The former head of the Azerbaijani diaspora in Yekaterinburg, Shahin Shikhlinsky, was sentenced to 22 years in a maximum-security prison colony. Six other Azerbaijani-born individuals received sentences ranging from 10 to 20 years.
Shakhin Shikhlinsky is accused of organizing two murders and leading an ethnic criminal group in the Sverdlovsk region in the 2000s. He denies all charges. His accomplices—the five Safarov brothers and Shujayaddin Rajabov—were also sentenced to lengthy prison terms.
As a reminder, in the summer of 2025, the arrest of Azerbaijani-born individuals in Yekaterinburg, during which two brothers died, led to a deterioration in relations between Moscow and Baku. All those arrested were charged with organizing contract killings. They denied the charges.
Shahin Shikhlinsky was arrested on July 1, 2025. According to investigators, the car his son was driving accidentally struck a security officer.
This followed a large-scale operation on June 27, 2025, in Yekaterinburg, during which the Safarov brothers and other Azerbaijani citizens and individuals of Azerbaijani descent suspected of involvement in previous crimes were detained. Some were tortured, resulting in the deaths of two.
Following this, the Prosecutor General's Office of Azerbaijan opened a criminal investigation into the torture and murder of Azerbaijani citizens and individuals of Azerbaijani descent. Following these events, persecution of Azerbaijani diaspora leaders in Russia has reportedly increased.
