A Russian journalist detained in Azerbaijan has been moved from prison to house arrest following talks between Baku and Moscow, Russia’s Kommersant newspaper reported on Friday, in what could signify a thaw in relations between the two countries.
Igor Kartavykh, executive director of Sputnik Azerbaijan, was arrested in June along with several colleagues amid a diplomatic dispute between Moscow and Baku which led to Azerbaijani law enforcement raiding the Sputnik office.
Two sources in the Azerbaijani government confirmed Kartavykh’s release to news agency Reuters. One source said it was not yet clear whether Kartavykh would still face prosecution.
Baku initiated an inquiry into Sputnik Azerbaijan after ordering its parent company, Rossiya Segodnya, to shutter its offices in the South Caucasus country.
Sputnik, a state-owned Russian news agency, is widely regarded as a Kremlin propaganda outlet and has been banned in the EU since February 2022, alongside RT.
Kommersant also reported that an unnamed Azerbaijani national was released from Russian custody in exchange for Kartavykh.
The newspaper later wrote on Telegram that the individual released was Mamedali Agayev, former head of the Moscow Academic Satire Theater, citing an anonymous source.
According to Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov via Kommersant, the move to release the Sputnik Azerbaijan director came just before a scheduled meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on Thursday in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
The pair were set to speak at the Kokhi Somon government residence in Dushanbe during the Moscow-led post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Heads of State Council meeting.
At the meeting, their first since the tragic incident, Putin finally acknowledged Russia’s fault in last December’s downing of an Azerbaijani passenger plane which killed at least 38 people, and promised that Russia would provide compensation for the incident.
The Russian president said that two Russian anti-air missiles had exploded around 10 meters from the plane during a Ukrainian drone attack on Grozny.
The crash strained relations between Moscow and Baku and tensions escalated over the months that followed.
In late June, authorities in Russia arrested a group of ethnic Azerbaijanis during a raid in Yekaterinburg over cold case murder inquiries dating back to the start of the century.
After two of the arrested Azerbaijani citizens were allegedly tortured and killed by Russian police, Baku’s prosecutor general said it launched a criminal investigation into the incident.
Azerbaijan also struck back, raiding the Sputnik Azerbaijan offices and arresting a group of Russian nationals in the country, who showed visible signs of having been beaten in custody when they resurfaced.
Relations deteriorated even further after a series of Russian airstrikes on Azerbaijani energy facilities in Ukraine, which sparked murmurs that Baku would begin considering supplying Ukraine with weapons
In August, Aliyev delivered a strongly-worded statement in opposition to Moscow saying that his country’s entry into the Soviet Union in 1920 was nothing less than a “Russian invasion and occupation.”
However, this week the Azerbaijani leader looked keen to smooth things over with his Russian counterpart, phoning Putin to wish him a happy birthday.
The pair “exchanged views on the current state and prospects of relations between Azerbaijan and Russia,” according to a statement from Aliyev’s office.