Russia slams fake letter to Azerbaijan as “political order”

PanARMENIAN.Net - Russia has described a fake letter alleged sent by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov as a “political order”.

According to a statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry, it was an attempt to speculate on the crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane.

"A so-called letter allegedly from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov, written in English, is being circulated online, stating that our country allegedly cannot guarantee the safe use of Russian airspace. This is a cynical and crude forgery," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

"This leak is an example of a primitive fake practice designed to provoke an emotional reaction. The authors of the forgery did not even bother to give it official attributes, sending it from a regular mail domain and an ordinary email address."

"It is obvious that behind such malicious disinformation there is a political order and an attempt to speculate on the topic of the crash of the passenger plane of Azerbaijan Airlines on December 25 near the Kazakh city of Aktau," the Russian Foreign Ministry added.

An Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) plane, en route from Azerbaijan’s capital Baku to Grozny in Russia's Chechen Republic, crashed 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from the Kazakh city of Aktau on the Caspian Sea coast on Dec. 25, killing 38 out of 67 people on board. AZAL then announced that it has suspended all of its flights between the Azerbaijani capital Baku and the Russian city of Kazan for an indefinite period.