Day: September 7, 2023

Radio Azadliq underwent a leadership transition after the closure, with a new director, Ilkin Mammadov, put in charge of Azadliq’s Prague office – where RFE/RL is also headquartered – in early 2015.

Mammadov’s arrival kickstarted a process of pushing out journalists who produced content critical of the Azerbaijani government – and producing content that followed the government’s agenda, the six journalists allege.

In turn, they say, Mammadov replaced them with journalists more aligned with Azerbaijan’s ruling authorities – including after they challenged management decisions. openDemocracy approached Mammadov for comment but did not receive a response.

Turkhan Karimov, Radio Azadliq’s former social media head, told openDemocracy that he had been fired in June this year – and then replaced by a new social media editor who had previously worked for Azerbaijani government-affiliated channels in the country.

Karimov, who shot to fame after exposing Baku’s corrupt traffic police on film, says his replacement, Mammadsharif Alakbarov, has previously edited films that appeared to glorify Azerbaijan’s 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh – which Azerbaijan won – and praised president Ilham Aliyev.

“After my departure, several journalists were recruited under the leadership of Mammadsharif Alakbarov who didn’t have experience on online media channels but instead had ties to the television networks associated with Azerbaijan’s first lady Mehriban Aliyeva,” Karimov said.

Alakbarov’s Facebook page had contained public posts, seen by openDemocracy, that appeared to support the Azerbaijani government and the Aliyev family’s initiatives in Azerbaijan. His page was deactivated after the allegations against Radio Azadliq first became public on social media.

When contacted, RFE/RL told openDemocracy that Alakbarov had resigned. Alakbarov did not respond to requests for comment from openDemocracy.

Karimov said Mammadov, Alakbarov and Radio Azadliq’s existing editor-in-chief, Zeynal Mammadli, had created a “strategic partnership” that drove personnel and content change at Radio Azadliq.

The corporation said: “RFE/RL makes operational decisions based on a strategic plan, and is guided by how to best reach our audiences with uncensored news.”

Corruption stories

These changes have also meant that Radio Azadliq has since 2016 produced fewer corruption stories that focus on the inordinate wealth accrued by Azerbaijan’s ruling class, Karimov alleged.

He also claimed there had been a move away from partnership with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an international investigative outlet that collaborates with established media to produce and publish stories.

Mammadov, Karimov claimed, “explicitly discouraged” partnership between Radio Azadliq and OCCRP.

“He insisted any cooperation with OCCRP must be pursued outside of regular working hours,” Karimov told openDemocracy, saying there had been a lack of joint projects as a result.

When asked by openDemocracy, OCCRP confirmed it had previously collaborated with Radio Azadliq “a number of years back”, but that the collaboration had lapsed.

“We’re not sure why other than some reporters have said they weren’t given the time they needed to do investigative work,” OCCRP said.

“It also seemed to us that [Radio Azadliq] editorial leadership had little interest in investigative work.”

RFE/RL, however, told us it enjoyed “a productive reporting relationship with OCCRP, and we value our award-winning collaboration”.

Focus on Nagorno-Karabakh

One strand of Radio Azadliq’s coverage has particularly highlighted the changes at RFE/RL, former employees alleged: an excessive focus on Azerbaijan’s 2020 victory against Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh and its aftermath, and a decline in coverage of human rights violations in other parts of Azerbaijan itself.

The victory in Nagorno-Karabakh has been viewed inside Azerbaijan as a justification for the Aliyev regime’s policies, boosting the regime’s image of Azerbaijan’s “military strength”, said Karimov, who accused Azadliq management of “playing to the hand of the Azerbaijani government” by favouring coverage of the conflict over “coverage of internal protests and human rights violations” in Azerbaijan.

Another former Azadliq journalist, Islam Shikhali, echoed these concerns. There is now, Shikhali said, “a conspicuous absence of attention to domestic human rights violations and societal dilemmas [in Azerbaijan],” in contrast to the regular coverage of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Tensions between Yerevan and Moscow continued to escalate as the Kremlin on Tuesday reacted to remarks by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan who told an Italian publication that Armenia’s heavy reliance on Russia has proven to be a “strategic mistake.”

The Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov hit back at Pashinyan’s assertions, saying Russia has no intention of leaving the South Caucasus as the Armenian leader claimed in his interview with the Italian publication La Repubblica daily that was publicized by his press office over the weekend.

