After Putin's meeting with Aliyev, Russian propagandist released from house arrest in Azerbaijan

on October 10, the executive director of the Russian propaganda agency Sputnik Azerbaijan, Igor Kartavykh, was transferred from a pre-trial detention center to house arrest after meeting with the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and the Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev the day before. This was reported by Russian media.

The transfer of the Kartavykhs to house arrest in Baku was announced by the general director of the Russian state holding Rossiya Segodnya, to which Sputnik belongs, propagandist Dmitry Kiselev.

At the same time, Putin's foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said that the final decision to release the Kartavykhs was made on the eve of the meeting between the Russian dictator and the Azerbaijani president on October 9.

Meanwhile, in response to the release of the Kartavykhs, the Russian side released one of the Azerbaijani citizens detained in Russia, the former director of the Moscow Satire Theater (1992-2021), Mammadali Agayev, reports Azerbaijani resource Minval Politika.

Agayev was detained by Russian security forces in late August. The Russian Prosecutor's Office claims that he and his accomplices allegedly stole 20 million rubles (about UAH 6 million) using fake invoices for work performed. The former theater director faced up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to 1 million rubles (~300,000 UAH).

It is not yet known whether other Azerbaijani citizens who abstain in the Russian Federation, and the Russians, arrested by the Azerbaijani side.

• On October 9, Putin, at a meeting with Aliyev, for the first time admitted that the crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) plane in December 2024 was caused by Russian air defense missiles, but began to complain about allegedly Ukrainian drones and alleged malfunctioning of Russian weapons.
• In addition to this disaster, the new meeting of Putin and Aliyev took place after deterioration of relations between Baku and Moscow over the deaths of representatives of the Azerbaijani diaspora as a result of the actions of Russian security forces in June, as well as after two Russian attacks on the oil depot of the Azerbaijani state company SOCAR in Ukraine in August.