Baku Releases Sputnik Azerbaijan Director Under House Arrest

The director of Sputnik Azerbaijan, Igor Kartavykh, has been released in Baku, Orda.kz reports.

Russia, in turn, released one of the Azerbaijani citizens detained in the Russian Federation, Putin’s aide Yury Ushakov told Kommersant, according to ASTRA.

Former director of the Satire Theater Mamedali Agayev was released in exchange for the release of Sputnik Azerbaijan journalist Igor Kartavykh, a Kommersant source reported.

The head of Sputnik Azerbaijan has been placed under house arrest instead of pre-trial detention, said Dmitry Kiselyov, director general of the Rossiya Segodnya media group.

These developing reports follow Putin's talks with Aliyev, where he acknowledged that Russian missiles exploded near the AZAL airplane that crashed in Aqtau, Kazakhstan. The flight from Baku to Grozny crashed near Aqtau Airport on December 25, 2024, killing 38 of 67 people on board, including six citizens from Kazakhstan.

Before the meeting, relations between Moscow and Baku had been strained, with law enforcement agencies in both countries detaining each other’s citizens in separate cases.