13:56, 10 October 2025

The court refused to release Shahin Shykhlinski

Shahin Shykhlinski. Photo: https://www.facebook.com/report.az.ru belongs to Meta, a company banned in Russia.

The Sverdlovsk Regional Court remanded Shahin Shykhlinski, head of the Azerbaijan-Ural organization, in custody, rejecting an appeal to reduce his pretrial detention.

As reported by the " Caucasian Knot ," Shahin Shykhlinski, chairman of the Sverdlovsk public national-cultural organization "Azerbaijan-Ural" and former head of the Azerbaijani diaspora in the Urals, was detained and taken to Yekaterinburg . The Verkh-Isetsky District Court of Yekaterinburg extended his pretrial detention until December 30. Before his arrest, he appealed to President Ilham Aliyev for assistance and indicated that he was staying in the guest house at the Azerbaijani embassy in Moscow.

Shahin Shykhlinski, the head of the Azerbaijan-Ural organization (also referred to in the media as Shikhlinsky and Shykhlinskiy, - Caucasian Knot note), was detained by security forces in Yekaterinburg on the evening of July 1. According to his son, he was taken to the Investigative Committee for questioning as a witness. That night, security forces released him after questioning him in the Safarov case. On July 16, a court arrested Shahin Shykhlinski's son on charges of assaulting a security officer: on the day of the elder Shykhlinski's arrest, his son, Mutvala Shykhlinski, was driving a Gelenvagen and struck a special forces soldier. Mutvala denies the charges, and an appellate court upheld his remand.

The Sverdlovsk Regional Court found no grounds to uphold the appeal of a lawyer who had requested a more lenient pretrial detention for Shahin Shykhlinski, chairman of the Sverdlovsk public national-cultural organization "Azerbaijan-Ural" and former head of the Azerbaijani diaspora. He is charged with attempted murder (Article 3, Section 2, Article 105 of the Russian Criminal Code). The court upheld the decision of the Verkh-Isetsky District Court of Yekaterinburg and upheld Shykhlinski's arrest until December 30, Kommersant reports.

According to the case file on the court's website, Shykhlinsky's appeal was filed on October 9, and the hearing was scheduled for today, which was held behind closed doors.

Relations between Moscow and Baku significantly deteriorated after the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane with 67 people on board en route from Baku to Grozny in Kazakhstan on December 25, 2024. More details can be found in the Caucasian Knot report " Baku-Grozny Plane Crash " and in the article " Geopolitical Confrontation: What Led to the AZAL Plane Crash ."

The latest deterioration in relations between the two countries has been marked by ethnic raids in Russia and retaliatory detentions of Russians in Azerbaijan. Baku accuses Russian authorities of extrajudicial killings of Azerbaijanis, and footage of the brutal detention of Russians in Baku appears to be a demonstrative response to Moscow's actions, according to the "Caucasian Knot" report " Crisis in Relations between Azerbaijan and Russia ."

On October 9, the first meeting in a long time between Russian and Azerbaijani leaders Vladimir Putin and Ilham Aliyev took place in Dushanbe. Two missiles fired by Russia's air defense system did not directly hit the AZAL plane, but exploded several meters away, Putin stated during the meeting.

On October 10, it became known that the executive director of Sputnik Azerbaijan, Igor Kartavykh, and one of the Azerbaijanis arrested in Russia had been released ; the decision to do so had been agreed upon before the meeting between Putin and Aliyev in Dushanbe.

The preconditions for resolving the diplomatic crisis between Russia and Azerbaijan were Moscow's admission of responsibility for the AZAL plane crash and the payment of compensation. Putin's statement on this issue in Dushanbe paved the way for a normalization of relations in the interests of both sides, analysts noted.

Author: Caucasian Knot