“Russia is an absolutely integral part of this region, so it cannot go anywhere. Russia cannot leave Armenia,” Peskov told reporters on Tuesday, adding that Russia will continue to its role as the“security guarantor” in the South Caucasus region.

In the interview with the Italian daily, Pashinyan said that his government is trying to “diversify” Armenia’s security policy.

“Armenia’s security mechanism, including the process of weapons and ammunition acquisition, has been connected to Russia by 99.999 percent,” he said.

“But now that Russia itself needs weapons and munitions [as a result of the Ukraine war] it is obvious that in this situation the Russian Federation could not provide for Armenia’s security needs even if it wanted to,” Pashinyan insisted.

“The Russian Federation has been in our region, the South Caucasus, for quite a long time. But we have seen situations when the Russian Federation simply left the South Caucasus in one day, one month or one year,” Pashinyan claimed.

“There are processes that, of course, lead one to think that the same scenario could be repeated and that one day we will simply wake up and see that Russia is not here,” added Pashinyan.

Peskov went on to also emphasize Yerevan’s close economic ties with Moscow, which have resulted in economic growth for Armenia.

“There are more Armenians living in Russia than in Armenia itself, and most of them are exemplary, patriotic citizens of the Russian Federation who make a significant contribution to the development of our country,” Peskov added on Tuesday.

Moscow deployed a long-used tactic of an unnamed Russian official being quoted by the government-run Tass news agency calling Pashinyan’s comments “unacceptable.”

The Russian official highlighted the growing tensions between Yerevan and Moscow, warning Yerevan against helping the West “squeeze Russia out” of the region.

“In fact, they are trying to artificially squeeze Russia out of the South Caucasus, using Yerevan as a means of achieving this goal,” the unnamed Russian official told Tass.

“As Armenia’s closest neighbor and friend, Russia, does not intend to leave the region. However, this should be a two-way street: Armenia should also not become a weapon for the West to squeeze out Russia,” the Russian official further warned.

In his interview, Pashinyan also criticized the Russian peacekeeping forces for their failure to reopen the Lachin corridor, saying that now almost nine-month-long blockade signaled that the peacekeeping contingent is “not fulfilling their mission” defined by the November 9, 2020 agreement.

The Russian official cited by Tass rejected Pashinyan’s “baseless attacks” on the peacekeepers, saying that the Armenian leaders’ controversial recognition of Azerbaijani sovereignty over Artsakh “made the work of the Russian peacekeeping contingent as difficult as possible.”

Official Moscow has used that line of thinking since Pashinyan declared his government’s willingness to recognize Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, which includes Artsakh. A similar recognition has not been offered by official Baku despite announcements that the leaders of both countries had agreed to recognize each other’s sovereignty.

The Russian foreign ministry on Thursday went a step further and blamed Pashinyan for the blockade, with its spokesperson Maria Zakharova saying that the Armenian leader’s remarks had led to the Artsakh blockade and the resulting humanitarian crisis.

Armenia’s foreign ministry hit back by citing several of Yerevan’s grievances against Moscow, including the fact that President Vladimir Putin of Russia himself had recognized Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity when he signed an broad partnership agreement with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev ahead of the Ukraine war.

After the Kremlin’s rebuttal, which could be deemed as restrained, Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, offered a more scathing retort to Pashinyan’s remarks about Moscow.

“One should have the ability to answer for their own actions, rather than blame others and do so endlessly, at every turn,” Zakharova told a news briefing in Moscow on Tuesday.

“You need to take responsibility for yourself and not shift that blame onto someone else,” Zakharova said. “This is what makes a politician, a statesman different from a random person who does not think about the interests of his country.”

In same news briefing, Zakharova also said that Moscow has asked for “clarification” from the Armenian government, which submitted the founding treaty for the International Criminal Court for parliament ratification two days after the Russian spokesperson blamed Pashinyan for the blockade.

Russia, which has not signed the treaty, on numerous occasions has warned Yerevan against ratifying the treaty, saying that such a move could adversely and seriously impact relations between Armenia and Russia.

Earlier this year the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin. This means any country that has ratified the document and has become a member of the court is obliged to arrest the Russian leader if he steps foot on their soil.

“We will decide on our next steps based on the content of Yerevan’s response,” the ministry spokeswoman, Zakharova, told reporters.

