The arrests come shortly after several Azerbaijanis were arrested in Russia’s south-central city of Yekaterinburg.
Authorities in Azerbaijan arrested two journalists from Russian state news agency Sputnik on June 30, in the latest sign of brewing tensions between Moscow and Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan.
According to AZERTAC, Azerbaijan’s state news agency, local authorities have “launched an investigation based on operational intelligence regarding [Sputnik’s] continued activities through illegal funding.”
Citing Azerbaijan’s interior ministry, the news agency said that “operational search measures were conducted at the branch office [of Sputnik in Baku] on June 30 and several individuals were detained.”
Later on the same day, Russia’s foreign ministry summoned Azerbaijan’s envoy to Moscow to voice its displeasure with what it called Baku’s “unfriendly actions” and the “illegal detention of Russian journalists.”
On July 1, Russia’s TASS news agency reported that the Azerbaijani ambassador, Rahman Mustafayev, had visited the foreign ministry building in Moscow.
Tensions between Russia and Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic in the South Caucasus region, have steadily mounted since late last week, when Russian authorities arrested several people in the city of Yekaterinburg.
An industrial city of roughly 1.5 million inhabitants, Yekaterinburg is located in south-central Russia, east of the Ural Mountains.
On June 27, local authorities in Yekaterinburg detained six ethnic Azerbaijanis following a series of police raids on what Russian state media has described as “organized crime gangs.”
According to a Russian investigative committee cited by TASS, the arrested individuals are suspected of involvement in “several murders and attempted murders in Yekaterinburg in 2001, 2010, and 2011.”
The committee also confirmed that two suspects had died in police custody, claiming one had succumbed to “heart failure” while the cause of death of the second suspect was still “being established.”
Baku Reacts
In a June 28 statement, Azerbaijan’s interior ministry decried the incident, voicing its “deep concern over the raids … on the homes of Azerbaijanis in Yekaterinburg on the morning of June 27.”
The ministry said that the raids had led to “the deaths of our compatriots, the serious injuries of some of them, and the detention of 9 people.”
It also called on the Russian authorities to open an “urgent investigation” into the incident and “bring the perpetrators of this unacceptable violence to justice as soon as possible.”
Meanwhile, a parliamentary delegation from Azerbaijan canceled a scheduled visit to Moscow, while a planned visit to Baku by a Russian deputy prime minister was abruptly called off.
By Adam Morrow
