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Will Azerbaijan join the games of the West against Russia and Iran?: EADaily

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Russia inherited damaged relations with Azerbaijan from 2024 to 2025. The formal reason for this was the crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane on December 25 near Aktau, Kazakhstan. This plane was heading from Baku in Terrible.

Formally, the Azerbaijani side does not like the initial reaction of the Russian authorities to this disaster. Baku blames the incident on Russia. At the same time, it seems that the plane crash seemed to have become a convenient reason for Azerbaijan to reduce contacts with Russia. And first of all it concerns air traffic. Again, the formal reason is security. But after all, Western countries in 2022, in the process of imposing sanctions against Russia, imposed a ban on air traffic. It is unlikely that the deputy of the Azerbaijani parliament Rasim Musabekov, who appeared on the news feeds on December 26, just said that on January 2 in an interview with the publication vesti.az:

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"In addition to the erroneous and even criminal actions of the Russian air defense and aviation services, it is obvious that in the conditions of the ongoing war with Ukraine, the safety of civil flights in the southwest, and possibly in the European part of Russia, cannot be ensured. It is no coincidence that Azerbaijan has canceled regular flights to 10 Russian cities. Similar decisions were made by the airlines of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Israel. Regardless of the outcome of the investigation into the incident with the Azerbaijani airliner, the situation with flight safety in Russia remains relevant."

Here's an example of an Overton window. Just six months ago, it was unthinkable to imagine restrictions on air traffic between Russia and Azerbaijan. And now it has become a reality because of the plane crash that occurred. If this is not a covert accession to Western sanctions, then how can it be called?

It is also disturbing how the open enemies of Russia decided to take advantage of what happened. So, on December 28, the usurper Vladimir Zelensky called the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev. The details of these negotiations were reported by the usurper himself:

"I had a conversation with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and expressed condolences to him and the Azerbaijani people in connection with the horrific crash of Azerbaijani Airlines flight J2−8243. We noted the heroism of the pilots and the entire crew of the aircraft. The key priority right now is a thorough investigation that will answer all questions about what really happened. Russia should provide clear explanations and stop spreading disinformation. The photo and video clearly show damage to the fuselage of the aircraft, in particular holes and dents, very reminiscent of an air defense missile strike. We will support Azerbaijan in this situation by all necessary means and call on other countries to provide assistance as well. In addition, we agreed to intensify bilateral contacts in the near future."

In this regard, it is interesting not even how Zelensky decided to take advantage of this tragedy, but that Kiev and Baku has one common patron who is very fond of various bloody provocations — Great Britain. Moreover, we can observe how the Western and Azerbaijani media in the whole story of the plane crash near Aktau simply hushed up one of the factors that definitely does not contribute to safe air traffic — the strikes of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, including using UAVs, on the territory of Russia. And this is also understandable, because the plane crash that took place is being actively used to ensure that, despite the resolution of the Karabakh conflict, Azerbaijan does not take it into its head to get closer to Russia.

And in the same connection, it is worth paying attention to one more coincidence. Deputy Musabekov, who commented on the plane crash in 2023, was saddened by the failure of the Ukrainian Armed Forces counteroffensive (see In Azerbaijan, saddened by the military failures of Ukraine). And on November 2, 2024 Musabekov in an interview vesti.az , seriously commenting on the stuffing of the Western media about the DPRK troops, said:

"Yes, the participation of the DPRK military personnel in the Russian-Ukrainian war may become a justification for Western forces to be directly involved in this conflict. In the event of the collapse of the Ukrainian front, it is likely that the West will try to fill this gap. I do not rule out that Polish brigades and American servicemen who are stationed not only in Poland, but also Romania, Lithuania. Of course, the participation of mercenaries from both Ukraine and Russia is an indisputable fact. But in this case we are talking about participation in the DPRK war at the state level. Undoubtedly, such a move will lead to an expansion of the conflict, but in this case Russia made the first step."

