Russian President Vladimir Putin and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev attend a meeting in Dushanbe, Tajikistan October 9, 2025. Sputnik/Grigory Sysoev/Pool via REUTERS
BAKU (Reuters) -Authorities in Azerbaijan released a Russian journalist from prison to house arrest following a meeting between the leaders of Russia and Azerbaijan, Russia's Kommersant newspaper reported on Friday, citing the Kremlin.
Igor Kartavykh, the executive director of Sputnik Azerbaijan, was arrested alongside several of his colleagues in June amid a diplomatic spat between Moscow and Baku.
Two sources in the Azerbaijani government confirmed Kartavykh's release to Reuters. One source said it was not immediately clear if the media director would still face prosecution.
Baku has launched an investigation into Sputnik Azerbaijan after ordering the Russian state company that owns it, Rossiya Segodnya, to close its offices in the South Caucasus country.
Kommersant reported that an Azerbaijani national, whom it did not name, was released from Russian custody in exchange for Kartavykh.
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told Kommersant the decision to free the Sputnik Azerbaijan director was made on the eve of a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on Thursday in the Tajik capital Dushanbe.
At that meeting, Putin made his most candid admission to date that Russia had accidentally downed an Azerbaijani passenger plane last December, and promised compensation.
The crash of the airliner, which killed at least 38 people, strained relations between Moscow and Baku after it became clear that Russian air defences had mistakenly shot down the plane during a Ukrainian drone attack over southern Russia.
The arrests of the Russian state journalists came after authorities in Russia arrested a group of ethnic Azerbaijanis in connection with historic unsolved crimes, including serial killings. Two of the suspects died in Russian police custody, angering Azerbaijan.
(Reporting by Nailia Bagirova in Baku; Writing by Lucy Papachristou in Tbilisi; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
