The Soviet Union and Russia hold the record for the largest number of airliner shootdowns in history. At this point, calling it human error is a joke.

Relevant: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/a-shot-in-the-dark-the-u...

I was surprised by the official Russian attitude on this, an hour after the crash it was clear what happened by the ample evidence but for some reason the non-apology("we are sorry that this happened over Russian land") came 3 days later and in Azerbaijani eyes the plane was directed into the sea in hope for a cover-up instead of an attempt to save those onboard.

How this helps anyone? Azerbaijan and Russia are allies, they even signed a cooperation agreement before the Ukraine war. AFAIK Azerbaijan even aids Russia with Georgia&Armenia to counter western influence.

Read the cloudberg article about KAL007, which happened during the Cold War. I think it's a remnant of Soviet culture, in that an order has to pass through multiple layers to be approved, so a lot is lost through Chinese whispers.

Even back then, the USSR initially planned to apologize, but instead walked back and began referring to the crash in similarly vague terms.

>How this helps anyone? Azerbaijan and Russia are allies

Putin would stab his own mother in the back, if it helped him save face in any small way. He's utterly devoid of empathy or morals. This shouldn't be surprising in 2024. He's shown you who he is.

Russian civil aviation is already suffering from a lack of spare parts.

Alienating foreign airlines who would be able to step in, but have to be willing to do so, is doubleplus ungood in this situation.