It was a heated discussion between two dictatorial leaders who tend to get their way.
Russian President Vladimir V. Putin was giving explanations for the Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash that killed 38 people a few days ago. Maybe it was a flock of birds, Mr. Putin said, or a gas explosion. Maybe a Ukrainian drone.
But President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan wasn’t buying it, according to two people familiar with that late December call. It became clear just a few hours after the accident that the plane was shot down by the Russian air defense in what appeared to be a dangerous mistake. It left explosives in the leg of one passenger and riddled the fuselage with holes.
On December 29, Mr. Aliyev went public with his anger without mentioning the Russian president by name. “Attempts to deny the obvious facts,” he said, “are absurd and absurd.”
The people who described the call insisted that his name be withheld in order to discuss sensitive communications. The Kremlin did not respond to a request for comment.
The uproar over the plane crash – and Mr Aliyev’s willingness to put Mr. Putin’s public challenge – revealed a dramatic breach between two post-Soviet rulers who had been close for more than two decades in power. Mr Putin tried to enlist Mr Aliyev in an apparent attempt to silence the cause of the accident; Mr. Aliyev, emboldened by Russia’s weak influence in the countries it ruled, insisted that Russia admit its guilt.
Interviews last week with Azerbaijani officials and people close to the government indicated that the December 25 crash of an Embraer 190, with 67 people on board, has become a political milestone in the former Soviet Union. Rather than allow Mr Putin to dictate his response to the crisis, Mr Aliyev has repeatedly lambasted Russia for its failure to accept responsibility.
Rasim Musabekov, a member of the foreign affairs committee of the Azerbaijan Parliament, described Russia’s reaction to the crisis as “an irrational attitude.
“Azerbaijan will no longer accept such a chauvinist attitude,” he added.
Behind the scenes, interviews showed, that disagreement arose directly between Mr. Aliyev and Mr. In the call on December 28 and the following day, people familiar with the calls said, Mr. Mr. Aliyev refused, insisting that the black boxes of the plane were recorded in Brazil, where the plane was made, a significant display of distrust of the Russian leader.
Officials in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, arranged interviews for the New York Times with three survivors, who said it was clear to some passengers that they were under attack soon after at least two explosions rocked the plane in mid-air.
After the second explosion, the girl started screaming. Leyla Omarova, 28, looked across the aisle from her window seat and saw the girl’s tie covered in blood.
Three rows behind them, Nurullah Sirajov, 71, was trying to comfort his wife. The first sound must be the gear going down, he told her. They had never flown before.
Then there was a second explosion, a gust of wind coming from the back of the plane and shouting, saying to the other passengers: “They hit us.”
As the plane drifted down, coming within 100 meters of the Caspian Sea, Mr. Sirajov thought that at least his marital disputes with his wife about who would die first would finally be resolved: They would die together. But after the front part of the plane disintegrated from the impact, the tail part broke off, flipped over and slid hundreds of meters into the sandy soil.
“Who is alive?” Mr. Sirajov remembers screaming as he hung upside down from his belt.
Because Europe closed its airspace to Russia after Mr. Putin in Ukraine, many Russians flying west now connect to Azerbaijan, a Soviet republic that was rich in oil and gas 10 million between Russia and Iran. Russia also sees Azerbaijan as an important link in an expanded southern trade route to Iran, India and the Persian Gulf.
Its role as a transit hub for sanctions-hit Russia is just another way Azerbaijan has seen its power rise against its much larger northern neighbor. Mr Aliyev also took advantage of the Russian military distraction in Ukraine to push Russian peacekeepers into Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-held territory that Azerbaijan recaptured in 2023.
Mr. Aliyev has strengthened his country’s alliance with Turkey and equipped Azerbaijan with high-tech weapons purchased from Israel. He has attacked independent activists and journalists, but has maintained ties with Europe, seeing Azerbaijan as a key alternative to Russian oil and gas.
Farhad Mammadov, a political analyst in Baku, said that Russia’s political and economic “repressive measures” in Azerbaijan have been reduced “almost completely.” Aykhan Hajizada, a spokesman for Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was blunt in arguing that his country is stronger than Russia: “They don’t even want to lose Azerbaijan,” he said.
The uproar over the plane crash emerged as the culprit. A US embassy official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly, described the crash as “proof of concept” of Azerbaijan’s ability to be independent. Other post-Soviet countries that have also sought arm’s-length relations with Russia, such as Kazakhstan, are taking a closer look.
“If you behave like this in this incident with Azerbaijan, what will the Uzbeks, Kazakhs and other remaining allies of Russia think of you?” Asked Mr. Musabekov, a member of Parliament. “It’s that Russia, as a state, is a very toxic partner that you need to reduce relations with.”
Mr Aliyev, who was educated in Moscow and took over as governor of Azerbaijan from his father in 2003, heard of the crash on his way to a summit of post-Soviet leaders in St. Petersburg. He called Mr. Phuthini on the plane and told him that he was not coming.
Hours later, Azerbaijani officials arrived at Aktau, Kazakhstan, the airport where the Embraer 190 had attempted an emergency landing. At the scene of the accident nearby, officials quickly realized that the visions of bird strikes or oxygen tank explosions they had been hearing in Russia were wrong.
“When I saw the plane, it was full of holes,” said Rinat Huseynov, the safety director of Azerbaijan Airlines in an interview. “We didn’t think this was possible at all.”
Mr. Aliyev and Mr. Putin spoke twice in the days after the accident. Mr. Putin apologized for the “terrible incident” at a Russian airport but did not admit that Russia had shot down the plane. The day after the apology, on December 29, Mr. Aliyev publicly accused Russia of a cover-up.
“Unfortunately, in the first three days, we didn’t hear anything from Russia except absurd ideas,” Mr. Aliyev said.
Officials say they expect initial results from the investigation by the end of January. Mr. Aliyev reiterated last week that Russia needed to accept responsibility and pay compensation, while the Kremlin said it was cooperating with the investigation.
“We are interested in an impartial and impartial investigation,” said Dmitri S. Peskov, a spokesman for Mr. Putin, told reporters last week.
The Azerbaijani theory of operation is that explosives from Russian Pantsir anti-aircraft missiles damaged the plane. Large pieces of metal about four centimeters long were found at the crash site.
The flight details and cockpit voice recordings, officials said, could help explain why the pilots chose to cross the Caspian Sea to land in Kazakhstan rather than go to a nearby airport in Russia; Mr. Huseynov, who is the director of aviation security, said that this decision seems reasonable given the cloudy situation in southern Russia at the time.
Inside the cabin, the flight attendants were trying to calm the panic. Ms. Omarova, on her way to see family in Russia, said she fainted. Mr. Sirajov, who had packed New Year’s gifts for his grandchildren in Grozny, said all he could think about was comforting his wife.
Flight data shows that after crossing the Caspian Sea, more than an hour after the pilots reported what they thought was a bird, the plane crashed while trying to land at Aktau Airport for the second time. All survivors were seated in about the rear third of the plane, according to a person close to the investigation.
After the tail section stopped, Mr. Sirajov fumbled in the dark to unbuckle his belt, unable to tell what had happened to his wife. He later found out that he too had survived.
Finally, Mr. Sirajov unbuckled his belt and fell onto the roof of the house. “Go that way, go that way,” he remembers hearing when someone pushed him into the wilderness of light.
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