Russian police have arrested the head of the Azerbaijani diaspora in Yekaterinburg, Shahin Shikhlinski, as part of an investigation into the attempted murder of a police officer. Shikhlinski’s son, Mutvali, has also been arrested as part of the same investigation.
An Azerbaijani activist in Russia told the Yekaterinburg-based news outlet E1.ru that Shahin Shikhlinski had been hiding in the Azerbaijani embassy in Moscow, but had agreed to surrender to authorities.
The charges stem from when Russian police previously apprehended Shahin Shikhlinski in July. During the fracas, Mutvali Shikhlinski allegedly backed his car into a police officer, causing him to hit his head on the asphalt. Shahin Shikhlinski was arrested at the time but then subsequently released.
In mid-July, Mutvali Shikhlinski was arrested, and shortly after, Shahin Shikhlinski was declared wanted.
The initial arrest of Shahin Shikhlinski was connected to a decades-old murder case, which he said he had already been held and interrogated about years prior.
In addition to Shahin Shikhlinski’s July arrest, Russian police conducted raids on dozens of other Azerbaijanis in Yekaterinburg, which resulted in the deaths of two Azerbaijani brothers.
Baku has said the two were tortured to death by Russian police, which reignited a simmering conflict between Azerbaijan and Russia that began with the downing of an Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) jet in December 2024.
The two sides have since continued tit-for-tat responses, including arrests, deportations, and other punitive measures.
Amid the ongoing feud, both Russia and Azerbaijan have escalated their respective rhetoric.
The trend continued in recent days, with Russian MP Konstantin Zatulin suggesting that Moscow could close existing plane and train routes with Azerbaijan if Baku proceeded with the practice of ‘renaming Russian cities’.
Zatulin was referring to a recent incident in which Azerbaijan demolished a sculpture of Russian–Armenian painter Ivan Aivazovsky in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Describing the removal of the sculpture, the Russian state-run media outlet TASS published an article using the word Stepanakert to refer to Nagorno-Karabakh’s capital, which is called Khankendi in Azerbaijani.
In response, the Azerbaijani state-run media outlet Azertac wrote an official complaint, noting that TASS had opted to use the name Khankendi in previous articles earlier in July.
Azertac then threatened that Azerbaijani media would start referring to Russian cities by their historical non-Russian names if Moscow did end the practice and ‘correct the mistake’.
TASS ultimately revised the original article three times, changing the use of wording of the headline from Stepanakert, to Nagorno-Karabakh, to just Karabakh.
Javid Agha
