An Azerbaijani court has sentenced one of eight Russians arrested for money laundering.

A Baku court sentenced Russian citizen Alexander Vaysero to four years in prison, finding him guilty of money laundering.

As reported by the "Caucasian Knot," on July 1, 2025, a Baku court arrested eight Russian citizens detained on charges of drug trafficking and cybercrime. Moscow hopes that Baku will abandon its excessive and unfair harshness toward the detained Russians, stated Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova. On July 16, it was reported that relatives of some of the Russians arrested in Baku were able to see them, and the Russian consul called their conditions of detention good. In October, the detention of eight Russians was again extended, with one complaining of a lack of medical care. In mid-April 2026, the arrested Russians were charged. According to the indictment, those detained in the operation involving drug trafficking from Iran planned to sell the drugs in Baku.

Relations between Moscow and Baku noticeably deteriorated after the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane with 67 people on board in Kazakhstan on December 25, 2024, en route from Baku to Grozny. More details can be found in the "Caucasian Knot" report "Baku-Grozny Flight Crash" and in the article "Geopolitical Confrontation: What the AZAL Plane Crash Led to." Ethnic raids in Russia and retaliatory detentions of Russians in Azerbaijan have become the latest step in the deterioration of relations between the two countries. 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".

Signs of easing tensions in relations between the two countries only appeared in October 2025: the first meeting in a long time between Vladimir Putin and Ilham Aliyev took place on October 9 in Dushanbe, and on October 10, after the meeting, it became known that Sputnik Azerbaijan executive director Igor Kartavykh and one of the Azerbaijanis arrested in Russia had been released. On October 19, Kartavykh flew to Russia. On October 25, the agency's editor-in-chief, Yevgeny Belousov, arrived in Moscow, and on the same day, Yusif Khalilov, a businessman from Voronezh and one of the leaders of the local diaspora, who was arrested in Russia on a bribery case, arrived in Baku.

As a reminder, on April 15, official Baku and Moscow reported on the resolution of the consequences of the AZAL plane crash, including the issue of compensation. The cause of the tragedy has been attributed to an "unintentional action by an air defense system."

The trials of members of the Azerbaijani diaspora in Yekaterinburg and Russian citizens in Baku are being held simultaneously, but the resolution of the issue related to the AZAL plane crash has paved the way for finding mechanisms to free citizens of both countries, analysts in Azerbaijan believe.