Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized to the President of Azerbaijan for the crash of the civilian airliner that killed 38 people, the Kremlin said Saturday.

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.

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.