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Why Are Ties Between Azerbaijan And Russia Fraying?

After ethnic Azeri suspects died during apparently violent raids in a Russian city, Baku has lashed out at Moscow. In 2001, a man was stabbed to death near a lakeside restaurant in Yekaterinburg, an urban centre in Russia’s Ural Mountains region. With his dying breath, he whispered the names of his alleged killers to the police, local media claimed. The man and his presumed murderers were ethnic Azeris, Turkic-speaking Muslims whose families fled to Russia in the 1990s after the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, an Azeri region dominated by ethnic Armenians. But it took Russian authorities 24 years to identify and detain the presumed suspects – even though they ran the restaurant and never went into hiding. Two alleged suspects died while being rounded up on Friday. One suffered a “heart attack” while the other suspect’s cause of death “is being established”, according to Russian prosecutors. They also purported that the suspects were part of “a criminal group” allegedly involved in other murders and the sale of counterfeit alcohol that killed 44 people in 2021. The prosecutors provided no answers as to why the presumed “criminals” were at large for so long – and did not elaborate on the apparently brutal manner in which they were detained. The deaths triggered a diplomatic storm that may contribute to a tectonic shift in the strategic South Caucasus region, Russia’s former stamping ground, where Azerbaijan won Nagorno-Karabakh back in 2020, and Turkiye is regaining its centuries-old clout. The spat has so far resulted in the arrest of two Russian intelligence officers in Azerbaijan, the shutdown of a Kremlin-funded media outlet there, and the cancellation of “cultural events” sponsored by Moscow. Russian police and intelligence officers used “unacceptable violence” that killed two brothers, Ziyaddin Safarov and Gusein Safarov, and left their relatives severely injured, Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Saturday. One of the injured men reportedly said masked officers began breaking his front door at dawn, frightening his children. The officers “turned the house upside down and kept beating us for an hour without asking anything”, Mohammed Safarov told the MediaAzNews website. He said his elderly father was also beaten and electrocuted for hours and claimed they were both requested to “volunteer” to fight Russia’s war in Ukraine. Other Azeri media outlets published photos of bruises and wounds the men claimed were caused by Russian officers. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday, in response to a question about Azerbaijan’s reactions, “We sincerely regret such decisions”. He added, “We believe that everything that’s happening (in Yekaterinburg) is related to the work of law enforcement agencies, and this cannot and should not be a reason for such a reaction.” But Emil Mustafayev, a political analyst based in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, said the incident highlighted a xenophobic strain in Russia. “The killing of Azeris is a link in the chain of tendentious politics where ethnic minorities are used as a lightning rod,” he said. “This is not just a tragedy, this is a symptom of a deep sickness of the Russian society.” The Azeri diaspora in Russia is at least two million strong, but they face discrimination, police brutality and hate attacks. “The Kremlin has long ago mastered a trick – when domestic dissent is on the rise, there is a need to switch attention to ‘the enemies from within’, be that Ukrainians, Tajiks, Uzbeks or, like now, Azeris,” Mustafayev added. The Kremlin uses state propaganda, police brutality and the taciturn approval of top officials to create an atmosphere of violence against migrants that is “seen as normal, as inevitable”, he said. Back in the 1990s, Azeri migrants nearly monopolised fruit trade and mini-bus transportation in Russian urban centres. Many still run countless shops selling vegetables and flowers. “We are the boogeymen, cops always need to check our documents and need no excuse to harass us and call us names even after they see my Russian passport,” an ethnic Azeri owner of a flower shop near a major railway station in Moscow told Al Jazeera, on condition of anonymity. Until the early 2000s, the Azeris “undoubtedly were the number one” most-hated ethnic minority in Russia, until the arrival of labour migrants from Russia’s North Caucasus and ex-Soviet Central Asia, said Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany’s Bremen University. Since then, some ultra-nationalists and skinheads who considered Azeris their main enemies joined law enforcement agencies, he added. “So, the cruelty in Yekaterinburg may have been caused by” the decades-old hatred, Mitrokhin told Al Jazeera. Other geopolitical factors contributed to anti-Azeri sentiments in Russia. In 2020, Azerbaijan put an end to the seemingly unsolvable political deadlock over Nagorno-Karabakh. “The success undoubtedly became possible thanks to Turkiye’s military aid,” Alisher Ilkhamov, head of Central Asia Due Diligence, a think tank in London, told Al Jazeera. Baku bought advanced Turkish-made Bayraktar drones that could easily strike large groups of Armenian and separatist soldiers, together with their trenches, tanks and trucks. An Azeri-Turkish alliance emerged, “allowing Baku to get rid of Moscow’s obtrusive ‘peacekeeping’ mission and depriving it of a chance to manipulate the Azeri-Armenian conflict to keep both [Azerbaijan and Armenia] in its political orbit”, he said. The alliance tarnished Moscow’s clout in South Caucasus, while Baku sympathised with Kyiv in the Russian-Ukrainian war, he said. Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev also accused Russia of obstructing an investigation into the downing of an Azeri passenger plane over Chechnya last December. The plane was apparently hit by panicking Russian air defence forces during a Ukrainian drone attack on Grozny, Chechnya’s administrative capital. Aliyev also refused to take part in the May 9 parade on Moscow’s iconic Red Square to commemorate Russia’s role in defeating Nazi Germany in 1945. Baku fiercely resists the Kremlin’s campaign to forcibly enlist Azeri labour migrants to join Russia’s war effort in Ukraine. Ilkhamov said the violent sting in Yekaterinburg became part of the Kremlin’s efforts to “frighten the Azeri community in Russia”. Follow Al Jazeera English:...

