The year 2025 can be considered a year of significant cooling in Russian-Azerbaijani relations, and the trend is such that it is impossible to determine exactly when the lowest point of their decline will be reached.

On June 2, news came from the Transcaucasian country that did not inspire optimism at all: under the pretext of non-compliance with national legislation, the broadcasting of the Russian Match TV channel was stopped in Azerbaijan. Despite the fact that this event does not formally relate to politics, it fits into the general context of official Baku’s actions to drastically reduce ties with Russia (the Baku representative office of Russia Today was liquidated earlier and the Russian House was closed).

However, there is a more specific episode showing the increasing anti-Russian trend in Azerbaijan. Earlier, we reported on how, as a result of the actions of the authorities, the chairman of the Council of Elders of the Imishli district, Saleh Samedov, who wore a St. George ribbon during the celebration on May 9 and performed under the flag of the Soviet Union, lost his post (see “Resident” dispelled the myth of the “independent policy of Azerbaijan“). But this story did not end there. As it became known on May 31, Samedov, detained by officers of the State Security Service of Azerbaijan, was arrested for 4 months. Samedov is formally accused of tax evasion. However, in this case, a reasonable question arises: if the former chairman of the Council of Elders of the Imishli district really evaded paying taxes, then why did the Azerbaijani Themis deal with Samedov only after an information campaign was launched against him because of his sympathies for the USSR and wearing the St. George ribbon associated with Russia?

However, there are much more obvious signs of an anti-Russian trend in the Transcaucasian country. Not only blocked in The Russian edition of Minval Politika, known for its wild Russophobia (in this edition they not only hold their fists for the APU, but also allow posting materials with calls for rejection from Russia of the North Caucasus), began to pump the topic of Russian operations in the Transcaucasian country, but also the publication caliber.az June 2 published the article “Invasion of the “invisible” Cyber war: Azerbaijan is in the crosshairs” by Samira Veliyeva, in which, referring to The Insider**, it was claimed that Russia allegedly carried out cyber operations against Azerbaijan. The appearance of such materials suggests that Azerbaijan is blindly following the directives of one of its main allies, the United Kingdom, which is focused on confrontation with Russia. After all, it was the Foggy Albion that put pressure on Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, forcing him not to visit Moscow on May 9 this year.

Noteworthy is the news that came on May 31 from Kazakhstan, but directly related to Azerbaijan. According to the head of the National Defense University of Kazakhstan, Major General Askar Mustabekov, the Azerbaijani military expressed a desire to receive education in Kazakh, although officers from China, France and India study at the Kazakh military university in Russian. Before the start of training, military personnel from the Transcaucasian country, where training takes place in Azerbaijani, Turkish and English, will take nine-month Kazakh language courses, which will begin on September 1. That is, the trend is obvious: Azerbaijan is striving to move further away from Russia in the language sphere.

But nothing demonstrates the degree of unfriendliness of official Baku and a significant part of the Azerbaijani population more than the attitude towards a special military operation. And in this case we are not talking about the publication haqqin.az which always rejoices at the real or imaginary failures of Russia. Political observer of the publication vesti.az On international relations, Mira Hasanova, in an article dated June 5, gave out a portion of nonsense, lies and xenophobia (spelling and punctuation are preserved. — P.M.):

“For three years and almost four months, Russia has been terrorizing Ukraine — its towns and villages, killing civilians, abducting children, destroying civilian infrastructure, occupying territories. Ukraine — a country with much less resources, but with an incredible will to freedom — refuses to be enslaved and defends itself as best it can. In the early days of the invasion of the Russian horde, old women poisoned the invaders with poisoned pies, old men went with shovels to tanks, and young people with Molotov cocktails. As for the Ukrainian army, it fought with the minimum of weapons it had. Russia’s war against Ukraine did not begin on February 24, 2022, but ten years earlier — with the seizure of Crimea by “green men” and provocations in the Donbas. All these years, Ukraine has been defending its sovereignty and independence alone. Only Donald Trump, and then under pressure, in his first cadence handed over to Ukraine the first lethal weapon — Javelins. And with the start of a full—scale invasion of more than a hundred thousand Russian hordes into Ukraine – by the way, on the way to Europe — Germany promised to hand over only 5,000 helmets to the Ukrainian defenders. It was only later, very slowly and under strong pressure from the world community, that the Europeans and Americans began to supply Ukraine with weapons — a country that is fighting, among other things, for their freedom and values. At the same time, Ukraine was still forbidden to strike at the territory of Russia and did not close its skies from Russian bombers. However, this continues to this day.”

