Brotherly to bruising. Russia and Azerbaijan swap raids in spiraling diplomatic feud after two men die in Yekaterinburg

What happened

On June 27, Russian security forces detained dozens of people of Azerbaijani descent in the major Urals city of Yekaterinburg. The operation was officially linked to a long-running investigation into murders and attempted murders allegedly committed by an “ethnic criminal group” between 2001 and 2011.

During the raids, Guseyn and Ziyaddin Safarov, two brothers who owned a local café, died. Russia’s Investigative Committee later stated that the preliminary cause of one death was heart failure, while the cause of the second is still being established. However, relatives and Azerbaijani officials have alleged the men were tortured.

Other detainees subsequently appeared in court with visible injuries. One man, Ayaz Safarov, had severe bruising on his face; another, Mazahir Safarov, said he suffered broken ribs. At least three other men were reportedly hospitalised following the detentions, with one, Kamal Safarov, said to be in intensive care.

Oxu.Az later published photos of two heavily bruised Azeri men who were released after questioning.

The Yekaterinburg court has since placed three men, Mazahir, Ayaz and Akif Safarov, in pre-trial detention. According to the local news outlet E1, which broke many details of the story, as many as 15 people are being investigated in connection with the case, including nine brothers from the Safarov family. Legal proceedings are also underway for at least three other named suspects: Akhliman Ganjiyev, Shahin Lalayev and Bakir Safarov.

The initial response

The events provoked a furious response in Azerbaijan.

On June 30, police in the capital, Baku, raided the office of Sputnik, a Russian state news agency. Officials justified the operation by claiming the agency had continued to work despite its local branch being formally shut down in February.

Azerbaijani media later reported that two employees, executive director Igor Kartavykh and editor-in-chief Yevgeny Belousov, had been detained, alleging they were agents for the FSB, Russia’s main security service, working under journalistic cover.

In another apparently retaliatory move, Azerbaijan’s food safety authority announced it had impounded and ordered the destruction of a 639-kilogram shipment of contaminated onion rings from the major Russian food producer, Miratorg. The tactic mirrors the one used by Russia itself to destroy banned Western food imports following the international sanctions over its 2014 annexation of Crimea.

Meanwhile, Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry called the FSB raid “unacceptable violence.” In protest, Azerbaijan cancelled all planned concerts and exhibitions involving Russian state and private institutions and called off planned visit to Moscow by a parliamentary delegation. 

Russia countered that the detained individuals are Russian citizens and that the raids were part of a legitimate criminal investigation.

Following the Sputnik raid, Russia’s foreign ministry in turn summoned the Azerbaijani ambassador to protest the “unfriendly actions” and the “illegal detention of Russian journalists”.

More violence and arrests

The diplomatic feud between Russia and Azerbaijan has escalated in the hours since this report was first published

A Baku court has now formally arrested local Sputnik branch’s director, Igor Kartavykh, and editor-in-chief, Yevgeny Belousov, for four months on charges of fraud, illegal entrepreneurship, and money laundering. Local media had previously described the men as “FSB agents” working under cover.

The IT gang

Azerbaijan’s Interior Ministry announced the special operation against two “gangs from Russia.” In an apparent response to FSB brutality in Yekaterinburg, local media distributed photos of the detained Russian men with severe bruising, bloodied clothing and facial injuries. They’ve been forced to do a perp walk on bent knees on humiliating video footage.

Later, media investigations have revealed the arrested men to be overwhelmingly programmers, entrepreneurs, and freelancers who had relocated to Azerbaijan after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The identified men include:

• Anton Drachev, 41, the founder of a Moscow-based IT startup Airo, whose investors include funds from MTS, a telecom giant, and T-Bank (formerly Tinkoff Bank; its founder, the mercurial entrepreneur Oleg Tinkov, denounced the Ukraine invasion, was labeled a “foreign agent,” and claimed he was forced to sell his bank stake “for kopecks”).
• Dmitry Bezugly, 30, a programmer who previously worked at Russian tech giants VK and Yandex and had been living in Dubai.
• Valery Dulov, 38, a developer and former engineer for Russian state oil companies Gazpromneft and Rosneft.
• Alexei Vasilchenko, 25, a psychologist from St. Petersburg who was reportedly visiting his friend, fellow detainee Valery Dulov.
• Sergei Sofronov, 23, a programmer who worked for an AI startup and left Russia after the 2022 mobilisation.
• Igor Zabolotskikh, 40, a former IT entrepreneur who was previously prosecuted in Russia for organising illegal casinos.

Haqqin.az reports they’ve been charged with drug trafficking from Iran, selling drugs online and cyber fraud. Eight of the brutalised men were taken to court to be placed under arrest.

Meanwhile, the Russian crackdown in the Urals continues to widen. Today, security forces in Yekaterinburg detained Shahin Shikhlinski, the head of the “Azerbaijan-Ural” diaspora organization. Officers smashed the car window to make the arrest. Shikhlinski, who had been briefly detained on June 27, was taken to the Investigative Committee for questioning as a witness.

What happened later

On July 2, Russia’s Investigative Committee announced that one of the Yekaterinburg detainees had confessed and “incriminated his accomplices.” That same day, a court in Yekaterinburg formally arrested two more suspects in the case, Kamal Safarov and Aziz Abasov, both of whom had been in intensive care since their initial detention.

The Kremlin commented on the crisis, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov framing the initial Yekaterinburg raid as a legitimate operation to solve crimes committed “also against citizens of Azerbaijan” and blaming Kyiv for stoking tensions. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova issued a travel warning to Russian citizens, advising them to “take into account the current situation” when visiting Azerbaijan.

The Russian Embassy in Baku and Kovcheg, an independent service assisting Russians abroad who left the country amid the invasion of Ukraine, mentioned multiple complaints from Russian citizens about document checks by Azerbaijani police, including night-time checks, with some alleging that they and their family members were subjected to physical violence.

On July 3, VCHK-OGPU, an anonymous Telegram channels with law enforcement sources, published a video of the arrest of Vagif Suleymanov (Vagif Bakinsky or Diplomat), a prominent Azerbaijani “thief-in-law”. The video shows a masked officer in tactical gear pinning a man to the ground, while a person off-camera asks him: “Are you a criminal authority? A thief? Are you a thief?” Suleymanov refused to answer “such questions.” Other media claim that he will be deported to Azerbaijan.

Update on July 3. This article has been updated for the second time to include details of further retaliatory actions.