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Looks like a proximity-fused missile shrapnel hit. Whomever was sitting on the other side of the fuselage, got shredded.

Birdstrike my @$$. Yeah, that thing's empennage got peppered pretty badly. I'm amazed anyone survived the crash, fiery and at an angle as it was. The pilots might have saved a lot of lives putting the thing down they way they did, even as they lost their own.

I think the fact that this aircraft has battle damage potentially casts its crossing of the Caspian sea in a different light: forget blaming GPS jamming. I'm guessing the pilots were simply trying to get their aircraft and passengers as far and as quickly away from whomever was shooting at them as possible. A quick look at a map and I'm inclined to agree with what they did- north is more Russia, west is also more Russia and approaching Turkey, who has their own strong air defenses that would surely be on a hair trigger on this night; south is Iran, who probably wouldn't be so neighborly themselves on an unplanned aerial arrival on a night with widespread drone raids.

That leaves east to Kazhakstan, which has the added bonus of getting the aircraft over the Caspian, which presumably doesn't have much in the way of air-defense armed ships on it. East was the direction they were least likely to get shot at again. So east they went. That they ended up in Aktau is no coincidence- as far as I can tell that's the nearest airport on that side of the Caspian. They made a bee-line for safety, and came excruciatingly close to making it. Damn.

I agree with your assessment. Definitely another example of “friendly fire” in a combat area and not an accidental crash. The same thing recently happened with an American navy aircraft (and almost another one and the same incident) in the vicinity of Yemen.

Props to the pilots for doing the best they could with the heavily damaged passenger plane.