President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia told the Azerbaijani leader, Ilham Aliyev, in a phone call, “that the tragic incident took place in Russian airspace.”

The Kremlin has said that the Russian president "apologized for the tragic incident" and expressed his "deep and sincere condolences" to the victims' families.

The extremely rare publicised apology from Putin was the closest Moscow had come to accepting some blame for Wednesday's disaster, although the Kremlin statement did not say Russia had shot down the plane.