A raid on Russians in Azerbaijan. Photo: Report
In Azerbaijan, security forces have begun forcibly checking the documentation of Russian citizens residing in the country, conducting raids at their places of residence to do so, according to reports from Russia’s diplomatic mission and the Ark project, an initiative designed to help Russians who emigrated due to their anti-war stance.
On Wednesday, the Russian Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, announced that it had heard from a “multitude” of Russians residing in the country, including tourists, that law enforcement officers had approached them at their places of residence, seeking to determine the purposes of their stays, checking their documents, and, in some cases, using force against them and their family members.
“We ask Russian citizens in Azerbaijan to report all such cases by emergency telephone,” the embassy said in a statement.
For its part, the Ark project reported on Wednesday that Azerbaijani police officers had been conducting night raids on residential buildings where Russians reside, in some cases using force to interrogate them about the legality of their stay.
The Ark project also reported that Russian citizens had been summoned to migration offices at late hours, without being given the opportunity to postpone their appointments, in order to allow law enforcement officers to identify visa violations. It also stated it would provide emergency legal assistance to Russian citizens facing such circumstances.
In Moscow, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday that Russians should “carefully consider the current situation” before visiting Azerbaijan, and noted that authorities in Baku had not granted consular access to Russians arrested in recent days, according to state-owned news agency TASS.
However, seeking to downplay the deterioration in Russian-Azerbaijani relations, Zakharova also stated on Wednesday that Moscow and Baku continue to have a “strategic alliance”, and accused outside “forces” of seeking to disrupt the two countries’ bilateral relations, TASS reported.
Tensions between Russia and Azerbaijan have rapidly escalated in recent days since two Azerbaijani citizens died under unclear circumstances, and over 50 were arrested during a police raid in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg on Saturday. Since then, law enforcement authorities in Azerbaijan and Russia have engaged in tit-for-tat arrests in a series of high-profile raids, including at the offices of Sputnik Azerbaijan, a Kremlin-backed news agency.
On Tuesday, Azerbaijani media outlet Minval published a leaked note allegedly written by Russian military captain Dmitry Paladichuk, in which he takes responsibility for transmitting the final order to shoot down Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243, a passenger jet that crashed in Kazakhstan last December, killing 38 people. Although Vladimir Putin issued an apology for the incident, his refusal to acknowledge Russian responsibility triggered a diplomatic fallout at the time.