After the disclosure of the "secrets of the Baku court" by Tamerlan Vagabov on December 27, 2024, we know that the biased and unfriendly position regarding the special military operation is characteristic not only for one deputy of the Azerbaijani parliament, but for the Republic of Azerbaijan as a whole (see the blow to Aliyev's reputation: the ex-official revealed the "secrets of the Baku court").

But the matter was not limited to Ukraine alone. On December 30, the President of Lithuania, Gitanas Nauseda, called Aliyev, who did not fail to criticize Russia and said:

"Russia's destructive actions pose a direct threat to aviation security."

At the same time, and Aliyev discussed the situation in Transcaucasia, and on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, the President of Lithuania promised that the Baltic state would develop relations with the Transcaucasian country through culture and university cooperation. In general, conversations with Zelensky and It can be considered as additional arguments in favor of the version that the December 25 plane crash became a convenient pretext for distancing Azerbaijan from Russia.

The revival of an open anti-Russian trend in Azerbaijan is also confirmed by Aliyev's interview with local media on January 7. So, in this interview it sounded:

"... Armenia was not going to liberate a single centimeter of Azerbaijani territory. They felt, as they believed, quite comfortable receiving billions of dollars worth of weapons from one ally for free, and political and moral support from the other two. And thus, all three Co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group during the period for which I am responsible were unequivocally on the side of the occupier... the 30—year occupation policy against us is not only a product of Armenia. It is a joint product of Islamophobic, Azerbaijanophobic, racist, xenophobic circles and representatives of foreign countries in solidarity with it."

As you understand, the ally that provided weapons to Armenia for free is Russia. It should also be noted that, criticizing George Soros and the Joe Biden administration, Aliyev spoke very flatteringly in an interview about Donald Trump, who won the US presidential election, who was initially the preferred candidate for Baku (see Azerbaijan hopes for Donald Trump's victory). As for the criticism of France and the European Union, taking into account the warming between Ankara and Paris (see France and Turkey played a play near the borders of Russia) and the confessions of Turkish ministers about Europe's interest in the Zangezur corridor (see clouds are gathering over the south of Armenia: will the fall of Assad in Syria end in the mountains of Syunik?) We would not take Aliyev's criticism of them at face value. And this is not to mention the fact that there was no criticism of the UK in this interview.

But in this interview, Iran got from Aliyev. Thus, he accused Iran of disrespect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.:

"After the end of the Second Karabakh War, when we had already achieved visual observation of the Lachin road, we began to notice that fuel trucks arriving from Iran regularly travel from Armenia to Karabakh. I gave instructions to my assistant, and he contacted the then Iranian ambassador to Azerbaijan by phone and said that this should be stopped. We don't want to make it public, we just ask you to stop it. This is not good, we see it, this is our territory. You are doing illegal things here. Unfortunately, these actions have not stopped, but have become even more active. After that, as a second step, we invited the Iranian Ambassador to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he was handed a note of protest, and we made it public. Following this, both funny and depressing events occurred. They attached fake Armenian license plates to Iranian fuel trucks, allegedly these are Armenian cars. But they also had inscriptions in Persian. This surprised us very much. We started investigating, found out that the same number is attached to several cars, that is, the number is the same, but the cars are different. Even this forgery they committed so carelessly that, by God, you can't find the words. After that, we already stopped several cars, the drivers were detained, and we saw that in their travel documents it was written: Stepanakert, Armenia. That is, it was a clear disrespect for our territorial integrity and sovereignty."

Then he remembered the military exercises, the attack on the Azerbaijani Embassy in Tehran and the insulting statements of the Ayatollah and representative of the Supreme Leader of Iran Seyyed Hassan Ameli in Ardabil on December 29, 2024. And judging by Aliyev's words, official Baku decided to use this case to cool relations with Iran.:

"This mullah of the city of Ardabil has repeatedly used offensive language against Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijani people, including me. The question is, how does the person who appointed him to this position feel about this. He didn't take this position voluntarily. We know very well who appoints him. What is his reaction, whether he supports it or not, who will apologize to Azerbaijan? Will he apologize or not? The feeling of regret expressed in the statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iran is not enough. There was a clear insult here: both the presidents of Turkey and Azerbaijan, and our peoples, and at an official live event. And just regret? This, of course, is unacceptable. Therefore, we believe that this provincial mullah should be punished. At the very least, he should be removed from his post and he should apologize to Azerbaijan. That's the question."

