The Embraer 190 passenger plane of Azerbaijan Airlines, flying from Baku to Grozny, crashed on December 25 near the Kazakh city of Aktau

The Russian president also said that he and Aliyev had recently seen each other "briefly" in Beijing, and had spoken on the phone several times prior to that

The Russian president recalled that he had originally apologized that the flight crashed in the Russian skies

The Embraer 190 passenger plane of Azerbaijan Airlines, flying from Baku to Grozny, crashed on December 25 near the Kazakh city of Aktau