A Ukrainian Grad launcher fires rockets at Russian positions in the Zaporizhzhia region.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian military said 34 combat clashes took place on the front line during the day on September 7 and that the situation in the east and south of Ukraine “remains difficult.”

The Ukrainian military repelled attacks in the Kupyansk, Bakhmut, and Avdiyivka areas, it said in its evening assessment.

“The Defense Forces of Ukraine continue to conduct an offensive operation in the Melitopol direction, destroy the enemy, and step-by-step liberate the occupied territories,” it reported.

RFE/RL’s Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia’s full-scale invasion, Kyiv’s counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL’s coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

A late air strike on Nikopol in the Dnipropetrovsk region wounded two people after constant shelling of the region throughout the day, regional Governor Serhiy Lysak said.

Lysak said the injured — a 52-year-old woman and a 57-year-old man — suffered shrapnel wounds. A house caught fire and several others were damaged, he said. Russian shelling of another community, Pokrovsk, resulted in a fire, he said.

The attacks came as the U.S. Defense Department announced a new security-assistance package to support Ukraine’s battlefield needs. The package is valued at up to $600 million and includes equipment to augment its air defenses, artillery munitions, and other capabilities, the Pentagon said in a statement.

The equipment will be procured from defense contractors as opposed to drawn from existing stockpiles and therefore not likely to arrive on the battlefield anytime soon.

Ukraine’s military reported shooting down 25 of the 33 drones it said were launched by Russia. Most were aimed at the Odesa region but some also targeted the northern area of Sumy, it added.

Ukrainian port infrastructure in Izmayil was damaged earlier on September 7 in another Russian drone attack. A grain silo and administrative buildings were damaged in the attack on the Danube River port southwest of Odesa, said Oleh Kiper, the governor of the Odesa region.

One person was injured in the attack, the fourth on a key Danube River port in the last five days, he said.

Russia has stepped up attacks on Ukraine’s grain-export infrastructure amid talks about the resumption of the Black Sea grain deal that would allow unhindered exports of grain from Ukrainian ports.

Russia quit the deal in July, a year after it was brokered by the United Nations and Turkey.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on X, formerly Twitter, that he had a conversation with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak about Black Sea grain exports.

“Ukraine has successfully opened an alternative path and needs the help of partners in strengthening the air defense of Odesa,” Zelenskiy said.

In his evening address, he said Ukraine had “a few very practical goals” for its cooperation with partners in September. These involve new weapons, new diplomatic efforts to unite more countries around the goal of restoring a just peace, and new pressure on Russia.

In Russia, drones were downed near Moscow, the southern Rostov region, and the Bryansk regions in the southwest, state media quoted Russian authorities as saying. According to TASS, three buildings were damaged in the city of Rostov-on-Don, a city of 1 million people nearly 1,000 kilometers south of Moscow. It is also home to Russia’s Southern Military District. One explosion was reported near its headquarters.

Vasily Golubev, governor of the Rostov region, said one person was injured when one of the drones crashed in the downtown area.

In the Moscow region, a drone was downed over the town of Ramenskoye, southeast of the Russian capital, according to Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin.

In Bryansk, a Ukrainian drone targeted an industrial site late on September 7, setting an administrative building on fire but causing no injuries, Governor Aleksandr Bogomaz said on Telegram. Emergency services were dispatched to the scene, he said.

The fresh drone strikes come a day after 17 people were killed and dozens wounded in a Russian missile strike on a busy outdoor market in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kostyantynivka, near the front line in the Donetsk region.

“Those who know this place are well aware that it is a civilian area,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. “There aren’t any military units nearby. The strike was deliberate.”

PHOTO GALLERY: An Associated Press photographer captured the horrific scene following a deadly Russian missile attack that struck a busy market in the center of Kostyantynivka, in eastern Ukraine, on September 6. WARNING: This gallery contains graphic content.

Photo Gallery:

An eyewitness of the Russian missile attack on the busy market told RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service that cars and market stalls caught fire after the explosion, which sent people running in all directions in a scene of mass confusion and fear.

“This is the market. There were a lot of people. The market is lively,” the eyewitness said. “It’s very difficult for us. We ask the whole world to stop this war. We’re tired. We are old people.”

Ukraine is in the third month of a major counteroffensive against Russian forces that it hopes will decisively shift the momentum of the war.

The pace of the counteroffensive has been criticized by some politicians and observers in the West, but a former U.S. diplomat who spoke in Kyiv on September 7 said these critics had the wrong expectations.

