BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) — Police in Azerbaijan's capital of Baku searched the offices of Russia's state-funded news outlet Sputnik on Monday, local media reported, as tensions rose between the two countries after the deaths of two ethnic Azerbaijanis during a police raid last week in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg.
Sputnik had continued working in the country via “illegal financing,” despite having its official accreditation revoked in February 2025, the Ministry of Internal Affairs said.
Arrests were made during the search, it said, without elaborating. Images on Azerbaijani media outlets appeared to show two men taken away by masked police.
They included Sputnik’s Azerbaijan’s editor-in-chief, Yevgeny Belousov, and its director, Igor Kartavykh, according to Sputnik's sister outlet, state-owned RIA Novosti.
In Moscow, Azerbaijan Ambassador Rahman Mustafayev was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry after the raid and notified of “the illegal detention of Russian journalists,” according to ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, as cited by the Russian news service Interfax.
The search followed official protests from Baku after Russian police raided the homes of ethnic Azerbaijanis in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg on Friday.
Two brothers, Ziyaddin and Huseyn Safarov, were killed, and several others were seriously injured during the raids, officials said, with nine people detained.
Sayfaddin Huseynli, a brother of the two dead Azerbaijanis, told The Associated Press the raids were “an inhumane, cruel act by Russia against migrants — an act of intimidation.”
One of the dead was a Russian citizen and the other held both Russian and Azerbaijani citizenship, Huseynli said. Their bodies were being returned to Azerbaijan on Monday.
He earlier told Azerbaijani public broadcaster ITV that the men were beaten and subjected to electric shocks “without any trial or investigation.”
“The so-called Russian law enforcement agencies broke into houses in the middle of the night, beat and took people away like animals,” he told the broadcaster.
Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry said it expected “that the matter will be investigated and all perpetrators of violence brought to justice as soon as possible.“
Russia's Investigative Committee said Monday that one of the deaths was from heart failure. It did not provide details on the second victim, but said a medical examination would be conducted to determine the exact cause of death for both men.
It also said the raids were part of an investigation into several murders spanning more than two decades.
Officials in Baku responded by canceling a scheduled trip to Moscow by Azerbaijani officials, citing the “targeted extrajudicial killings and violence against Azerbaijanis on the basis of their nationality” by Russian law enforcement. It also canceled a planned visit to Baku by a Russian deputy prime minister, and the Culture Ministry called off concerts, exhibitions, festivals and performances by Russian state and private institutions.
Moscow has maintained a muted response to Azerbaijan's actions. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday he “sincerely regretted” Baku’s decision to cancel the events.
He also said Moscow would continue to “explain the reason and nature” of the Yekaterinburg raids.
“Everything that took place is related to the work of law enforcement agencies, and that cannot and should not be a reason for such a reaction. We are interested in further developing our good relations with Azerbaijan,” he said.
Ties between Moscow and Baku have been strained for months. On Dec. 25, 2024, an Azerbaijani passenger jet was hit by fire from the ground as it approached Grozny, the regional capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, Azerbaijani officials said. It diverted to nearby Kazakhstan, where it crashed while attempting to land, killing 38 of 67 people aboard.
Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev said it was shot down over Russia, albeit unintentionally, and rendered uncontrollable by electronic warfare measures amid allegations that Russian air defense systems were trying to fend off a Ukrainian drone strike near Grozny.
Aliyev accused Russia of trying to “hush up” what happened for several days. Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized to Aliyev for what he called a “tragic incident” but stopped short of acknowledging responsibility.
In May, Aliyev declined to attend Russia’s Victory Day parade in Moscow.
Later that month, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha visited Azerbaijan, signaling closer ties between Baku and Kyiv.
FILE - The Old City stands with the Flame Towers skyscrapers in background in Baku, Azerbaijan, June 13, 2021. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic, File)
FILE - Workers carry a coffin with the body of a victim from the Azerbaijani Airlines crash near the Kazakhstani city of Aktau, at the Heydar Aliyev International Airport outside Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 28, 2024. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev enter a hall during a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Oct. 8, 2024. (Valery Sharifulin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.
West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.
The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.
Decisions are expected by early summer.
President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.
“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”
She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.
Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.
She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.
Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.
“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.
Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.
The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.
About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.
"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”
But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.
“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”
Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”
“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.
One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.
Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”
The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.
The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.
The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.
The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.
If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.
“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)
