The reason for the speech of the Ministry of Culture of Azerbaijan and measures to reduce the exchange in the cultural field were the events related to the detentions at the In the Urals, and Baku's reaction is hypertrophied, said Konstantin Zatulin, first Deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs.
The MP pointed out that the statement of the department is related to the general course of Azerbaijan, which began to manifest itself after the episode with the crash of the Azerbaijani airlines plane. However, in fact, these are all just reasons that are given exaggerated significance at the government level, <url> quotes the deputy as saying.
"Azerbaijan has been following a certain course for a long time, which we used to ignore, because there was an appearance of good-neighborly relations and strategic partnership. For the time being, Azerbaijan maintained this appearance of special relations with Russia, based on the tasks that it set for itself to resolve the protracted Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in its favor," Zatulin said.
The parliamentarian noted that Azerbaijan's desire to benefit is aggravated by Baku's desire to get ahead, demonstrate its specialness and independence. At the same time, Azerbaijan maintains contacts and supplies Ukraine, behaves ambiguously towards Iran, cooperating with Israel, he said.
"Therefore, what has just happened does not surprise me at all. The reason could be different — a plane, a raid on criminals, and so on. It is important that all this is hypertrophied and all this is presented as an evil will on the part of Russia, with which it is necessary to reconsider relations," the deputy said.
Earlier, Baku protested over the detention of Azerbaijani citizens in Yekaterinburg. According to the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation in the Sverdlovsk region, the detentions were connected with the suspicion of persons committing crimes in the 2000s.