Russian citizens with Armenian surnames allowed to visit Azerbaijan after informing embassy beforehand: Azerbaijani FM

Azerbaijani foreign minister Elmar Mammadyarov stated that citizens of Russia with Armenian surnames may visit Azerbaijan but they are to inform their embassy in Moscow about it, to avoid “emotional background” because of Karabakh conflict.

Earlier, Russian citizen Kristina Gevorkyan wrote on Facebook that she spent 13 hours in the Heydar Aliyev international airport in Baku being “isolated informationally and being on the nerves.” She wanted to spent New Year holidays in Azerbaijan but she was immediately stopped at the passport control.

Gevorkyan said that she and two other families were not allowed to Baku because of Armenian surname of one of the family members.

Azerbaijani MFA described the situation with Gevorkyan as an attempt to “exaggerate a private case,” adding that there are no problems in Azerbaijani-Russian relations.

Russian Foreign Ministry described not allowing Russian citizens with Armenian decent to Baku inadmissible.

“We are saying if there are Russian citizens with Armenian surnames who want to visit Azerbaijan let them do that, but before doing it they should visit the Azerbaijani embassy. We have visa-free regime with Russia and knowing beforehand about the visits of citizens with Armenian surnames will allow to prevent any situations that may appear because of emotional background in Azerbaijan because of the existing conflict. We usually speak about this issue very openly with the Russian side,” Mammadyarov told Russian Izvestiya paper.