ISLAMABAD: Relations between Russia and Azerbaijan have reportedly deteriorated after a campaign of arrests against each other’s citizens, The Washington Post reported.
The latest development began after an arrest operation against ethnic Azeris conducted by Russian law enforcement last week netted 50 people in Yekaterinburg, a city in Russia’s Ural Mountains, the newspaper said.
The Washington Post cited the police as claiming it was a part of a decades-old investigation into contract killings in the city.
“A criminal investigation”
“A criminal investigation has been launched … concerning the torture and brutal killing of Azerbaijani citizens and individuals of Azerbaijani origin in the Russian Federation,” the newspaper cited the prosecutor general’s office of Azerbaijan as saying.
Russian investigators said six ethnic Azerbaijani men with Russian citizenship — four of them with the last name Safarov — were arrested as part of murder investigations.
Baku, in turn, lashed out with retaliatory actions. The Culture Ministry canceled all events tied to Russian institutions, condemning what it called “demonstrative targeted and extrajudicial killings” motivated by ethnic bias, The Washington Post reported.
On Monday, Azerbaijani police raided the Baku office of Sputnik Azerbaijan, the local arm of Russia’s state-run news agency.