Former U.S. special envoy Kurt Volker said Ukrainian forces were attacking in many places along the front line so that Russia is forced to stretch its forces out. Where possible, Ukrainian forces then push through. He said Ukrainian forces were also successfully disrupting Russian supply lines in the occupied territories, particularly Crimea and southern Ukraine.

Volker said Ukraine had hit fuel and ammunition depots, bridges, and roads and used drones to target Russian Navy ships, disrupt Russian oil supplies, and force commercial air traffic in Russia to halt, “bringing the reality of this war to the Russian people.”

With reporting by AP and Reuters

Prime Minister of Georgia Irakli Garibashvili arrives for his address to the 77th Session of the United Nations Generl Assembly at U.N. Headquarters in New York City, U.S., September 22, 2022. REUTERS/Mike Segar Acquire Licensing Rights

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The demise of Wagner boss Yevgeniy Prigozhin and the diminishing role of mercenaries in Ukraine has done little to assuage fears inside the North Caucasus of the return of thousands of mercenaries formerly convicted of robbery, rape, and murder.

In April, a 38-year-old resident of Tskhinvali (Tskhinval), South Ossetia, was stabbed to death in the streets.

Soslan Valiyev, known locally as ‘Tsugri’, was known to have developmental disabilities and was generally loved by his community, with current President Alan Gagloyev and former president Eduard Kokoity condemning his murder and offering their condolences to his family.

His killer, Giorgey Siukayev, was arrested the following day. Siukayev had already served time for murder in 2014 after shooting dead a soldier in Donetsk. He had barely spent a few weeks in prison before he was set free, after agreeing to serve in Wagner, a Russian state-backed private military company founded by the late Yevgeniy Prigozhin.

He has since gone by the callsign ‘Arbalet’ and had been stationed in Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia, taking part in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Siukayev was among thousands of Wagner mercenaries to be given freedom in exchange for fighting in Ukraine. Many mercenaries were convicted of murder, rape, and other grave crimes, stirring concerns about their return to civilian life once the fighting dies out or their contracts expire.

In January, Prigozhin announced that the ‘first wave’ of formerly convicted Wagner mercenaries had completed their military service. Shortly after, many of them were decorated by President Vladimir Putin.

Prigozhin claimed in February that his group had stopped recruiting prisoners and later announced that 32,000 former convicts had fulfilled their contractual obligations with Wagner in June.

In a separate interview with Konstantin Dolgov, a pro-Kremlin political strategist, Prigozhin claimed that a total of 50,000 convicts had joined Wagner’s ranks, about 20% of whom had died fighting in Ukraine. 

Before this year, Russia’s penitentiary service, the Interior Ministry, and the General Prosecutor’s Office regularly published statistics about crimes committed, including by former Wagner members. The end of this has forced journalists to find different sources or to rely on information issued by the few remaining non-profit organisations in Russia.

Wife killer, drug addict, war hero

In another high-profile case in the Caucasus, the Wagner recruited a former North Ossetian police officer, Vadim Tekhov, from a penal colony. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison for the brutal murder of his ex-wife, violating restraining orders, and taking part in a mass brawl with Ingush people in North Ossetia.

CCTV footage shows Tekhov stabbing his ex-wife, Regina Gagiyeva, 21 times. She succumbed to her wounds six days later, having not regained consciousness. 

Thousands of people have attended Regina Gagiyeva’s funeral procession.

Thousands of North Ossetians took part in her funeral procession as local feminist activists condemned the authorities for not guaranteeing her safety. Gagiyeva had reportedly sought protection from the police since November 2017, and Tekhov, who was wearing an electronic tracker when he attacked her, was supposed to be under house arrest.

Fighting in Ukraine did not appear to rehabilitate Tekhov; as soon as his contract with Wagner ended, he was caught trafficking drugs in Ukraine. He dodged a prison sentence again by striking up another deal with Prigozhin’s forces.

Once his second contract expired, Tekhov returned to his home in downtown Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia. His ex-wives’ relatives fear retribution against them for having pushed for his incarceration.

‘We can’t get an answer from the prison warden where Tekhov was held’, Roksana Gagiyeva, Regina’s sister, tells OC Media. ‘How was he released?’ 

‘He is a particularly dangerous criminal, a repeat offender’, she added. 