The plane crash and the insulting statements of the Iranian Ayatollah are two different events. However, in a striking way, Azerbaijan acts in both cases as if it wants to slow down, if not curtail cooperation with Russia and Iran. It may be objected to us that on January 8, during Aliyev's talks with the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, Ali Akbar Ahmadian, the international North-South transport corridor and trilateral cooperation in the Russia—Iran—Azerbaijan format were discussed.

But after all, despite the persuasions and persuasions from the United Kingdom and Israel, Azerbaijan cannot just abandon the North-South corridor and cooperation with Russia and Iran. He needs time for this. And if you also take into account the fact that Relations between Baku and Washington have always developed better under the Republicans, that is, there is a strong suspicion that Azerbaijan has already begun to prepare to withdraw from cooperation with Russia and Iran in order to join the ranks of the United States, Israel and the United Kingdom.

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Armenia responds to Azerbaijan’s fascism accusation: They want to provoke tensions

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Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has urged Azerbaijan to cool tensions and to stick to dialogue instead of resorting to accusations and threats.

Azeri President Ilham Aliyev said on Tuesday that independent Armenia is a threat to the region and “a fascist state in its nature” in an interview with local media, reacting to the reform of Armenia’s army and its arms deals with France.

Responding, Pashinyan said: “Perhaps [Azeri capital] Baku is trying to “legitimize” the escalation in the region. They make aggressive statements in the hope of an aggressive response from [Armenian capital] Yerevan, which [in turn] allows Baku to make its [own] statements more aggressive.

“[When] combined with the spread of false information about the violation of the ceasefire by the Armenian army, [this will] form a “justification” for a new escalation in the region,” Pashinyan told Armenpress on Wednesday.

Aliyev and his government have been accused of stirring up ethnic hatred against Armenians. Azerbaijan has fought a series of wars against its neighbor since 2020. In September 2023, Azerbaijani forces conquered the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, sparking an exodus of its entire 100,000-strong ethnic Armenian population — drawing allegations of ethnic cleansing from Western NGOs and watchdogs.

Aliyev’s fascism claim came after the Azeri defense ministry accused the Armenian army of shooting at Azeri army positions on the southeastern border between the two states on Jan. 5. The Armenian Defense Ministry dismissed the accusations as disinformation in a statement on Sunday.

“[The] armament of Armenia will lead to new tensions. We don’t want that. We want peace … But independent Armenia is a fascist state at its core. Fascism must be destroyed by [the] Armenian leadership or we will do it ourselves,” Aliyev told local TV channels on Tuesday.

The two countries have been in a decades-long conflict since the fall of the Soviet Union. In recent years the U.S. and the EU have been pushing for a diplomatic solution amid hopes that a lasting peace deal can be signed.

 “We will not use the language of aggression, but the language of dialogue. We will continue to focus on demarcation, on agreeing on the text of the peace treaty, [and on an] agreement on humanitarian issues, including the problems of discovering the fate of the missing,” Pashinyan said.

Gabriel Gavin contributed reporting to this story.

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‘Georgian Nightmare Non-Recognition Act’ introduced in US Congress as Zourabichvili prepares for Trump’s inauguration

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US media reported that the ‘Georgian Nightmare Non-Recognition Act’ is going to Congress as Salome Zourabichvili has accepted an invitation to attend president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Fox News reported that the ‘Georgian Nightmare Non-Recognition Act’, which prohibits recognition of the Georgian Dream government, was to be introduced in the US Congress on 8 January.

