A Baku court has arrested two men who fought in the Russian PMC Wagner – Ramil Aliyev and Ismail Hasanov – in a criminal case. They are suspected of mercenarism.
According to the Azerbaijani investigation, Aliyev and Hasanov were convicted in Russia for premeditated murder and other serious and especially serious crimes and sentenced to long-term imprisonment. They were released after signing a contract to participate in the Russian “special operation” in Ukraine as part of the Wagner PMC. Azerbaijani law prohibits citizens of the republic from participating in military operations on the territory of other states. Both defendants were arrested for four months.
Recall that in February 2025, the Azerbaijani authorities sent the Russian side an official notification about the termination of Rossotrudnichestvo’s activities in the country. Baku accused the Russian House project under its control of espionage, calling it a "hotbed of separatism and a nest of espionage."
Tensions in relations between Russia and Azerbaijan arose after a high-profile air crash that occurred in late 2024. On December 25, 2024, an Azerbaijani passenger airliner Embraer 190, flying from Baku to Grozny, crashed near the Kazakh city of Aktau. It is known that there were 67 people on board, of which 42 were citizens of Azerbaijan, 16 were Russian, 6 were Kazakh, and 3 were Kyrgyz. 29 passengers survived.
Moscow hid the reasons for the plane crash for a long time. However, the dominant version was that it came under fire from Russian air defense systems during an attack by Ukrainian drones on the territory of Chechnya. This is also the opinion of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, in connection with which he demanded that Russia admit guilt, punish the perpetrators and pay compensation.
On June 30, 2025, Azerbaijani police raided the editorial office of Sputnik Azerbaijan. As a result, seven people were detained, including the editor-in-chief of the Russian state agency Sputnik Azerbaijan Igor Kartavykh and editor-in-chief Yevgeny Belousov. In response, a number of Azerbaijani businessmen were detained in Russia and ethnic Azerbaijanis were stripped of their citizenship without explanation.
The measures against Sputnik employees followed the forceful actions of Russian law enforcement officers in Yekaterinburg on June 27, as a result of which ethnic Azerbaijanis were killed and many were tortured. A forensic examination in Azerbaijan established that the cause of death of the two Safarov brothers was post-traumatic shock caused by multiple rib fractures and other serious injuries. The Prosecutor General's Office of Azerbaijan has opened a criminal case on the fact of torture and deliberate murder with particular cruelty of two citizens of the country and persons of Azerbaijani origin by Russian law enforcement officers.