Tekhov’s reception in Vladikavkaz after his return from Ukraine indicates concerns people feel about Wagner’s recruitment and subsequent release of dangerous convicts back to their communities.

Crimes committed by former Wagner members throughout Russia have been put under scrutiny, says North Ossetian journalist Rooslán Totrov, who refers to convict-turned-mercenaries as ‘loose cannons’.

‘These are absolutely unguided shells that are fired from the fiery furnace into as yet peaceful Russian cities’, Totrov tells OC Media. ‘These people will suffer from PTSD, which is not surprising, and, among other things, they have a record of especially grave crimes’.

Back to their old ways

Convicts released from their Wagner contracts have been known to have committed various crimes in Russia; these range from robbery to extortion, blackmail to assassination attempts, and murder.

In the Caucasus in late April, Kirill Chubko and Tatyana Mostyko, both 18 years old, disappeared in Krasnodar Krai. A search team of 500 volunteers set out to search for them after news of their disappearance, eventually finding their bodies a few days later.

The police apprehended Demyan Kevorkian, a 31-year-old former convict who had served a stint in Ukraine with the Wagner Group, on suspicion of their murder.

Many in Krasnodar Krai were left wondering how Kevorkian had his 18-year sentence commuted, despite serving time for extortion, robbery, car theft, and murder.

In Volgograd, Arsen Melkonyan, sentenced to 11 years in prison for beating a person to death in 2020, was given a new lease on life for serving with Wagner. He was sentenced to prison yet again on his return to Volgograd for threatening to murder his ex-wife and his daughter.

While in May, Sergei, a 42-year-old from Novosibirsk, was charged with raping two girls aged 10 and 12, mere days after his contract with Wagner expired.

Before his death, Prigozhin confirmed that the man had served in his private military company, dismissing the gravity of his allegedly committed crime.

‘Well, guys, these rapists, there are just immense numbers of them, rapes — they just happen 20–50 a day’, Prigozhin said at the time.

Prigozhin had always defended former Wagner members in the face of legal scrutiny, claiming that convicts employed by his group had only committed a total of 83 crimes as of June 2023.

‘[That is] 80 times lower than crimes committed by those released from prison for a similar period without a contract with the Wagner Group’, said Prigozhin.

With no open access to statistics about crimes committed by former Wagner members, some in Russia remain sceptical about the likelihood that former convicts who had fought on the frontlines would return to cause trouble in Russia.

But Yana Sherova-Ignatiyeva, a trauma psychologist based in Saint Petersburg, says that while war can contribute to increased violence in societies, especially if combatants do not seek psychological support after deployment, it is too early to tell how this could affect Russia.

‘We cannot know whether there is a difference in the number of crimes committed among convicts who were at war and those who simply served their time’, Sherova-Ignatiyeva tells OC Media.

‘The existence of a problem has to be recognised somehow, and there is no demand for it’, she tells OC Media. ‘This is not the problem of each combatant, but the problem of the society around them’.

‘There is no need for demonisation’, says Sherova-Ignatiyeva. ‘We all realise that horror happens and horror will happen. It never stays in a box; it spills out. War fundamentally changes society.’

‘Washing away their sins with blood’

With Prigozhin’s death, and his Wagner group appearing to have been neutralised, fears over the return of convicts to society have not disappeared. 

Prigozhin had already announced earlier this year that Wagner had stopped recruitment drives in Russian prisons. At the same time, reports indicate that most convicts who had served with Wagner had already fulfilled their contracts or were dismissed following July’s mutiny.

However, it appears that Moscow is unwilling to let go of Prigozhin’s legacy, with the State Duma passing a bill that would allow convicts to clear their criminal records in exchange for directly serving in the Russian Armed Forces.

Since the start of the war, there have been reports that ethnic and religious minorities in Russia — including in the North Caucasus — are being drafted disproportionately compared to those from predominantly ethnic-Russian regions.

For North Ossetian journalist Rooslán Totrov the return of convicts from the front is a real concern.

He says that try as they might, former convicts serving in Ukraine cannot ‘wash away their sins with blood’.

‘I do not believe that any “heroic” deeds in war, which involves the unjust invasion of someone else’s land, write off previous crimes’, he says.

 For ease of reading, we choose not to use qualifiers such as ‘de facto’, ‘unrecognised’, or ‘partially recognised’ when discussing institutions or political positions within Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and South Ossetia. This does not imply a position on their status.