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.

The Russian leader’s phone call stopped short of acknowledging responsibility for the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines 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.