense missiles.
Azerbaijan did not accuse Russia, but the country's Minister of Transport said that the plane was subjected to “external interference” and was damaged from the inside and outside while trying to land.
Rashad Nabiyev said: “All (survivors) without exception said that they heard three explosions when the plane was over Grozny.”
Nabiyev said that investigators will now examine “the type of weapon, or rather the type of missile used.”
But pro-government MP Rasim Musabekov was clear: “The plane was shot down over Russian territory, in the sky of Grozny. Denying this is impossible.”
He told Agence France-Presse that the plane was damaged and the pilot requested an emergency landing in Grozny. Instead of directing it to nearby airports, he said it was “sent away” across the Caspian Sea without a GPS.
The flight attendant, Zulfikar Asadov, described the moments when the plane was subjected to “some kind of external strike” over Chechnya.
“Its impact caused panic inside. We tried to calm them down, sit them down. At that moment, another blow occurred, and my arm was injured.”
The pilots of the Embraer 190 are credited with saving 29 people on board by managing to land part of the plane, although they were killed in the accident.
The Kremlin refused to comment on the growing number of reports that the Azerbaijan Airlines plane was hit by Russian air defense.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “This aviation accident is being investigated, and until the results are reached as a result of the investigation, we do not consider ourselves qualified to give any assessments.”
Kazakh authorities are treating the injured and working closely with Azerbaijan in the investigation.
Reports in Baku indicate that Russia and Kazakhstan proposed forming a committee from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) – a regional organization dominated by Russia – to investigate the incident, but Azerbaijan instead demanded an international investigation.
