Journalists learned the background of two Russians detained in Azerbaijan

Two of the Russians detained in Baku in connection with an organized crime case were IT specialists in Russia and arrived in Azerbaijan no later than autumn 2022.

As "Kavkazsky Uzel" reported, on June 30, law enforcement agencies of Azerbaijan conducted a search in the office of the Russian agency "Sputnik Azerbaijan" and announced the detention of two people, calling them undercover agents of the Russian special services. Today, the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported that two employees have been arrested, and five more are under criminal prosecution in cases of fraud, illegal entrepreneurship and property laundering. Also today, Azerbaijani security forces reported the detention of two groups of Russians suspected of drug trafficking and cybercrime.

Journalists identified two Russian IT specialists in the video with those detained in Azerbaijan. One of them is 40-year-old Anton Drachev, who previously headed IT developments at the hedge fund Red Star Asset Management, and then became a co-founder of the online dry cleaner Airo. Venture funds of MTS and T-Investments invested in Drachev's startup, the Telegram channel "Beware, News" notes.

Also among those detained was 30-year-old developer Dmitry Bezugly, a graduate of the St. Petersburg ITMO, a former employee of VKontakte and Yandex. “What they were doing in Azerbaijan is unknown,” the channel notes.

Journalists found out that Bezugly left Russia in the fall of 2022 and joined the chats of the so-called “relocants” - IT specialists who left Russia with the start of mobilization. Drachev at about the same time, at the end of 2022, began flying regularly to Azerbaijan, and before September 2023, he flew to Iran once1.

The Sabail District Court of Baku is choosing a preventive measure for the detained Russians today; the investigation has requested the arrest of eight people, Azertaj reports.

The detentions of Russians in Azerbaijan followed the mass detentions of ethnic Azerbaijanis in Yekaterinburg. Two of them, Guseyn and Ziyaddin Safarov, died, experts in Baku called blunt force trauma as the cause of their death, while the Russian side called a heart attack the cause of death. Several more detainees in Yekaterinburg were hospitalized with injuries and reported torture.

Relations between Moscow and Baku have noticeably worsened after an Azerbaijan Airlines plane with 67 people on board crashed in Kazakhstan on December 25, 2024, flying from Baku to Grozny. More details about this can be found in the "Caucasian Knot" reference "Baku-Grozny Air Crash" and in the article "Geopolitical Confrontation: What Led to the Crash of the AZAL Plane".

In February, at the request of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, the activities of the Russian House in Baku were terminated, then the representative office of the Russia Today media group was liquidated. In May, Azerbaijan called Russia the organizer of a cyberattack on its media in connection with these events.

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