Latest news with #UralMountains
Russia Today
3 days ago
- Politics
- Russia Today
Putin names desired minimum fertility rate for Russia
Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that the country's total fertility rate (TFR) must reach replacement level within the next five years to stem declining birth rates. A replacement-level fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman is enough to maintain a stable population. This figure accounts for child mortality and the fact that not every woman has children. It is widely considered the minimum needed to prevent population decline. 'I understand it's not easy to achieve, but it should be at least 2.1,' Putin said on Monday, responding to a report on regional demographic trends presented by the head of the Udmurt Republic, Aleksandr Brechalov. Brechalov noted that Udmurtia's current TFR of 1.39 is below the national average, adding that the region, which is located west of the Ural Mountains, aims to raise it to 1.6 by 2030. Falling birth rates and a shrinking population have become pressing issues for Russian lawmakers, spurring a range of proposed solutions, from tax incentives to abortion restrictions. Earlier this month, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova warned of a looming fertility crisis. She said the number of women of childbearing age has reached a historic low and is projected to fall further over the next decade. To reverse the trend, the government has introduced a range of support measures, including lump-sum payments for childbirth, expanded maternity benefits, and ongoing financial assistance for families. The Soviet-era 'Mother Heroine' award that offers cash rewards to women who have more than ten children has also been revived. Officials have proposed other policies as well, such as discouraging the promotion of 'child-free' lifestyles and offering extra tax breaks for larger families. Putin has repeatedly stressed the importance of improving economic and social conditions to promote larger families and make parenthood a widely supported choice. In June, he endorsed the creation of a national family support service. Last year, he established a presidential council focused on family and demographic policy. Russia's Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) reported only 1.222 million births in 2024, the lowest annual total since 1999. The figure marks a decline of one third since 2014.
Al Jazeera
01-07-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Azerbaijan accuses Russia of ‘unacceptable violence' over custody deaths
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. Azerbaijan slams Russia's 'unacceptable violence' 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 forced 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. Strained ties 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'.
Yahoo
30-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
A Russian media outlet is raided in Azerbaijan's capital as tensions rise between Moscow and Baku
BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) — Police in Azerbaijan's capital of Baku searched the offices of Russia's state-funded news outlet Sputnik on Monday, local media reported, as tensions rose between the two countries after the deaths of two ethnic Azerbaijanis during a police raid last week in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg. Sputnik had continued working in the country via 'illegal financing,' despite having its official accreditation revoked in February 2025, the Ministry of Internal Affairs said. Arrests were made during the search, it said, without elaborating. Images on Azerbaijani media outlets appeared to show two men taken away by masked police. They included Sputnik's Azerbaijan's editor-in-chief, Yevgeny Belousov, and its director, Igor Kartavykh, according to Sputnik's sister outlet, state-owned RIA Novosti. In Moscow, Azerbaijan Ambassador Rahman Mustafayev was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry after the raid and notified of 'the illegal detention of Russian journalists,' according to ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, as cited by the Russian news service Interfax. The search followed official protests from Baku after Russian police raided the homes of ethnic Azerbaijanis in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg on Friday. Two brothers, Ziyaddin and Huseyn Safarov, were killed, and several others were seriously injured during the raids, officials said, with nine people detained. Sayfaddin Huseynli, a brother of the two dead Azerbaijanis, told The Associated Press the raids were 'an inhumane, cruel act by Russia against migrants — an act of intimidation.' One of the dead was a Russian citizen and the other held both Russian and Azerbaijani citizenship, Huseynli said. Their bodies were being returned to Azerbaijan on Monday. He earlier told Azerbaijani public broadcaster ITV that the men were beaten and subjected to electric shocks 'without any trial or investigation.' 'The so-called Russian law enforcement agencies broke into houses in the middle of the night, beat and took people away like animals,' he told the broadcaster. Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry said it expected 'that the matter will be investigated and all perpetrators of violence brought to justice as soon as possible.' Russia's Investigative Committee said Monday that one of the deaths was from heart failure. It did not provide details on the second victim, but said a medical examination would be conducted to determine the exact cause of death for both men. It also said the raids were part of an investigation into several murders spanning more than two decades. Officials in Baku responded by canceling a scheduled trip to Moscow by Azerbaijani officials, citing the 'targeted extrajudicial killings and violence against Azerbaijanis on the basis of their nationality' by Russian law enforcement. It also canceled a planned visit to Baku by a Russian deputy prime minister, and the Culture Ministry called off concerts, exhibitions, festivals and performances by Russian state and private institutions. Moscow has maintained a muted response to Azerbaijan's actions. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday he 'sincerely regretted' Baku's decision to cancel the events. He also said Moscow would continue to 'explain the reason and nature' of the Yekaterinburg raids. 'Everything that took place is related to the work of law enforcement agencies, and that cannot and should not be a reason for such a reaction. We are interested in further developing our good relations with Azerbaijan,' he said. Ties between Moscow and Baku have been strained for months. On Dec. 25, 2024, an Azerbaijani passenger jet was hit by fire from the ground as it approached Grozny, the regional capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, Azerbaijani officials said. It diverted to nearby Kazakhstan, where it crashed while attempting to land, killing 38 of 67 people aboard. Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev said it was shot down over Russia, albeit unintentionally, and rendered uncontrollable by electronic warfare measures amid allegations that Russian air defense systems were trying to fend off a Ukrainian drone strike near Grozny. Aliyev accused Russia of trying to 'hush up' what happened for several days. Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized to Aliyev for what he called a 'tragic incident' but stopped short of acknowledging responsibility. In May, Aliyev declined to attend Russia's Victory Day parade in Moscow. Later that month, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha visited Azerbaijan, signaling closer ties between Baku and Kyiv.
