Azerbaijan and Russia Face Off Over Arrests—and More?

Two months ago, nothing foretold that the most dramatic confrontation between Azerbaijan and Russia would be ignited by events in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg. After ups and downs over the past year, their relations were steady—to the extent that the Russian authorities had handed over to their Azerbaijani counterparts the 71-year-old Zahireddin Ibrahimov, an ethnic Talysh separatist and long-time critic of the government of Azerbaijan. He had been residing in Yekaterinburg for more than three decades as a citizen of Russia.

Things changed on June 27 with a violent raid by the Yekaterinburg police and the Federal Security Service on a house belonging to an extended family of entrepreneurs of Azerbaijani origin, the Safarovs, most of whom hold Russian as well as Azerbaijani passports. Some 50 family members were detained, some were severely beaten and tortured, and some were arrested. Two of the detained men, aged 55 and 60 died, with the Office of Chief Prosecutor of Azerbaijan implying it was of torture.

The two men had been prime suspects in the murder of another Azerbaijani national in Russia in 2001. The Russian authorities justified the raid by the fact of the re-opening of this case, and of its expansion to include now charges related to events in 2010 and 2011, with the family now suspected of forming a criminal gang.

In response to these events, Azerbaijan has cancelled scheduled parliamentary and high-level intergovernmental visits. It has also cancelled until the end of the year all cultural events involving Russian artists and performers. The state media has launched an unprecedented wave of criticism of Russia’s policies and of President Vladimir Putin. The police raided the Baku office of the Russian news agency Sputnik and arrested its two Russian directors. They will be detained under various criminal charges for the next four months while there is an investigation. The media has declared them to be Russian spies.

On July 1, Russia’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Azerbaijani ambassador and issued a “verbal note” to him. It demanded the immediate release of the two journalists and an end to all government actions deemed “destructive” to bilateral relations. However, on July 2, eight more Russian nationals were arrested in Baku and charged with drug trafficking and other criminal activities. The television footage of them in court showed bruises and blood on their faces. The same day, a local Azerbaijani diaspora leader in Yekaterinburg was violently detained but released after questioning. His son has said this was presumably in relation to the 2001 murder case.

The forcefulness of the actions by the Azerbaijani and Russian authorities suggests that there is a hidden cause of the conflict.

The forcefulness of the actions by the Azerbaijani and Russian authorities suggests that there is a hidden cause of the conflict, which the two sides avoid referring to directly in public. Tough police raids against traders of Azerbaijani origin have been common in Russia for the past 30 years, and they can hardly be viewed as the true source of the outrage in Baku and Moscow. (Another such raid took place on July 1 in Voronezh, but it is not clear if this was linked to the other ones).

The outburst of tension draws attention to other serious and minor incidents in relations between Azerbaijan and Russia over the past year. In particular, Baku remains angered by Moscow’s reluctance to recognize its responsibility for the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane in December in which most of those on board died. The final international report on the incident is to be published by the end of this year. The government in Baku insists that the plane was shot by a Russian anti-aircraft missile in the context of the war in Ukraine.

The crash fueled fierce anti-Russian sentiment in Azerbaijan and the government closed down the local branch of Rossotrudnishestvo—Russia’s Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States Affairs, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation. President Ilham Aliyev refused (nominally for other reasons) to take part in the military parade in Moscow on May 9 to commemorate the 80th anniversary the end of the Second World War in Europe, although an Azerbaijani unit took part in it.

On July 1, the Azerbaijani online media outlet Minval published Russian military documents and voice recordings that support Baku’s accusation regarding the plane crash. On the same day, Putin’s spokesman hinted that Kremlin wanted to receive a phone call from Baku to resolve the ongoing confrontation, which did not happen. On the same day, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky made a phone call to Aliyev in which he expressed solidarity with the people of Azerbaijan.

It remains to be seen in the coming days and weeks whether the recent events should be seen as part of the geopolitical discord between Azerbaijan and Russia.

Also on July 1, a senior official in Russia’s Foreign Ministry criticized the West for trying to steal from Moscow the laurels for mediating a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which awaits their signature. There have been unconfirmed reports that Aliyev and Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan may meet in Dubai by the end of this month, when they could decide to remove some of the conditions that have been impeding the signing.

This would see them endorse a Western private company’s control over the currently dysfunctional “Zangezur corridor” that connects mainland Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave. The corridor is of strategic importance for the east-west transport connections that bypass Russia. The prospect of Moscow losing any say in operating it may maybe the main reason of the ongoing rise in tension between Russia and Azerbaijan.

Mehriban Rahimli is a consultant on Azerbaijan for the German Marshall Fund of the United States.