Russian court extends Azerbaijani diaspora leader’s prison term to 24 years

Source: Kommersant

A court in Yekaterinburg has sentenced Shahin Shykhlinski, the head of the Azerbaijani diaspora in the Urals, to nine years in a maximum-security prison for using violence against a law enforcement officer. The Kirovsky district court issued the verdict on April 13, the Russian regional news outlet Kommersant-Ural reported.

Shykhlinski was sentenced to 22 years in early March — the first four to be served in prison, the remainder in a maximum-security colony — on charges of murder and attempted murder committed in 2001 and 2011. Combined with the new sentence, he will serve a total of 24 years.

The violence charge stems from his arrest in July 2025. When special forces officers tried to pull Shykhlinski from a car driven by his son Mutvaly, the younger Shykhlinski reversed sharply, knocking an FSB officer to the ground.

Mutvaly Shykhlinski said he had not hit the officer intentionally and expressed regret but did not admit guilt. He was sentenced to eight years in a general-regime prison colony.

Members of the Azerbaijani diaspora in the Urals were arrested against the backdrop of a crisis in Russian-Azerbaijani relations that erupted after an Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet crashed near Aktau, Kazakhstan, in December 2024, due to Russian air defense fire. In October 2025, Vladimir Putin and Ilham Aliyev met in Dushanbe for the first time since the crisis began.

In March, a court tried a case involving the murders and attempted murders of businesspeople between 2001 and 2011, in which six members of the Azerbaijani diaspora in the Urals and its leader, Shahin Shykhlinski, were charged. The court sentenced the defendants to terms ranging from 10 to 22 years in prison.

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Russian court extends Azerbaijani diaspora leader’s prison term to 24 years

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Russian court extends Azerbaijani diaspora leader’s prison term to 24 years

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