CTV News
30-06-2025
- Politics
- CTV News
A Russian media outlet is raided in Azerbaijan's capital as tensions rise between Moscow and Baku
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev enter a hall during a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Oct. 8, 2024. (Valery Sharifulin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File) BAKU, Azerbaijan — Police in Azerbaijan's capital of Baku searched the offices of Russia's state-funded news outlet Sputnik on Monday, local media reported, as tensions rose between the two countries after the deaths of two ethnic Azerbaijanis during a police raid last week in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg. Sputnik had continued working in the country via 'illegal financing,' despite having its official accreditation revoked in February 2025, the Ministry of Internal Affairs said. Arrests were made during the search, it said, without elaborating. Images on Azerbaijani media outlets appeared to show two men taken away by masked police. They included Sputnik's Azerbaijan's editor-in-chief, Yevgeny Belousov, and its director, Igor Kartavykh, according to Sputnik's sister outlet, state-owned RIA Novosti. In Moscow, Azerbaijan Ambassador Rahman Mustafayev was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry after the raid and notified of 'the illegal detention of Russian journalists,' according to ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, as cited by the Russian news service Interfax. The search followed official protests from Baku after Russian police raided the homes of ethnic Azerbaijanis in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg on Friday. Two brothers, Ziyaddin and Huseyn Safarov, were killed, and several others were seriously injured during the raids, officials said, with nine people detained. Sayfaddin Huseynli, a brother of the two dead Azerbaijanis, told The Associated Press the raids were 'an inhumane, cruel act by Russia against migrants — an act of intimidation.' One of the dead was a Russian citizen and the other held both Russian and Azerbaijani citizenship, Huseynli said. Their bodies were being returned to Azerbaijan on Monday. He earlier told Azerbaijani public broadcaster ITV that the men were beaten and subjected to electric shocks 'without any trial or investigation.' 'The so-called Russian law enforcement agencies broke into houses in the middle of the night, beat and took people away like animals,' he told the broadcaster. Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry said it expected 'that the matter will be investigated and all perpetrators of violence brought to justice as soon as possible.' Russia's Investigative Committee said Monday that one of the deaths was from heart failure. It did not provide details on the second victim, but said a medical examination would be conducted to determine the exact cause of death for both men. It also said the raids were part of an investigation into several murders spanning more than two decades. Officials in Baku responded by canceling a scheduled trip to Moscow by Azerbaijani officials, citing the 'targeted extrajudicial killings and violence against Azerbaijanis on the basis of their nationality' by Russian law enforcement. It also canceled a planned visit to Baku by a Russian deputy prime minister, and the Culture Ministry called off concerts, exhibitions, festivals and performances by Russian state and private institutions. Moscow has maintained a muted response to Azerbaijan's actions. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday he 'sincerely regretted' Baku's decision to cancel the events. He also said Moscow would continue to 'explain the reason and nature' of the Yekaterinburg raids. 'Everything that took place is related to the work of law enforcement agencies, and that cannot and should not be a reason for such a reaction. We are interested in further developing our good relations with Azerbaijan,' he said. Ties between Moscow and Baku have been strained for months. On Dec. 25, 2024, an Azerbaijani passenger jet was hit by fire from the ground as it approached Grozny, the regional capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, Azerbaijani officials said. It diverted to nearby Kazakhstan, where it crashed while attempting to land, killing 38 of 67 people aboard. Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev said it was shot down over Russia, albeit unintentionally, and rendered uncontrollable by electronic warfare measures amid allegations that Russian air defense systems were trying to fend off a Ukrainian drone strike near Grozny. Aliyev accused Russia of trying to 'hush up' what happened for several days. Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized to Aliyev for what he called a 'tragic incident' but stopped short of acknowledging responsibility. In May, Aliyev declined to attend Russia's Victory Day parade in Moscow. Later that month, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha visited Azerbaijan, signalling closer ties between Baku and Kyiv. Aida Sultanova, The Associated Press