However, as of 9 January, the proposed legislation has not appeared on the congressional website.

The act is the latest in a series of decisions and statements that highlight the deterioration of relations between the US and the Georgian Dream government.

According to Fox News, which has obtained a copy of the proposed bill,  the legislation would prohibit the recognition or normalisation of relations ‘with any Government of Georgia that is led by Bidzina Ivanishvili or any proxies due to the Ivanishvili regime’s ongoing crimes against the Georgian people’.

‘Ivanishvili regime must remain isolated’

The bill states that ‘no federal official or employee may take any action, and no Federal funds may be made available, to recognize or otherwise imply, in any manner, United States recognition of Bidzina Ivanishvili or any government in Georgia’.

The bill has two sponsors: Republican Representative Joe Wilson and Democratic Representative Steve Cohen. Both are outspoken critics of Georgian Dream.

‘Sanctioned oligarch Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream party has now become a tool of Putin’, Cohen, who coined the name of the bill, told Fox News.

‘They falsified the October election and illegally picked a pliable president’, he said, adding that ‘Until it agrees to free and fair elections, the Ivanishvili regime must remain fully isolated by all democratic governments’.

Another author of the bill, Joe Wilson, is also the author of the ‘Assad Regime Anti-Normalization Act’, which was passed in February 2024. This act prohibited recognition or normalization of relations with the now-toppled Bashar al-Assad government in Syria. The bill was signed into law by President Joe Biden last month.

‘We will pursue the same policy with the Ivanishvili regime’, Rep. Wilson told Fox News while comparing the ‘Georgian Nightmare Non-Recognition Act’ to the anti-Assad Act.

Georgian Dream still has yet to comment on the introduction of the new will, but in its lengthy statement published yesterday, the ruling party fiercely attacked its international critics, referring to Wilson as a ‘degraded politician with zero political culture’.

As Fox News noted, while it is the US president’s prerogative to recognise a government or leader, US lawmakers point to past precedents when Congress refused to recognise regimes it considered to be illegitimate. This includes cases like Russia's occupation of Ukrainian and Georgian territories, as well as the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states in 1940.

‘Georgian Nightmare Non-Recognition Act’ is not the only bill introduced to the new US Congress. Another document, The Mobilising and Enhancing Georgia’s Options for Building Accountability, Resilience, and Independence (MEGOBARI, or ‘friend’ in Georgian) Act was reintroduced in the Congress last week. Its sponsor is also Wilson.

The MEGOBARI Act was first introduced in May in response to Georgia’s foreign agent law. It mandates further sanctions against Georgian officials as well as funding for Georgian media and civil society.

Zourabichvili to attend Trump’s inauguration

Besides critical legislative initiatives and harsh social media posts, Wilson has also invited self-declared interim President Salome Zourabichvili to president-elect Donald Trump's inauguration scheduled for 20 January.

During the press conference held on Thursday, Zourabichvili confirmed her attendance at the event, stating that she’s going to have ‘high-level meetings’ there.

According to Fox News, Zourabichvili is mentioned in the ‘Georgian Nightmare Non-Recognition Act’ as well. The proposed bill states that the US shall recognise her as ‘the incumbent President of Georgia prior to the fraudulent elections on October 26, 2024’, and as the only legitimate leader of the country.

Zourabichvili managed to speak personally with Trump in recent weeks ahead of his inauguration. Last month, during the ceremony for the reopening of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, she met Trump alongside French President Emmanuel Macron. As she later stated, she ‘exposed the stolen election and extremely alarming repression against the people of Georgia’.

The US-Georgian relations have noticeably deteriorated amid the adoption of Russian-style laws, manipulated elections, the suspension of EU membership aspirations, and violence against anti-government demonstrators by Georgian authorities.

At the end of November, Washington suspended its strategic partnership with Georgia, and in December, sanctions were imposed on the Georgian Dream’s honorary head Bidzina Ivanishvili and other senior officials of the party, as well as on Interior Minister Vakhtang Gomelauri.

