On 3 May, RIA Novosti published an extensive interview with Artak Beglaryan, the de-facto Minister of State of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. At the night of the same day, Russia's RIA Novosti agency has been blocked in Azerbaijan. The agency turned to the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry to raise questions about the reasons for blocking the site.
“The spread of provocative statements by the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti casts a shadow over efforts to bring peace to the region,” Spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan Leyla Abdullayeva said during her commentary on an interview with Artak Beglaryan.
According to Abdullayeva, the information dissemination by the state news agency of Russia, which opposes the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, propagating slanderous slogans and separatist tendencies does not correspond with the spirit of friendly relations between Azerbaijan and Russia and is thus deeply regrettable.
"This behavior of the state agency is contrary to the provisions of the Agreement on Friendship, Security and Strategic Partnership between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Russian Federation signed in 1997 and of the Declaration on Allied Interaction of 2022 to refrain from any activity directed against the principles of the UN Charter and the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each other, as well as counter the threats of separatism," she said.
On 17 March, Caucasus Watch reported that the Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Communications (Roskomnadzor) blocked access to the Azerbaijani information and analysis portal Haqqin in Russia. Roskomnadzor justified the decision to block the site haqqin.az with federal legislation, according to which access to the resource is restricted if it contains information calling for unrest, extremism, as well as for the dissemination of unreliable information replicated under the guise of "reliable information." Roskomnadzor made the decision to block the Azerbaijani internet publication based on the request of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation. The Azerbaijani website minval.az was also blocked in Russia.
On 28 March, Azerbaijan's Press Council published a statement in response to Russia's shutdown of several Azerbaijani news websites. According to the statement, "a number of Azerbaijani news websites are prohibited in Russia. The reason is that Russia is dissatisfied with Azerbaijani media reporting on Ukraine and their objective stance in the Russia-Ukraine crisis. Oxu.az has been blacklisted in Russia, after the websites Haqqin.az and Minval.az."
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