Diplomatic tensions are growing between Russia and Azerbaijan amid the high-profile deaths of the Safarov brothers after being tortured by FSB officers. It all began on June 27 in Yekaterinburg – the city saw mass detentions and arrests of people from Azerbaijan in connection with the 2001-2011 contract killings. Two key suspects died after being detained, with signs of brutal beatings found on their bodies. For more details, watch our video.

Access to Azerbaijani news sites has been restricted in Russia. It is noted that problems with access are observed in Moscow, Astrakhan, Volgograd, St. Petersburg, Vologda, Chelyabinsk and other regions.

On May 2, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) published its annual report on global press freedom. For the first time since 2002, when the annual ranking began, the press freedom situation was rated as difficult worldwide. The report's authors believe economic pressure is the main factor behind the global decline in the Press Freedom Index.

On the night of May 1, the Russian army struck Ukraine with five Iskander-M ballistic missiles and 170 drones of various types. The Odessa, Kharkiv, Sumy, Donetsk, and Kyiv regions were damaged. In Odessa, two people were killed and 15 were injured. Several fires broke out, and multi-story residential and private buildings, a supermarket, a school, and cars were

On June 27, in Yekaterinburg, officers from the FSB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Russian National Guard conducted a joint raid on apartments housing Azerbaijanis. Two of those detained during the raid—brothers Ziyaddin and Huseyn Safarov—died from beatings, sparking a diplomatic conflict between Russia and Azerbaijan.

On the night of June 26, an explosion occurred near the North Caucasus Police College on Mutaliyev Street in the Ingush city of Nazran. There were no injuries.

On June 25, FSB officers detained Magomed-Sultan Magomedov, the State Secretary of Dagestan (pictured left). He is suspected of embezzlement and the illegal privatization of the state-owned enterprise Dagnefteprodukt. The stolen property was confiscated from the official, and he was dismissed from his post, but not arrested.

On June 23, the Cherkessk City Court found 45-year-old disabled Jehovah's Witness Vladimir Fomin guilty of participating in and recruiting members of an extremist group (Article 282.2 of the Russian Criminal Code) and sentenced him to four and a half years in a general regime penal colony. According to the "Jehovah's Witnesses: The Legal Situation in Russia" project, this is the 13th Jehovah's Witness in Karachay-Cherkessia to be prosecuted for their religious beliefs.

On June 17, the London Review Bookshop in England hosted a presentation of Lana Estemirova's book "Please Live: The Chechen Wars, My Mother, and Me," about human rights activist Natalia Estemirova. The book was published in English. The author hopes that it will eventually be translated into Russian, but first—and Lana emphasizes this is a matter of principle—she plans to publish her memoirs in Ukrainian.

On June 14, following Israeli strikes on a uranium enrichment center in Iran, Rospotrebnadzor (the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing) instituted round-the-clock radioactive monitoring in southern Dagestan. No excess of natural gamma background levels was recorded.