On Monday, authorities in Baku detained three Russian journalists following a police crackdown on suspected Azerbaijani gangs in Russia
Russia’s Foreign Ministry has summoned Azerbaijani ambassador Rakhman Mustafaev, following the arrest of three Russian journalists in Baku. Two senior editors with Sputnik media and one with the Ruptly video news agency were detained by Azerbaijani authorities on Monday.
Relations between Russia and Azerbaijan have soured in recent days, in the wake of a police raid in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, targeting the local Azerbaijani diaspora.
Speaking to reporters following the arrests, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that “in light of Baku’s hostile actions and the unlawful detention of Russian journalists… the ambassador of the Azerbaijani Republic has been summoned to the Foreign Ministry.”
Zakharova expressed concern over the fact that Russian diplomats “have not been able to contact the [detained] journalists [who are] Russian citizens.”
Dmitry Kiselev, the head of ‘Rossiya Segodnya’ (Russia Today) media group, which Sputnik belongs to, described the arrest of the Russian reporters in Baku as an “injustice.”
“There have been no objections to the journalistic work of Sputnik Azerbaijan,” he insisted, adding that Russian and Azerbaijani officials agreed to iron out “formalities” of the Russian media outlet’s operations during a meeting in Moscow in early April. However, Baku has allegedly stalled the process.
Kiselev expressed incredulity at the way the Russian reporters were treated by the Azerbaijani police, “as though they were terrorists.”
He noted that the treatment of reporters is in stark contrast to the nature of relations between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev.
Earlier on Monday, Sputnik confirmed that the head of the editorial office Igor Kartavykh and Editor-in-Chief Evgeny Belousov had been detained by police in Baku. Both were accused of being agents of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) – a claim the Russian media outlet has dismissed as “absurd.”
Later in the day, it transpired that a third Russian journalist, working for the Ruptly video news agency, had also been placed in police custody in Baku.
Last week, Russian police carried out a raid on suspected members of an Azerbaijani criminal group in the city of Yekaterinburg in central Russia, arresting a number of individuals. Two of the suspects died during the operation, according to Russia’s Investigative Committee, one from a heart attack, the other from an as yet unidentified cause.
According to the Russian authorities, the group is suspected of having been behind several murders dating as far back as the early 2000’s.
