BAKU -- After Azerbaijan's president accused Russia of accidentally shooting down an airliner and covering up the cause, public anger in the Caucasian country is mounting against Moscow for its handling of the incident.
"Although Russia tried to evade responsibility, it could not escape the facts," the daily news program for ITV, an Azerbaijani state-controlled broadcaster, began its show on December 29.
"Refusing to allow the plane to land after shooting it down has only one name -- a crime!" stated an opinion piece in Yeni Musavat, a pro-government online newspaper, following the December 25 disaster that killed 38 people and injured 29.
The tough statements are part of a growing wave of criticism toward Russia in online discourse and from state-owned and pro-government media in Azerbaijan, which typically avoids harsh comments about the country's ally and large neighbor.
It is also a reflection of the increasing public anger toward Russia for its apparent attempts to sidestep responsibility in the downing of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane.
During a televised interview on December 29, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who has leveraged the country's oil wealth to enhance his autocratic rule, said Moscow was trying to "hush up" that the plane was struck by ground fire over Russia and "rendered uncontrollable by electronic warfare," forcing it off course from its destination of Grozny in Chechnya before it attempted an emergency landing and crashed in western Kazakhstan.
"We can say with complete clarity that the plane was shot down by Russia," Aliyev told state television. "We are not saying it was done intentionally, but it was done."
Amid the backlash, Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized on December 28 to Aliyev for the "tragic incident" in Russian airspace, saying the country's air defences had engaged Ukrainian attack drones.
Originally, Russia said the crash occurred after the Embraer 190 aircraft hit a flock of birds. A Kremlin statement said Putin had spoken with Aliyev but did not say Russia had shot down the plane, only noting a criminal case had been opened.
"Unfortunately, for the first three days, we heard nothing from Russia except absurd versions," Aliyev said during the interview.
Some Azerbaijani analysts have said the lack of a complete apology and an offer to pay compensation for downing the plane from Russia could harm relations between Baku and Moscow.
"It's clear that the Azerbaijani president was not satisfied with his phone call [with Putin]," Elkhan Shahinoglu, the director of the Atlas Research Center, a think tank in Baku, told RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service.
Shahinoglu said Russia will need to take clear steps to satisfy the Azerbaijani government and public, which have been galvanized by the Kremlin's initial attempts to offer other explanations that have been firmly rejected by Baku and international aviation experts.
"If they had confessed immediately, the situation would not have become so tense," Shahinoglu said.
Russia's Investigative Committee Chairman Aleksandr Bastrykin pledged on December 30 that there would be a "full and objective investigation of the crash." Authorities in Kazakhstan have also sent the flight recorders to Brazil, where the Embraer 190 was manufactured. There, Azerbaijani and international experts will extract and analyze the data.
Following a period of national mourning, Azerbaijan paid tributes to victims of the downed plane and then held a state funeral for the flight's crew.
Three members -- Captain Igor Kshnyakin, co-pilot Aleksander Kalayaninov, and flight attendant Hokuma Aliyeva -- were posthumously awarded the title of National Hero of Azerbaijan, one of the country's highest distinctions, by presidential decree.
