The Kremlin leadership was fully aware of everything literally on the same day. They had no intention of punishing Major General Alexander Tolopilo either, because he was carrying out a specific order. Moreover, he was even promoted after the incident.
This opinion was expressed to Minval Politika by political analyst and member of the Milli Majlis of Azerbaijan Rasim Musabayov, commenting on Minval Politika’s information that the Russian side decided back in September last year to close the criminal case into the crash of the AZAL passenger aircraft, which was shot down by a Russian air defense system while approaching Grozny.
“It was obvious that all of Vladimir Putin’s assurances that they would conduct an investigation and punish those responsible would, at best, amount to punishing some ‘scapegoats.’ I will say more: the Russian military and all the security agencies, including the FSB, which hates Kadyrov, very much wanted to steer everything toward blaming Kadyrov’s uncontrollable forces in order to provoke a clash between Azerbaijan and Chechnya. It didn’t work,” the expert is convinced.
The political analyst also drew attention to the fact that the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, who initially led the investigation, was likewise steering the case in that direction and, “having been disappointed with the outcome, stopped dealing with the investigation substantively.”
“So the Kremlin’s game was to find ‘scapegoats,’ punish them, and close the issue. But they ran into the principled position of the Azerbaijani president, and it will not be possible to simply ‘sweep the situation under the rug,’” the MP noted.
Musabayov is convinced that against the background of the enormous number of people dying in the war in Ukraine, “Moscow sees it as a trifle that Azerbaijan is being picky and looking for a pretext to distance itself from Russia.”
“One must distance oneself from a Russia that behaves this way toward Ukraine, toward Azerbaijan, and toward all of its neighbors. There is no need to look for a special pretext, because the Russia we observe today is a source of danger to all of its neighbors,” the political analyst said.
“The idea that Bastrykin is acting in defiance of Putin is complete nonsense, because he is one of Putin’s closest confidants, a sword with which Putin deals with the undesirable or those who make mistakes within the Russian elite itself. Stylistically, Bastrykin is a greater nationalist and usually positions himself as an advocate of a harsher and rougher attitude toward all of Russia’s neighbors, but I do not think he would dare to cross any boundaries without receiving a green light personally from Putin,” our interlocutor added.
As for the future development of Azerbaijani–Russian relations, the parliamentarian noted that Azerbaijan is drawing certain conclusions for itself.
“Of course, we have no intention of entering into any confrontation with Russia, but there is also no sense in turning a blind eye to such an attitude or in pretending there is an allied interaction and ‘brotherhood.’ So I think relations with Russia will be built pragmatically: where something is beneficial for us, we will cooperate, and where it is not, the distance will widen,” Musabayov concluded.
