Azerbaijan on Sunday paid tribute to the pilots and passengers of the Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane that crashed in Kazakhstan killing 38 people after Russian air defences were used against Ukrainian drones.

On 25 December, 38 people died when an Azerbaijan Airlines flight, which had been due to land in Russia, crash-landed in Kazakhstan. The circumstances around the crash remain unclear, but limited evidence so far suggests it may have been damaged by missiles fired by a Russian air-defence system as it tried to land in Chechnya.

Vladimir Putin has apologised for the Azerbaijan Airlines crash but stopped short of accepting responsibility for what he described as a “tragic incident”.