(Reuters) – Azerbaijan has closed the Baku office of Russian state media outlet Rossiya Segodnya and revoked the accreditation of a reporter for the U.S.-government funded Voice of America broadcaster, a foreign ministry spokesperson said on Monday.
Ayhan Hajizade, the spokesperson, did not provide a reason for the decisions, which follow a move by Baku to suspend BBC News’ Azerbaijani operations last week.
Both Rossiya Segodnya – which operates the Sputnik and RIA Novosti news agencies – and BBC News will be allowed to maintain one correspondent each in the South Caucasus country, Hajizade told Reuters.
Rossiya Segodnya did not immediately respond to a comment request. Voice of America, which produces content in 48 languages and is funded by the U.S. Congress, also did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
President Ilham Aliyev has repeatedly maintained that his oil-rich country has a robust free press even as Azerbaijan has come under increasing scrutiny from the West in recent years over its record on press freedom and freedom of expression.
At least 23 media professionals are currently behind bars there, according to Reporters without Borders.
The authorities have launched criminal investigations into smuggling against several employees of independent media outlets and say the detained journalists have real charges to answer.
The decision to close the office of Russian government-funded Rossiya Segodnya comes as ties between Moscow and Baku are strained after an Azerbaijani airliner travelling from Baku to Grozny in southern Russia crashed in Kazakhstan in December, killing 38 people.
Aliyev has publicly demanded justice and transparency from Moscow over the disaster involving the Azerbaijan Airlines plane, which he said crashed as a result of accidental damage due to shooting from the ground in Russia.
President Vladimir Putin made a rare public apology for the incident, but a Kremlin statement did not say Russia had shot down the plane.
A preliminary investigation published on a Kazakh government website found the plane was riddled with holes, and a senior Azerbaijani government official told Reuters the external impact referred to in the report was from a Russian surface-to-air missile.
(Reporting by Nailia Bagirova; Writing by Lucy Papachristou; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
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