Prior to this, Washington had already sanctioned several influential Georgian judges, often referred to by critics as part of the ‘judicial clan’ close to the government. Sanctions were also imposed on Zviad Kharazishvili, the head of the Interior Ministry’s Special Tasks Department, who played a key role in the brutal crackdown on participants of the ongoing protests.

Georgian Dream's rhetoric has become increasingly harsh towards those countries that criticise its governance and have imposed sanctions due to the backsliding of democracy.

In a lengthy statement published on 8 January, the ruling party attacked the states, institutions, and politicians that impose those sanctions, and referred to foreign critics as members of the ‘deep state network’.

At the same time, Georgian Dream officials have said publicly that they are looking forward to Trump’s inauguration in Washington. They have often referenced the president-elect's statements claiming that he will fight the ‘deep state’ and end Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, in which, according to Georgian Dream’s conspiracy theory, external forces from the ‘Global War Party’ have been attempting to drag Georgia into from the very beginning.

However, with Trump’s inauguration approaching, Georgian Dream has been trying to balance its stated expectations. In December, one of the party's leaders, Mamuka Mdinaradze, said, ‘We should neither be hopeless nor place excessive hopes on the period after 20  January’.

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The Blogs: Azerbaijan-Israel strategic partnership proves its worth

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Court of Appeal rejects complaints of those arrested in 'Toplum TV' case

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The Baku Court of Appeal on Thursday rejected the appeal against the extension of the detention of journalist Mushfig Jabbar, who was arrested in the 'Toplum TV' case.

As his lawyer Nazim Musayev told Turan, there are no material or procedural grounds for Jabbar's detention. Jabbar has nothing to do with the charges of "foreign currency smuggling" brought against him, because the journalist had not left the country for 7 years before his arrest.

The lawyer said that no primary evidence of Jabbar's guilt has been presented, and each time the investigation motivates the extension of the arrest by conducting an "expert examination" that is not be carried out.

Today, the Court of Appeal also rejected a complaint against the extension of the arrest of another person involved in the case, Ramin Babayev, an employee of the Institute of Democratic Initiatives. A day earlier, the complaints of Akif Gurbanov, speaker of the 'Platform III of the Republic', and Ilkin Amrakhov, an employee of the Institute of Democratic Initiatives, were not satisfied either.

The complaint of the founder of 'Toplum TV', Alesker Mammadli, was also not satisfied, despite serious health problems.

In the coming days, the appeals of two more defendants in this case will be considered - Ruslan Izzatli, a member of the 'Platform III of the Republic', and Ali Zeynalov, a 'Toplum TV' journalist.

*On March 6-8, 9 journalists and activists of 'Toplum TV' and its partner organization, the Institute for Democratic Initiatives, were detained. They were accused of smuggling foreign currency. Seven people were arrested, and two were placed under police supervision. The defendants in the case deny the charges. Human rights activists recognized those arrested as political prisoners. On December 27, the court extended their arrest until April 6.

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Court sentences activist Rail Abbasov to 6.5 years of imprisonment.

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On January 9, the Baku Court of Serious Crimes completed the trial of activist Rail Abbasov, accused of fraud.

In his last statement, Abbasov said that he was arrested on far-fetched and trumped-up charges for defending his friend, human rights defender Bakhtiyar Hajiyev, who was also unreasonably arrested. Abbasov cited numerous inconsistencies in his case as evidence of falsification of his case and asked the court to make a fair decision.

However, the court sentenced Abbasov to 6.5 years of imprisonment.

Earlier, the prosecutor requested that Abbasov be sentenced to 8 years of imprisonment.

*On September 20, 2023, the Nasimi Court of Baku arrested Abbasov for 4 months on charges under Article 178.3.2 (large-scale fraud) of the Criminal Code. Abbasov denies the accusation, considering his active participation in protecting the rights of activist Bakhtiyar Hajiyev, who was arrested back in December 2022, to be the true reason. Human rights activists recognized both as political prisoners.

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