Yes, who shoots down entire civilian aircrafts?

Itavia 870 comes to mind: In the 80ies, a fighter jet was being smuggled to Gaddafi by hiding under a civilian aircraft, and the speculation is that France shot the convoy, killing 81. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itavia_Flight_870

It’s sadly somewhat common: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inc...

Russia/USSR does seem overrepresented here.

Sure, but who's most likely to have shot down this plane over Russian territory?

The russians.

> [...] a fighter jet was being smuggled to Gaddafi by hiding under a civilian aircraft [...]

Do you have any sources for that? The article you link does not seem to mention that theory.

That’s what I understood from a documentary, I think it was from Al Jeezira, a civilian was pointing that there was a double radar echo from the plane and it meant there were probably two planes on top of each other.

Sure the article mention a theory that Gaddafi was in a fighter jet, and the civilian plane was a collateral damage from a dogfight, but given the lack of information in the public space, both theories still have a lot of common points.

Yeah, definitely seems like a strange incident, but as far as I can tell there isn't any widely accepted theory for what exactly happened.

Well considering the incident happened in Kazakhstan, one might imagine Kazakhstan has air defences too...

The aircraft was sent away / prohibited from landing after reporting the explosion over Grozny, and had to divert to Kazakhstan to land without real pitch control.

Some view the denying of emergency landing clearance as an effort to destroy/obscure evidence: https://x.com/DailyTurkic/status/1872008574878298418

The pilots probably should have ignored that. There’s no such thing as “denying landing clearance” to an aircraft experiencing an emergency. There’s only “get out of the way of the incoming emergency.” But I can’t blame them for not wanting to take their chances when they were just shot by local air defense.

Do you really wanna push your luck with the people who just shot at you while also handing over all physical evidince to them?

"Yah, ATC is saying to leave-- but instead let's say 'unable' and shoot an approach at same airport where we just got shot at."

There’s also “accidentally shoot another missile at the threat that wasn’t shot down last time” phenomenon

The more obvious explanation would be that air controllers surmised that it was at risk of being shot at again if it continued attempting a landing in Grozny and the safest thing to do was to divert it out of Russia.

Regional air traffic control is in Rostov (on-Don) - you’d think they’d at least be able to get the military controllers at Rostov (Southern military district HQ) on the horn?

Assuming they have an established channel of communication, yes they would have, but imagine trying to communicate to them which blip on the radar screen is an actual civilian aircraft, and hoping they're able to track it and make sure they only fire on other targets.

The plane crashed in Kazakhstan. It was shot over Russia. It was still sufficiently airworthy to make quite a distance before crashing.