The Kremlin leader’s apology, made during a call with his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, is likely to tamp down anger that had been growing over the crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane this week. The preliminary results of an investigation ...

Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized for the deadly Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 crash on Christmas but did not take responsibility for causing it as an investigation continues into the matter.

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.