Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev has called on Russia to accept blame for a plane crash on Christmas Day that killed 38 people. The plane is thought to have come under fire from Russian air defence systems as it tried to land in Chechnya before being diverted to Kazakhstan, where it crashed.

The coordinator for Strategic Communications of the US administration, John Kirby, said that the Azerbaijan Airlines plane flying from Baku to Grozny could have been shot down by the Russian air defense.

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NATO spokesman Farah Dahlalla expressed condolences over the crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane near the Kazakh city of Aktau and called for a comprehensive investigation.

"No one claims that it was done on purpose," an Azerbaijan official told Reuters. They added their government "expects the Russian side to confess."

Experts say evidence in the Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash in Kazakhstan points to a possible midair explosion, not an encounter with a flock of birds.

Russians who reviewed the transcript of the crew's conversations from the Baku-Grozny flight themselves admit that the air crash was caused by their air defense systems (ADS), according to Andriy Kovalenko,

An Azerbaijan Airlines flight to the southern Russian town of Mineralnie Vody turned back to Baku on Friday after being told a chunk of airspace in southern Russia had been closed, Russia's TASS news agency reported.