Why are ties between Azerbaijan and Russia fraying?

In 2001, a antheral was stabbed to decease adjacent a lakeside edifice successful Yekaterinburg, an municipality centre successful Russia’s Ural Mountains region.

With his dying breath, helium whispered the names of his alleged killers to the police, section media claimed.

The antheral and his presumed murderers were taste Azeris, Turkic-speaking Muslims whose families fled to Russia successful the 1990s aft the warfare successful Nagorno-Karabakh, an Azeri portion dominated by taste Armenians.

But it took Russian authorities 24 years to place and detain the presumed suspects – adjacent though they ran the edifice and ne'er went into hiding.

Two alleged suspects died portion being rounded up connected Friday. One suffered a “heart attack” portion the different suspect’s origin of decease “is being established”, according to Russian prosecutors.

They besides purported that the suspects were portion of “a transgression group” allegedly progressive successful different murders and the merchantability of counterfeit intoxicant that killed 44 radical successful 2021.

The prosecutors provided nary answers arsenic to wherefore the presumed “criminals” were astatine ample for truthful agelong – and did not elaborate connected the seemingly brutal mode successful which they were detained.

The deaths triggered a diplomatic tempest that whitethorn lend to a tectonic displacement successful the strategical South Caucasus region, Russia’s erstwhile stamping ground, wherever Azerbaijan won Nagorno-Karabakh backmost successful 2020, and Turkiye is regaining its centuries-old clout.

Azerbaijan slams Russia’s ‘unacceptable violence’

The spat has truthful acold resulted successful the apprehension of 2 Russian quality officers successful Azerbaijan, the shutdown of a Kremlin-funded media outlet there, and the cancellation of “cultural events” sponsored by Moscow.

Russian constabulary and quality officers utilized “unacceptable violence” that killed 2 brothers, Ziyaddin Safarov and Gusein Safarov, and near their relatives severely injured, Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said connected Saturday.

One of the injured men reportedly said masked officers began breaking his beforehand doorway astatine dawn, frightening his children.

The officers “turned the location upside down and kept beating america for an hr without asking anything”, Mohammed Safarov told the MediaAzNews website.

He said his aged begetter was besides beaten and electrocuted for hours and claimed they were some requested to “volunteer” to combat Russia’s warfare successful Ukraine.

Other Azeri media outlets published photos of bruises and wounds the men claimed were caused by Russian officers.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said connected Monday, successful effect to a question astir Azerbaijan’s reactions, “We sincerely regret specified decisions”.

He added, “We judge that everything that’s happening (in Yekaterinburg) is related to the enactment of instrumentality enforcement agencies, and this cannot and should not beryllium a crushed for specified a reaction.”

But Emil Mustafayev, a governmental expert based successful Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, said the incidental highlighted a xenophobic strain successful Russia.

“The sidesplitting of Azeris is simply a nexus successful the concatenation of tendentious authorities wherever taste minorities are utilized arsenic a lightning rod,” helium said. “This is not conscionable a tragedy, this is simply a grounds of a heavy sickness of the Russian society.”

The Azeri diaspora successful Russia is astatine slightest 2 cardinal strong, but they look discrimination, constabulary brutality and hatred attacks.

“The Kremlin has agelong agone mastered a instrumentality – erstwhile home dissent is connected the rise, determination is simply a request to power attraction to ‘the enemies from within’, beryllium that Ukrainians, Tajiks, Uzbeks or, similar now, Azeris,” Mustafayev added.

The Kremlin uses authorities propaganda, constabulary brutality and the taciturn support of apical officials to make an ambiance of unit against migrants that is “seen arsenic normal, arsenic inevitable”, helium said.

Back successful the 1990s, Azeri migrants astir monopolised effect commercialized and mini-bus proscription successful Russian municipality centres.

Many inactive tally countless shops selling vegetables and flowers.

“We are the boogeymen, cops ever request to cheque our documents and request nary excuse to harass america and telephone america names adjacent aft they spot my Russian passport,” an taste Azeri proprietor of a angiosperm store adjacent a large railway presumption successful Moscow told Al Jazeera, connected information of anonymity.

Until the aboriginal 2000s, the Azeris “undoubtedly were the fig one” most-hated taste number successful Russia, until the accomplishment of labour migrants from Russia’s North Caucasus and ex-Soviet Central Asia, said Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany’s Bremen University.

Since then, immoderate ultra-nationalists and skinheads who considered Azeris their main enemies joined instrumentality enforcement agencies, helium added.

“So, the cruelty successful Yekaterinburg whitethorn person been caused by” the decades-old hatred, Mitrokhin told Al Jazeera.

Strained ties

Other geopolitical factors contributed to anti-Azeri sentiments successful Russia.

In 2020, Azerbaijan enactment an end to the seemingly unsolvable governmental deadlock implicit Nagorno-Karabakh.

“The occurrence undoubtedly became imaginable acknowledgment to Turkiye’s subject aid,” Alisher Ilkhamov, caput of Central Asia Due Diligence, a deliberation vessel successful London, told Al Jazeera.

Baku bought precocious Turkish-made Bayraktar drones that could easy onslaught ample groups of Armenian and separatist soldiers, unneurotic with their trenches, tanks and trucks.

An Azeri-Turkish confederation emerged, “allowing Baku to get escaped of Moscow’s obtrusive ‘peacekeeping’ ngo and depriving it of a accidental to manipulate the Azeri-Armenian struggle to support some [Azerbaijan and Armenia] successful its governmental orbit”, helium said.

The confederation tarnished Moscow’s clout successful South Caucasus, portion Baku sympathised with Kyiv successful the Russian-Ukrainian war, helium said.

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev besides accused Russia of obstructing an probe into the downing of an Azeri rider level implicit Chechnya past December.

The level was seemingly deed by panicking Russian aerial defence forces during a Ukrainian drone onslaught connected Grozny, Chechnya’s administrative capital.

Aliyev besides refused to instrumentality portion successful the May 9 parade connected Moscow’s iconic Red Square to commemorate Russia’s relation successful defeating Nazi Germany successful 1945.

Baku fiercely resists the Kremlin’s run to forcibly enlist Azeri labour migrants to articulation Russia’s warfare effort successful Ukraine.

Ilkhamov said the convulsive sting successful Yekaterinburg became portion of the Kremlin’s efforts to “frighten the Azeri assemblage successful Russia”.