Azerbaijan's flag carrier announced Friday that it will suspend flights to several Russian airports, citing potential flight safety risks after a crash of one of its planes that many experts blamed on Russian air defense fire.

The national airlines of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have suspended some flights to Russia after evidence suggested an Azerbaijani plane had been downed by Russian air defence systems. The Kazakh airline,

Russia's aviation watchdog said on Friday that an Azerbaijan Airlines plane which crashed in Kazakhstan on Wednesday had decided to reroute from its original destination in Chechnya amid dense fog and a local alert over Ukrainian drones.