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Who Wins, Who Loses If Trumps One Big Beautiful Bill Passes?

The richest Americans, families with children, and traditional carmakers will gain; while EV makers and those on food stamps and Medicaid will lose. The United States Senate is debating President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill“, which promises sweeping tax breaks, as Republicans hope to pass it before Friday’s Independence Day holiday. On Saturday, the Senate voted 51-49 to open debate on the latest 940-page version of the bill,  despite two Republican senators joining the Democrats to oppose the motion. Trump’s Republicans hold 53 seats in the Senate, and Democrats hold 47. On May 22, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed an earlier version of the bill in a 215-214 vote. That bill has been revised by the Senate, and both chambers of Congress must pass the same legislation for it to become law. If the Senate passes its version, then members from both chambers would work to draft compromise legislation that the House and Senate would have to vote on again. Republicans hold 220 seats and Democrats hold 212 in the House. If the compromise bill is passed, it would advance to Trump, who is expected to sign it into law. So, who would be some of the winners and losers if the bill – opposed by Democrats and some conservatives – becomes law? The groups who would benefit include: The bill would extend tax cuts that Trump introduced during his first term. While Trump has pitched this as a gain for the American people, some will benefit more than others. More than a third of the total cuts would go to households with an annual income of $460,000 or more. About 57 percent of the tax cuts would go to households with a yearly income of $217,000 or more. According to an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the Senate bill would slash taxes on average by about $2,600 per household in 2026. “High-income households would receive much more generous tax benefits”, its analysis said. If the bill does not pass, the child tax credit, currently at $2,000 per child per year, would drop to $1,000 in 2026. However, if the current version of the Senate bill passes, the child tax credit will permanently increase to $2,200. This is a smaller increase than the $2,500 in the version of the bill that the House approved. Makers of traditional petrol-driven cars could benefit from the bill because the Senate version seeks to end the tax credit for purchases of electric vehicles (EVs), worth up to $7,500, starting on September 30. This could decrease consumer demand for EVs, levelling the playing field for cars that run on petrol or diesel. Tips will not be taxed if the bill passes. Currently, workers – whether waiters or other service providers – are required to report all tips in excess of $20 a month to their employers, and those additional earnings are taxed. This bill would end that. Some of the groups that would not benefit include: The Senate version of the bill proposes slashing the food stamps programme, called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), by $68.6bn over a decade, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Food stamps help low-income families buy food. In the 2023 fiscal year, 42.1 million people per month benefited from the programme, according to the US Department of Agriculture. The Senate version of the bill proposes federal funding cuts by $930bn to Medicaid, the largest US programme providing healthcare to low-income people. These are cuts to budget outlays by 2034. The bill says that starting in 2026, able-bodied adults under the age of 65 will be required to work 80 hours a month to continue to receive Medicaid, with the exception of those who have dependent children. More than 71 million low-income Americans were enrolled in Medicaid for health insurance as of March. The EV tax credit would end on September 30 if the Senate version of the bill passes. The House version aims to phase out the tax credit by the end of 2025. Billionaire Elon Musk, who owns the EV manufacturer Tesla, has voiced his opposition to the bill online. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” Musk wrote on X on June 3. He doubled down on his criticism before the Senate deliberations on the bill on Saturday. “The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country,” Musk wrote on X, a platform he owns. The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country! Utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future. https://t.co/TZ9w1g7zHF — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 28, 2025 Some conservatives have criticised the bill, saying it would inflate the country’s enormous debt. The CBO estimated that the Senate version would raise the national debt by $3.3 trillion from 2025 to 2034. Under the House version, the CBO estimated a $2.4 trillion increase in the debt over a decade. The current US national debt stands above $36 trillion and represents 122 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). Follow Al Jazeera English:...