Washington Post
30-06-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
A Russian media outlet is raided in Azerbaijan's capital as tensions rise between Moscow and Baku
BAKU, Azerbaijan — Police in Azerbaijan's capital of Baku searched the offices of Russia's state-funded news outlet Sputnik on Monday, local media reported, as tensions rose between the two countries after the deaths of two ethnic Azerbaijanis during a police raid last week in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg. Azerbaijan's Ministry of Internal Affairs said it was investigating claims that Sputnik Azerbaijan was continuing its work despite having its license revoked in February 2025, media outlets said. Russian diplomatic representatives in Baku went to the Sputnik offices to investigate, said Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of broadcaster RT as well as editor of the state-funded media group Rossiya Segodnya, which operates Sputnik. 'We are unable to reach our Azerbaijan bureau staff by phone after local media announced a 'special security operation' against our staff, which includes Russian citizens,' Simonyan posted on X. 'Representatives from our embassy are attempting to gain access.' The search followed official protests from Baku after Russian police raided the homes of ethnic Azerbaijanis in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg on Friday. Two brothers, Ziyaddin and Huseyn Safarov, were killed, and several others were seriously injured during the raids, officials said, with nine people detained. Sayfaddin Huseynli, a brother of the two dead Azerbaijanis, told The Associated Press the raids were 'an inhumane, cruel act by Russia against migrants — an act of intimidation.' One of the dead was a Russian citizen and the other held both Russian and Azerbaijani citizenship, Huseynli said. Their bodies were being returned to Azerbaijan on Monday. He earlier told Azerbaijani public broadcaster ITV that the men were beaten and subjected to electric shocks 'without any trial or investigation.' 'The so-called Russian law enforcement agencies broke into houses in the middle of the night, beat and took people away like animals,' he told the broadcaster. Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry said it expected 'that the matter will be investigated and all perpetrators of violence brought to justice as soon as possible.' Russia's Investigative Committee said Monday that one of the deaths was from heart failure. It did not provide details on the second victim, but said a medical examination would be conducted to determine the exact cause of death for both men. It also said the raids were part of an investigation into several murders spanning more than two decades. Officials in Baku responded by canceling a scheduled trip to Moscow by Azerbaijani officials, citing the 'targeted extrajudicial killings and violence against Azerbaijanis on the basis of their nationality' by Russian law enforcement. It also canceled a planned visit to Baku by a Russian deputy prime minister, and the Culture Ministry called off concerts, exhibitions, festivals and performances by Russian state and private institutions. Moscow has maintained a muted response to Azerbaijan's actions. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday he 'sincerely regretted' Baku's decision to cancel the events. He also said Moscow would continue to 'explain the reason and nature' of the Yekaterinburg raids. 'Everything that took place is related to the work of law enforcement agencies, and that cannot and should not be a reason for such a reaction. We are interested in further developing our good relations with Azerbaijan,' he said. Ties between Moscow and Baku have been strained for months. On Dec. 25, 2024, an Azerbaijani passenger jet was hit by fire from the ground as it approached Grozny, the regional capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, Azerbaijani officials said. It diverted to nearby Kazakhstan, where it crashed while attempting to land, killing 38 of 67 people aboard. Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev said it was shot down over Russia, albeit unintentionally, and rendered uncontrollable by electronic warfare measures amid allegations that Russian air defense systems were trying to fend off a Ukrainian drone strike near Grozny. Aliyev accused Russia of trying to 'hush up' what happened for several days. Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized to Aliyev for what he called a 'tragic incident' but stopped short of acknowledging responsibility. In May, Aliyev declined to attend Russia's Victory Day parade in Moscow. Later that month, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha visited Azerbaijan, signaling closer ties between Baku and Kyiv.
