That's it, the target is destroyed, says a Russian soldier to a Russian Santa Claus, watching the fireworks left in the sky by a foreign Santa Claus. And he adds: that's right, we don't need anything foreign in the sky. This video is being shared on Russian social media two days after Russian air defense shot down an Azerbaijani plane. They say that the video was filmed a month ago, but the timing of the posting could not have been worse. The entire story of Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8432 is made up of such absurd parts. It's as if the screenwriter who was given the job of writing it drank the entire advance before starting work. However, we are talking about the real deaths of 38 people, seven of whom, by the way, were Russians. And to call what happened to Embraer 190 a plane crash (as a number of Ukrainian publications continue to write for some reason) is like calling the downing of a Malaysian Boeing 777 in the Donetsk region in July 2014 a plane crash.

For the first day, newsrooms around the world stared at the distinct traces of the plane being hit. Until the video of the tail section was released, the main version coming from Rosaviatsiya was that it was a collision with birds. It became obvious that if they were birds, they were iron birds with torn parts inside. Russian liberal editorial boards, which seem to have been working from abroad for a long time and are proud of the “foreign agent” label, avoided the word “downing” like the plague. For obvious reasons, Russian propagandists did the same. Thus, anyone who reprinted their texts in any language, without making an effort to analyze what they wrote (i.e., those of our colleagues who really should be afraid of competition with artificial intelligence), told readers that the plane had crashed. All this time, official Azerbaijan remained silent, but the first sign of a serious problem was Aliyev's decision to turn the plane around, en route to St. Petersburg for the CIS summit. The Azerbaijani president still uses the word “accident” and cites “weather conditions” as the reason for the change of course from Grozny to Aktau, Kazakhstan. It is obvious: what the Russian liberal press has been afraid to talk about for the first day, Baku and Moscow are discussing with each other.

And they do not agree.

A day after the crash, on December 26, Euronews reported, citing sources in the Azerbaijani government, that they knew that the plane was shot down by a Russian surface-to-air missile. Moreover, they know that the plane that was damaged over Grozny was banned from landing at all Russian airports, despite numerous requests from the pilots. Instead, they were ordered to fly across the Caspian Sea to the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan. Worse, the plane's GPS system was jammed throughout the flight over the sea. Telling this to journalists is like telling them outright: the missile-damaged plane was cynically attempted to be sunk. It's a Russian classic: “Throw everything into the ditch, and the ends into the water, and that's that.” Almost every hour, new footage appears on social media, including from the cabin, showing external damage to the plane, with a wing damaged. They say that Pantsyr systems have recently been brought to Grozny. They do not say the main thing: how, if there was a battle with drones around the Grozny airport, a civilian aircraft was allowed to fly there at all. Why the airport was not closed. Why the pilots were not sent to another city in advance, and why they tried to help the plane land until the moment a missile exploded near the plane, when the plane's computer navigation was not working due to electronic warfare. “No one claims that this was done intentionally,” told a source at the Azerbaijani Reuters. “However, taking into account the established facts, Baku expects the Russian side to recognize the downing of the Azerbaijani plane.

The next day, Rosaviatsiya issues a statement full of fog (literally), which leaves Azerbaijani journalists with even more questions. They are reminiscent of the Second Karabakh War, during which a Russian military helicopter was shot down on the border with Armenia, killing two Russian pilots. Azerbaijan immediately claimed responsibility and did not interfere with a comprehensive investigation. “Why don't we see a similar approach from the Russian side?” is a question so rhetorical that the author of the article, recognizing this, adds: “It is especially important that the state involved in the war in Ukraine recognizes its mistakes.” Let's leave aside all the obvious comments about the participle chosen by Bayram Elshadov, as the threat that can be heard between the lines is much more interesting. The same threat is de facto voiced in the official position, ranging from the willingness to share information with journalists to the refusal to accept compensation from Kadyrov. For Ilham Aliyev, who recently successfully (and not without the help of Turkey) returned Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan, negotiations with Putin's lapdog are unacceptable. A source in Aliyev's administration tells the press: “Azerbaijan demands recognition of the fact, official apologies and payment of appropriate compensation” - and, apparently, directly from the Kremlin. Turkish President Recep Erdogan is not going to stand idly by: a Turkish investigative team has already flown to Baku. The president of Kazakhstan is in a difficult position: since the plane is on his territory, from the first minutes it becomes a subject of interest for both Russians and Azerbaijanis, as well as all others who can put pressure on Tokayev.

Meanwhile, a television crew is allowed to visit the surviving flight attendants, and the whole world hears the news: “The plane was shot down over Grozny. One flight attendant was wounded in the arm, the passengers were getting sick from the shock, people were fainting, everyone was preparing to fall into the sea, but the captain tried to bring the plane to land.” In this way, Azerbaijan is eloquently demonstrating that an attempt to blame the dead pilots, who are already being called heroes at home, will not work. Declaring a day of mourning, as Kadyrov did, will not help either. The Kremlin will not comment on the “plane crash” in Kazakhstan until the investigation is complete, Putin's spokesman Peskov said. The Z-dream Santa Claus that was shot down had no intention of flying over Russia, but other airlines that have been flying there - such as Israel's El Al and Arabian FlyDubai - are suspending flights for a week. Predictably, Azerbaijan is banning flights for its airlines, and Kazakhstan's Qazaq Air is only operating flights to Omsk and Novosibirsk. This is only the first obvious economic consequence of the downing. Not everyone in Azerbaijan is used to so openly aggravating relations with Russia, and Transport Minister Nabiyev is ashamed of the verb “downing,” replacing it with the amorphous (and so typical of the Russian new language of recent years) “external influence.” In 1936, the American Dale Carnegie published a worldwide bestseller, How to Make Friends and Influence People. It is symbolic that on December 25, Christmas Day, Russians collectively wrote a sequel: “How to Destroy Relationships by Influencing Airplanes”.