• An Azerbaijan Airlines flight crashed in Kazakhstan, killing 38 people.
• Azerbaijani sources said Russian air defenses, not a bird strike, downed the airliner.
• An aviation safety firm plans to raise its risk rating for the nearby airspace after the incident.

A preliminary investigation pointed to Russian air defenses as the cause of an Azerbaijan Airlines crash in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, Azerbaijani sources said.

Russia's civil aviation authority quickly pointed to a bird strike as a possible cause of the crash-landing, which killed 38 of the 67 people on board, including both pilots.

Aviation experts had been skeptical of the Russian government's bird crash explanation due to the plane's erratic course and the holes in the plane's fuselage and tail section.

Azerbaijani sources confirmed that the investigation found an air defense missile fired by Russian Pantsir-S struck the Azerbaijan Airlines aircraft, the New York Times and the Euronews TV network reported Thursday.

Ukraine was quick to put the blame on Russia.

On Wednesday, Andriy Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation, said in an X post that the plane was "shot down by a Russian air defense system."

Others have also suggested that Russian air defenses likely played a role as images of the crash and the plane's flight track emerged.

Osprey Flight Solutions, an aviation security firm, said in a critical alert sent to its clients and shared with Business Insider that the flight was "likely shot down by a Russian military air-defense system of unspecified type/variant over the North Caucasus Federal District."

The firm cited video of the wreckage, Ukraine's official statement, and the "circumstances around the airspace security environment in southwest Russia."

It also said that "incidents of civilian airliners being misidentified and shot down by air-defence systems are not unprecedented in the region."

It pointed to examples such as Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, which crashed in eastern Ukraine in 2014 after reportedly being hit by a Russian-made missile.

Matthew Borie, Osprey's chief intelligence officer, told BI that the firm was in the process of raising its risk ratings for that portion of Russian airspace to its highest level.

"We have a portion of Russian airspace within 300 kilometers of the Ukrainian border, we have at extreme, we'll be expanding that out to about 600 kilometers from the Russian border now," he said, equivalent to 373 miles.

The Azerbaijan Airlines flight was en route to Grozny, which Ukrainian drones have targeted in recent attacks.

The governor of the Russian region of North Ossetia said in a Telegram post that there were Ukrainian drone attacks carried out on Wednesday in a number of regions of the North Caucasus Federal District, which includes Grozny and the surrounding area.

The governor's post specifically mentioned a drone being taken down in Vladikavkas, which is about 70 miles away from Grozny.

Sources familiar with Azerbaijan's investigation into the crash told The Wall Street Journal that Russia redirected the Embraer-made aircraft from its airspace and jammed the GPS system.

Flightradar24, a live flight tracking website, said in a post on X that the plane was "exposed to GPS jamming and spoofing near Grozny."

Oliver Alexander, an independent OSINT analyst, told BI that "all the evidence I have seen points to the aircraft being hit by shrapnel from an air defense missile, which severely damaged the elevator and rudder controls."

In a thread on X, which cited post-crash footage, he wrote that "every single piece of debris that hit the aircraft had enough kinetic to punch through the skin and not just dent it."

Alexander also dismissed the preliminary information from Russia's civil aviation authority, Rosaviatsia, which suggested that the plane diverted after a bird strike, causing an onboard emergency.

He told BI that a bird strike would produce "a lot of blood" and "a lot of denting," neither of which seemed apparent in footage and images from the crash site.

"The location of the damage is all focused around the tail section," he added, "which would be very unlikely for a bird strike."

Subkhonkul Rakhimov, one of the surviving passengers, told RT, the Russian state-owned news network, that he had heard an explosion in the tail of the aircraft.

He also told TASS state news agency that he had seen the plane make three attempts to land the plane in Grozny.

Russia has cautioned against drawing conclusions.

On Thursday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said it "would be wrong to put forward any hypotheses" until the investigation into the crash is concluded.

"We, of course, will not do this, and no-one should do this," he added, per a translation by the BBC.

Azerbaijan Airline's president, Samir Rzayev, told reporters Wednesday that the plane's black box had been recovered and its analysis was being "conducted in line with international aviation standards."

The country's president, Ilham Aliyev, said in a statement that while there are videos of the crash online, the cause was still unknown.

However, on Thursday, unnamed Azerbaijani government sources told Euronews that a preliminary investigation had found that a Russian surface-to-air missile caused the crash.

According to Euronews, the sources said that shrapnel from the missile hit the plane after it exploded during drone activity above Grozny.

Azerbaijan's Foreign Affairs department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.