Russians located in Azerbaijan have increasingly reported that they are being subjected to nighttime raids by police officers, the Russian non-profit organisation Kovcheg said on Thursday.
The organisation has been forced abroad by the Kremlin and works to assist Russian nationals who live outside the country and are against the full-scale war in Ukraine.
The reports came amidst a sharp increase of tensions between Moscow and Baku following Russian police raids in Yekaterinburg that resulted in the deaths of two ethnic Azerbaijanis.
‘Our subscribers said the police came to them at night and interrogated them, using non-lethal weapons, about the legality of their stay in Azerbaijan’, Kovcheg wrote.
Kovcheg said it would assist with ‘emergency legal advice’ for those caught up in the sweeps, and urged Russians in Azerbaijan to make copies of their identification documents, as well as keeping an original on their person at all times.
The reports were corroborated by the Russian Embassy in Azerbaijan, which said on Wednesday that it had received numerous reports from Russian nationals in the country that they had been subjected to document checks by Azerbaijani authorities, some of whom were plainclothes officers.
‘Some of them said they and their family members were subjected to physical violence’, the embassy said.
The feud continues
Amidst the continued unravelling of the relations between Baku and Moscow, Russia has been sending mixed messages, at times adding fuel to the fire and at other times claiming both governments continue to collaborate.
The state-run media outlet TASS, one of the primary news agencies in the country, largely appeared to downplay the feud, saying on Thursday that the prosecutor general’s offices of Russia and Azerbaijan are in ‘regular contact’.
Another article in TASS sought to disprove rumours that Azerbaijanis in Russia had begun to be barred from participating in cultural events.
On the other side, Russia’s Commissioner for Human Rights Tatyana Moskalkova shared a letter she had sent to Azerbaijani authorities complaining about the use of excessive force during the detention of Russian nationals in the country.
On Wednesday, the pro-government Russian media outlet Lenta claimed that Heydar Aliyev Jr., the son of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, was in legal trouble in Russia for tax delinquency.
Lenta alleged that 27-year-old Aliyev Jr. owns an elite property near Moscow valued at around $35 million, and has failed to keep up with his taxes and currently owes ₽945,000 ($12,000).
The claim cannot be independently verified.
Elsewhere, Russian military bloggers and social media influencers continued to make inflammatory statements about Azerbaijan.
Alexei Zhivov, who has more than 100,000 followers on Telegram, claimed that Nagorno-Karabakh is ‘neither Azerbaijani nor Armenian’. Instead, Zhivov argued that because it was conquered by the Russian Empire, it is ‘Russian land’. His comments echo statements from other Russian propagandists in recent days who have made similar claims about the Russian ownership of Azerbaijani territory.
Nate Ostiller
