The Ryazan Regional Court sentenced a native of Azerbaijan, Mehriban Lukinskaya, to five years in prison under the article on confidential cooperation with a foreign state (Article 275.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). This criminal article, which provides for three to eight years of imprisonment, was introduced in Russia in 2022. Details of the case are classified.

Azerbaijani MP Mushfig Jafarov has accused Russia of deliberately pressuring the country. According to him, raids and murders of Azerbaijanis in Russia are not accidental.

The Russian Prosecutor General's Office has filed a lawsuit against former Makhachkala mayor Said Amirov, who is serving a life sentence, and 18 of his relatives, demanding the return of illegally appropriated assets worth 2 billion rubles to state ownership.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian arrived in Armenia on August 18 for a two-day official visit. In Yerevan, he held a one-on-one meeting with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, after which the talks continued in an expanded format. The parties summed up the results at a joint press conference.

The leader of the opposition Popular Front Party of Azerbaijan Ali Karimli accused the country's President Ilham Aliyev of establishing "harsh authoritarianism". He spoke about the systematic persecution of the opposition and independent journalists.

Zarema Musayeva decided to appeal the sentence in the new criminal case after reading the reasoning of the decision of the Shali City Court of Chechnya. On August 6, she was sentenced to 3 years and 11 months in a penal colony on charges of disrupting the activities of a correctional institution.

A new criminal case has been opened against a native of Chechnya, Said-Akhmed Visangiriyev, who previously reported torture in penal colony No. 3 in the Vladimir region. He is charged with assault.

The health condition of Crimean Tatar activist Akim Bekirov, sentenced to 14 years in prison on charges of involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir, raises serious concerns.