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Images from the Armenian Ministry of Defense provided by the Armenian Unified Infocenter on Wednesday. Some of the photos show the wreckage of a Su-25 fighter plane with several Armenian soldiers nearby. (Read: Turkish F-16 Combat Jet Shoots Falling Su-25 Armenia, Azerbaijan Assumes Talk)
The plane crashed during a battle with Azerbaijani troops over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. The pilot who died in the incident was identified as Major Valeri Danelin.
Meanwhile, an aide to Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev said two Armenian Su-25 fighter jets crashed and destroyed on September 29. However, he said, the two planes were destroyed after hitting a mountain, and not as a result of being shot down by a Turkish F-16 fighter jet.
“The two planes hit the mountain and exploded and were destroyed. This shows the Armenian military leadership is not providing accurate information to its citizens and the public,” presidential aide Hikmat Hajiyev was quoted as saying. Reuters, Thursday (1/10/2020). (Read: Bombarded by Azerbaijani Artillery, Armenian Troops Crying to Go Home)
Azerbaijanaaa Ministry of Defense spokesman Vagif Dargyakhly has previously criticized the Armenian claim. “The reports claiming that the Armenian Sukhoi-25 was destroyed by F-16 fighters is a lie,” he said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s senior aide, Fahrettin Altun, also considers the Armenian claim to be gibberish. “Armenia’s claim is false,” he told Bloomberg. The Turkish official denounced Armenian claims he described as “cheap propaganda stunts”.
Nagorno-Karabakh is a territory controlled by ethnic Armenians and has been independent from Azerbaijan since the 1990s or shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Azerbaijan does not recognize this independence and still regards the territory as its own. However, Armenia defends Nagorno-Karabakh as an ally forged by ethnic ties. (Also read: Fierce War, Azerbaijan Destroys Armenia’s S-300 Missile System)
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