What a hell, to hear that friends or even family, in any case a loved one has died on Christmas Day.
In the case of AZAL ID# 4K-AZ65 this tragedy happened killing 38 and 29 injured.
My prayers and condolences go out to the families and loved ones of this tragedy!

I watched raw footage of the struggle of the aircraft (pilots) fighting for control over the vessel as it flew around trying to bring it to a safe landing, but as I watch the full video I notice that this cannot be a bird strike as initially presumed as there is no indication of any engine damage.
Admittedly once a bird hits the manifold it is instantly "chewed" up by the fan blades and spat out with a mostly sputter of flames from the rear and the engine, damaged, but still operable continues to perform it´s duties. I saw no evidence of this to conclude it was a bird.
However I did see something else which made me pause: The constant battle that the pilot was having to keep the plane level as well as the up and down swerving of the aircraft.
Should a bird strike occur, it would mostly and normally only affect one engine and a trained pilot can land the aircraft easily with the other engine fully functional and intact! This is standard training for all pilots globally. So why wasn´t this the case? I looked again at the flight behaviour of the pilot and wondered if he was drunk or in some other way incapacitated, maybe even injured, heart attack? This cannot be the cause either as the first officer would immediately take command. So what other options are open?
The more I looked at the footage the more I thought this can only be pilot error OR loss of hydraulics. As most modern planes utilize "Fly By Wire" systems which are in worst case double redundant, in most cases today even triple redundancy, this Embraer 190 falls into the latter category. This accident was not supposed to happen, well any accident never is supposed to, but you get where I am going...
This morning the first (and of course most obvious) reactions I read was "The Russians" did it, plane shot down by Russia; Russian SAM (Surface to Air Missile) takes out AZAL plane....blah blah etc.
Anyone with the smallest level of intelligence and the most minute amount of grey matter between their ears can see that this wasn´t a SAM! BUT then I saw this picture:

This patter resembles an annular blast fragmentation pattern which looks, in my eyes, to be similar to one of a RPG or ManPad, BUT I am just speculating here and by the reaction of the aircraft and loss of control I might surmise that this is a possibility. In any case I could be wrong but I would then really have to ask Cui bono?
An investigation has been started as I´m writing this.