"Authorities attempted to conceal the drone attack on Chechnya, which may be linked to the plane crash in Aktau. Ten hours after the drone strike on the Caucasian region, officials still did not acknowledge that Chechnya had once again been targeted by drones in the morning," the report states.
The authors pointed out that only one state agency and some Telegram channels associated with the security forces mentioned the drone attack on Chechnya, and there was "one dubious attempt to refute this."
"Authorities also concealed for several hours that one of the drones was shot down over [the neighboring Russian city of] Vladikavkaz, but eventually admitted it. In the evening, officials likely tried to "overshadow" the news cycle. [...] "RIA Novosti" published a "loud" story that may have been intended to overshadow the plane crash. The company "Oboronlogistika," which owns the sunken cargo ship Ursa Major off the coast of Spain, attributed the cause of its sinking to a "deliberate terrorist attack." Simultaneously, [Chechnya's leader Ramzan] Kadyrov awarded his son, the Minister of Sports of Chechnya, Akhmat," reports "Agency."
It mentions a video showing that there are holes in the fuselage of the crashed plane, resembling damage from missile fragments.
"The Azerbaijani plane was supposed to land at the airport in Grozny around the same time that Chechnya was likely being attacked by UAVs. [...] Kadyrov did not comment on the information regarding the UAV attack on the republic. Only Kadyrov's nephew, the Secretary of the Security Council of Chechnya, Hamzat Kadyrov, confirmed it on his personal Instagram: 'Everything has been shot down,'” the "Agency" reports.
The publication cites the testimony of a surviving passenger, Subhonkula Rakhimov, who claims that the aircraft attempted to land in Grozny three times, and on the third attempt, "something exploded." "I wouldn't say it was inside the plane. Where I was sitting, the lining next to me flew off," the media quotes him.
The head of the Center for Counteracting Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Andrey Kovalenko, stated that the Embraer 190 was shot down by a Russian missile system. "Russia should have closed the airspace over Grozny but failed to do so; the plane was damaged by Russians and sent to Kazakhstan," he wrote.