As authorities in several countries tried to determine what caused the deadly crash of a passenger airplane in Kazakhstan, investigators and experts on Thursday were focusing on the possibility that a Russian air defense system had struck the plane.

Aviation experts cast doubt on a Russian agency’s contention that the Azerbaijan Airlines jet had hit a flock of birds, saying images of the crash site show holes in the plane’s fuselage that appeared unlikely to have been caused by them.

“What he said or didn’t say is between him and the people of North Carolina,” said Mr. Vance, former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate. He added: “I’ve seen some of the statements. I haven’t seen them all. Some of them are pretty gross, to put it mildly. Mark Robinson says that those statements are false, that he didn’t actually speak them. So I think it’s up to Mark Robinson to make his case to the people of North Carolina that those weren’t his statements.”

The jet had been flying on Wednesday morning from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, to Grozny, in Russia’s Chechnya republic, at a time when drone strikes were taking place around Grozny and Russian air defense systems were responding, according to residents and local news media reports.

By The New York Times

Two Azerbaijanis briefed on a government inquiry said that Azerbaijani officials now believe that a Russian Pantsir-S defense system damaged the plane. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing. Caliber, a news outlet in Azerbaijan that is close to the government, also reported that the country’s investigators believe a Russian Pantsir system was responsible.

U.S. intelligence agencies do not have definitive information yet, but U.S. officials said there are preliminary indications that the plane was shot down by a Russian antiaircraft system, mostly likely a surface-to-air missile.

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