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Latest Articles about Azerbaijan
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Turkmenistan Redirects Its Oil Exports From Azerbaijan to Russia
Swiss firm Vitol and Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR have been embroiled in a quarrel over the transportation of crude oil from Turkmenistan. While the respective companies and government officials from Azerbaijan, Russia and Turkmenistan have kept silent on the matter, media outlets tend to... MORE
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Resettlement of Lezgins Complicates Azerbaijan’s and Russia’s Relations With Ethnic Minorities
On January 17, 130 families were resettled from the two Lezgin villages of Khrakh-Uba and Uryan-Uba, located on the border between Azerbaijan and Dagestan. The resettlement of ethnic Lezgins had been planned since November 2017, when the Russian authorities issued 138 accommodation certificates, providing 38... MORE
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Armenian-Azerbaijani Talks on Karabakh Appear Positive Even as Conflict Continues to Simmer Underneath
The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan held four-hour-long consultations in Paris, on January 16, under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Minsk Group. The joint statement to come out of the meeting included telling language. In particular, the... MORE
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‘Monument Dispute’ Raises Tensions in South Caucasus
Over the past several decades, multiple disputes over historical monuments and the symbolism they carry have broken out across the post-Soviet region. Notably, Russia has vocally denounced the removal of any monument to “liberating Soviet soldiers” in other former Soviet states—most famously in Estonia and... MORE
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Georgia Renegotiating Gas Transit Contract With Russian Gazprom
The two-year contract between the government of Georgia and the Russian energy giant Gazprom on natural gas transit from Russia to Armenia expired on December 31, 2018 (Georgia Today, January 21, 2019). And talks are now ongoing about extending or renegotiating this arrangement. Tbilisi and... MORE
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Azerbaijan Deepens and Expands Its Partnerships With International Arms Suppliers
On January 10, Azerbaijan displayed its new Tufan (“Storm”)–class patrol ship for the country’s State Border Service. The vessel features Israeli-made navigational, monitoring and radio-telecommunication devices as well as advanced missile complexes (President.az, January 10). The Border Guard also received new SkyStriker autonomous loitering munitions... MORE
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A Year in Review: Azerbaijan Optimizes Its Balanced Foreign Policy in 2018
Azerbaijan saw several important events in 2018—both domestic and external and sometimes interlinked. And a major takeaway from contextualizing the past year has been Baku’s cautious optimization of its existing balanced foreign policy. In particular, when looked at together, the events of 2018 suggest that... MORE
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The Broader Security Context of Azerbaijani-Belarusian Ties
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev traveled to Belarus on November 19 (see EDM, December 6). During his visit, both governments signed a number of key agreements, including regarding the supply of Belarusian air-defense weapons to Azerbaijan. President Aliyev praised the level of “military-technical cooperation” with Belarus,... MORE
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French Air-Defense Missile Systems Instead of Russian Coastal Missiles for Azerbaijan
The Azerbaijani military portal Azerideffence.com recently published information about Baku acquiring French ASTER 30-SAMP/T and VL MICA air-defense missile systems. A representative of the company producing these missile systems—MBDA—confirmed the information (Azeridefense.com, December 1). Several days later, the Russian newspaper Kommersant informed that Moscow had... MORE
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Belarus and Azerbaijan Enhance Their Strategic Military Partnership
On November 19, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev paid a long-awaited official visit to Belarus, where he met with his counterpart, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka. On this occasion, the Belarusian and Azerbaijani state news agencies praised the level of bilateral strategic cooperation, widely citing Lukashenka’s words to... MORE