Russia fires TASS news agency executive after Azerbaijan visit
MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia dismissed a senior executive of the TASS state news agency on Friday after he attended an event hosted by the president of Azerbaijan, whose relations with Moscow have deteriorated in recent months.
Mikhail Gusman, who oversaw international relations at TASS as first deputy CEO, interviewed world leaders on his own television show and moderated a meeting last month between President Vladimir Putin and international news agencies.
Earlier this month, Gusman caused a stir among Russian bloggers supporting Moscow's war in Ukraine when he attended a media forum alongside Ukrainian journalists in the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, a region Azerbaijan retook from Armenia in 2023.
At the forum, he praised Azerbaijan for maintaining relations with a wide range of countries. Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev told a Ukrainian journalist at the same forum that Ukrainians should never accept occupation.
Gusman's dismissal was announced in a brief statement on the government's website which did not give a reason. Some Russian media welcomed the move, labelling Gusman, who was born in Azerbaijan to a Soviet navy doctor, an Azeri spy.
"That's it. Azeri spy Gusman has been fired from his position as the first deputy CEO of TASS," said the nationalist Telegram channel Mnogonational, which has about 400,000 subscribers.
Relations between Russia and its ex-Soviet neighbour Azerbaijan have sharply deteriorated in recent months after an Azerbaijani passenger plane flying to southern Russia crashed last December, killing 38 people on board.
Aliyev has said he wants Russia to publicly acknowledge that it accidentally shot down the plane and to punish those responsible. Moscow has not done that, although President Vladimir Putin has apologised to Aliyev over the incident.
Tensions escalated further after two Azerbaijani men died in Russian custody following their arrests during police raids as part of a murder investigation. Azerbaijan then arrested Russian state media journalists in a move seen as retaliation.
In a statement, TASS CEO Andrei Kondrashov thanked Gusman for his 30 years of service with the agency. Gusman did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on whether his dismissal was linked to the Azerbaijan trip.
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