BAKU/MOSCOW — Authorities in Azerbaijan arrested two journalists from the local branch of a Russian state news agency on Monday (June 30) in a move likely to further stoke tensions with Moscow following arrests in Russia of ethnic Azerbaijanis suspected of serious crimes.
In a statement, Azerbaijan’s Interior Ministry said it had launched an investigation into the outlet, Sputnik Azerbaijan, after raiding its offices earlier on Monday.
Russia’s RIA state news agency said two staff members — the head of the editorial board and the chief editor — had been detained. Azerbaijan’s Interior Ministry published video showing officers leading two men to police vans in handcuffs.
Another Russian media outlet, Ruptly, later said one of its editors had been detained after trying to film the police action at the Sputnik offices in Baku.
Tensions between Russia and Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic in the South Caucasus, have risen in recent days after investigators in Yekaterinburg, a Russian industrial city, arrested six people following a slew of raids in connection with historic unsolved crimes, including serial killings.
They said they had detained six people, all of whom had Russian passports, but they also said two suspects had died. Azerbaijan’s Interior Ministry identified the people as ethnic Azerbaijanis.
One of the suspects died of heart failure, Russian investigators said in a statement, and medical tests would reveal the cause of death of another suspect.
The bodies of the suspects are expected to arrive in Baku by plane on Monday evening for expert examination.
Baku has accused the Russian police of carrying out extrajudicial killings “on ethnic grounds”, an allegation Moscow has rejected.
Earlier on Monday, as the raid on Sputnik Azerbaijan was under way, Russia summoned Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Moscow over what it described as Baku’s “unfriendly actions” and the “illegal detention” of Russian journalists working in the country.
Police in Baku said they would investigate Sputnik Azerbaijan over illegal funding.
Journalists led away ‘like terrorists’
In February, the government shuttered the outlet, which is an affiliate of Russian state media agency Rossiya Segodnya, but it has continued to operate with fewer staff.
The General Director of Rossiya Segodnya, Dmitry Kiselev, said Sputnik and Azerbaijani officials had been trying to clinch a temporary agreement allowing Sputnik to keep working in Baku.
Russia, he wrote on the Telegram messaging app, was shocked at the actions of Azerbaijani security officials leading staff members away “with their arms twisted and their heads bowed, as though they were terrorists”.
“This all looks like a deliberate step aimed at worsening relations between our countries,” he wrote.
Azerbaijan’s parliament has pulled out of planned bilateral talks in Moscow amid the recent controversy and cancelled a visit by a Russian deputy prime minister.
On Sunday, Azerbaijan’s Cultural Ministry said it was also cancelling cultural events planned by Russian state and private organisations due to “targeted and extrajudicial killings and acts of violence committed by Russian law enforcement agencies.”
Asked about the Culture Ministry’s decision, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday: “We sincerely regret such decisions.”
“We believe that everything that’s happening (in Yekaterinburg) is related to the work of law enforcement agencies, and this cannot and should not be a reason for such a reaction,” Peskov told reporters.
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Azerbaijan arrests journalists at Russian state outlet as tensions with Moscow rise
