Azerbaijan says the plane had multiple holes in its fuselage and that the occupants had sustained injuries ‘due to foreign particles penetrating the cabin mid-flight’

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.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has apologized for the fact that an Azerbaijan Airlines flight crashed after entering Russian airspace in Grozny, Chechnya on Wednesday, but did not say that Russia was responsible.