Moscow—Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized on Saturday over the crash of an Azerbaijani Airlines plane, though he stopped short of accepting that it might have been hit by Russian fire. Putin did admit that Russian air defenses were at work when the passenger plane tried to land in Grozny before crashing,

A passenger jet operated by Azerbaijan Airlines crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, after diverting from an area of southern Russia where Moscow has repeatedly used air defence systems against Ukrainian attack drones.