Russian President Vladimir Putin has admitted that his country’s air defences were responsible for shooting down an Azerbaijan Airlines plane in December.
The crash on Christmas Day killed 38 of the 67 people on board.
Mr Putin made the statement at a meeting with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliev in Tajikistan’s capital of Dushanbe on Thursday.
Both men are attending a summit of the former Soviet nations.
Video footage taken on Thursday showed Mr Putin and Mr Aliyev shaking hands and smiling before the meeting, where the Russian leader spoke about the crash.
The passenger jet was on a flight from Baku to Grozny, the regional capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, when it was struck.
Azerbaijani authorities said the jet was accidentally hit by fire from Russian air defences, then tried to land in western Kazakhstan when it crashed.
Mr Putin earlier apologised to Mr Aliyev for what he called a “tragic incident”, but stopped short of acknowledging responsibility.
Mr Aliyev, meanwhile, criticised Moscow for trying to “hush up” the incident.
On Thursday, Mr Putin said Russia would offer compensation to those affected.
“Of course, everything that is required in such tragic cases will be done by the Russian side on compensation and a legal assessment of all official things will be given,” he said.
“It is our duty, I repeat once again … to give an objective assessment of everything that happened and to identify the true causes.”
A preliminary report published on a Kazakh government website after the crash said that there was damage to the plane, including on its stabilisers, hydraulics and trim systems.
Also included were photographs showing that the port side of the tail section had numerous punctures, while other pictures showed fragments that it described as “foreign metal objects” removed from the left stabiliser and hydraulic system.
