Azerbaijani state TV showed on Tuesday (July 1) footage of detained group of Russians, said to be arrested on suspicion of drug trafficking and cybercrime. The videos showing them being handcuffed, made to march in line, and being bundled into police vans.

Russia summoned the Azerbaijani ambassador to Moscow on Tuesday to receive an official protest over "the latest unfriendly actions of Baku, deliberate steps by the Azerbaijani side to dismantle bilateral relations," the Russian foreign ministry said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the journalists' arrests were an "extremely emotional reaction" by Azerbaijan, and Russia aimed to negotiate their release.

The chain of events began last week when investigators in Yekaterinburg, a Russian industrial city, conducted scores of raids against ethnic Azerbaijanis whom they suspected of complicity in historic unsolved crimes, including serial killings.

Russian investigators initially said Ziyaddin had died of heart failure and did not give a cause for death for Huseyn. The bodies of the men arrived in Baku on Monday evening.

Adalat Hasanov, head of forensic examination at Azerbaijan's health ministry, said fresh post-mortems showed the brothers both died of "post-traumatic shock" due to severe beatings.

Russian examiners' assertion that Ziyaddin, who was born in 1970, died of heart failure, was a "blatant falsehood," Hasanov told reporters.

Azerbaijan and Russia have traded barbs since the men's deaths, with Baku accusing Russian police of carrying out extrajudicial killings "on ethnic grounds," an allegation Moscow has rejected. Russian investigators said all the six men arrested held Russian passports.

The Azerbaijani police raid targeting Russian journalists in Baku was conducted at the office of Sputnik Azerbaijan, the local branch of the state-run Rossiya Segodnya news agency.

An Azerbaijani source said two people had been placed under formal arrest and five others were still under investigation. The case relates to alleged fraud, illegal entrepreneurship and money laundering, the source said.

DESCRIPCIÓN DE IMÁGENES

BAKU, AZERBAIJAN (JULY 1, 2025) (AZ TV - Access all)

1. VARIOUS GROUP OF DETAINED RUSSIAN NATIONALS, SOME WITH SWOLLEN FACES, SOME WITH BLOOD ON THEIR FACES, HELD BY AZERBAIJANI POLICE, LOADED INTO BUS AND POLICE VAN