An Azerbaijan Airlines plane, which crashed in Kazakhstan on 26 December, was downed by a Russian surface-to-air missile system (SAM). Source: Andrii Kovalenko, Head of the Centre for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine,

Russian aviation authorities did not allow the plane to land in any of the multiple airports nearby, forcing the pilots to fly over the stormy Caspian Sea to try to land in the western Kazakh city of Aktau. The plane crashed close to Aktau airport.