Belousov clarified that he had already arrived in Moscow.
He thanked Russian diplomats for their “help and support.”
Earlier, the representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, announced the departure from Baku of Belousov, who was released from custody.
At the same time, it became known about the release in the Russian Federation of the head of the Azerbaijani diaspora in Voronezh, entrepreneur Yusif Khalilov, who was allegedly detained for bribery.
The Azerbaijani publication Minval called what was happening “untying the knots” between Baku and Moscow thanks to the diplomatic efforts of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
“The arrest of the head of the local diaspora in Russian realities is an extraordinary event. As a rule, the head of the diaspora not only has authority among his compatriots. Local authorities, with whom he necessarily has good connections, resolve issues with him. And if such a person is detained, this is not so much a crime as it is politics,” the media writes about Khalilov.
Meduza draws attention to the fact that on October 10, the day after Aliyev’s meeting in Dushanbe with the illegitimate Russian President Vladimir Putin, the executive director of Sputnik Azerbaijan, Igor Kartavykh, was released from custody in Azerbaijan, and Russia (according to Kommersant) released the former director of the Citizen Satire Theater from behind bars. Azerbaijan Mamedali Agayeva. The decision on this was allegedly made by Putin and Aliyev.
Context
Relations between Baku and Moscow worsened after the accident of an Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane, which crashed on December 25, 2024 near Aktau (Kazakhstan). Then 38 people died. According to Ukrainian and Azerbaijani sources, the plane was shot down by a Russian anti-aircraft missile near Grozny. Minval published evidence of the shelling of the plane on the orders of the Russian Ministry of Defense.
On June 27, 2025, the Russian FSB conducted raids on the houses of Azerbaijanis in Yekaterinburg and detained about 50 people. The raids were allegedly carried out as part of the investigation into the death of Azerbaijani merchant Yunis Pashayev in 2001. Two Azerbaijanisbrothers Ziyaddin and Huseyn Safarov, died after a visit from security forces. The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation stated that one of them died “as a result of heart failure”, the cause of death of the second is “being established”. An examination carried out in Baku showed that the brothers were tortured, and the cause of death was shock from the injuries they received.
July 1 General Prosecutor's Office of Azerbaijan opened a criminal case on the fact of torture and deliberate murder with particular cruelty in the Russian Federation of citizens of Azerbaijan and people of Azerbaijani origin. They noted that, in addition to the two dead brothers, there were other detained Azerbaijanis, “who received varying degrees of bodily injury as a result of the same torture.”
On the same day, according to Azerbaijani media, members of two organized criminal groups suspected of drug transit from Iran, online trading and cybercrime were detained in Baku.
