A Russian -neighboring country is distanced from Moscow. Assuming Russian spies were arrested in the local editorial of Sputnik
Ilham Aliev and Vladimir Putin: Maxim Shipenkov / AFP / Profimedia
The Azeră police searched the headquarters in Azerbaijan on Monday of the official Russian Sputnik press agency, a new illustration of the streams between Baku and Russia, AFP reports.
The Azerle authorities closed the Sputnik offices in Azerbaijan in February in a wave of repression against the foreign average. However, according to information that appeared in the local press, Sputnik continued his activities in this country in the South Caucasus.
The Ministry of Interior Azer indicated that law enforcement carried on Monday “an operation and research” at the SPUTNIK headquarters, without providing more details.
The Azer Minval website said that two alleged Russian intelligence agents, who would have activated “undercover” within the Sputnik branch in Azerbaijan, were arrested.
“We worry about our journalists,” the spokesman for Russian diplomacy, Maria Zaharova, quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency, who is part of the same media group with Sputnik, reacted. The Russian Embassy in Baku contacted the Azer authorities after this search, Zaharova said.
In parallel, the public channel of the Azer Azetv television broadcast a show with a critical content to Moscow, in which the political repression in Russia was denounced, and Russian President Vladimir Putin was compared to the Soviet dictator Iosif Stalin.
Relations between Baku and Moscow are going through a crisis from December's collapse of a line of line of the Azerbaijan Airlines, Baku accusing Moscow of breaking the aircraft, and then tried to mask the facts.
Recently, Azerbaijan denounced the death of two of his citizens during a police raid in Ekaterinburg (Ural), in Russia.
In this context, the Ministry of Culture of Azerbaijan canceled all the cultural events related to Russia on Sunday, invoking “systematic acts of violence” towards the Azeri community in the Russian Federation from Russian security services.