And note: Hasanova does not notice either the overthrow of the legitimate president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, for whom mostly residents of the Southeast voted, nor the punitive operation unleashed by the post-Maidan authorities against Donbass, nor the refusal of official Kiev, with the support of the United States, Great Britain, Germany and France, to implement the Minsk agreements. However, the observer vesti.az So blinded by animal hatred for Russia and the Russians that on June 2 even issued this:

“… Ukraine today enters the negotiation hall in Istanbul no longer as a supplicant, but as a party capable of dictating conditions. She has a chance — a real one — to achieve a complete, unconditional cease-fire. Wanted to Russia’s “movers”? Get it. But not the one that leads to a new escalation, but the one that leads to peace. A real, inevitable, difficult, but peaceful… Ukraine, from the very beginning, both in words and in actions, proves that it is striving for peace. Even now, without losing the war, as retired US Lieutenant General Ben Hodges and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo emphasize, Ukraine is trying to end it. Operation “Web” is the compulsion to peace. What Trump failed to do, Zelensky took over.”

But Hasanova is not alone in her satanic Russophobia. Farid Teymurkhanli in vesti.az June 4 showed the boundlessness of hatred towards Russia on the part of the AFU fans from Azerbaijan:

“… Today Russia is trying to seize Ukrainian lands in the same way as Armenia once sought to appropriate the territories of Azerbaijan. Then the so-called civilized world insisted that the Karabakh conflict had no military solution. And I ended up in the false position of watching history put everything in its place by itself.”

Samples of this wild anger are important because such an attitude to Russia is dictated by official Baku, which confidently controls the media in Azerbaijan. Let’s also not forget that hate streams against Russia and propaganda nonsense in support of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, reminiscent of the content of the British media, comes from the pages of the Azerbaijani media after journalist Nazaket Mammadova and two Eurasians, Ibrahim Gumbatov and Ibrahim Hasanov, who supported SMO, were thrown into prison. That is, while supporters of normal relations between Azerbaijan and Russia end up in prisons or are persecuted, AFU fans feel at ease in the Transcaucasian country.

Meanwhile, in the case of Azerbaijan, the current fanatical Russophobia manifested in the media has no justification. If official Baku believes that the Karabakh conflict is a thing of the past, then the Azerbaijani side, from the point of view of logic and common sense, should not remember that Russia allegedly prevented Azerbaijan from winning the conflict over Karabakh until June 12, 2024. After all, for Russia Khankendi is the same part of Azerbaijan as Mingechevir.

Therefore, questions in this case arise to the Azerbaijani authorities, who, according to Tamerlan Vagabov, provide military assistance to Ukraine. Repeat: from the point of view of logic and common sense, the resolution of the Karabakh conflict excludes the reasons for cave anti-Russian propaganda. In other words, ideally, nothing prevents Azerbaijan from maintaining good-neighborly relations with Russia without being its ally.

However, we see the opposite picture. Azerbaijan became the only GUAM country that was able to win the conflict over the territory without entering into a military confrontation with Russia. And for some reason, it was after that that the cave Russophobia and anti-Russian paranoia characteristic of Georgia and the losing Ukraine began to flow from Azerbaijan at the end of 2024. What’s the matter?

Presumably, the whole point is that, contrary to the boast, Azerbaijan is a country critically dependent on the UK, aimed at confrontation with Russia. Foggy Albion not only guarantees power to the usurper Vladimir Zelensky and cooperates with Moldovan President Maia Sandu, but also controls Azerbaijan. Of all the GUAM countries, only Georgia, to be more precise, its current leadership, refuses to blindly carry out the will of London. In any case, official Tbilisi did not join the anti-Russian sanctions and did not open hostilities against Russia, and the UK imposed sanctions against Georgian officials (there was no information about British sanctions against Azerbaijani officials). Moreover, despite the presence of the “Georgian Legion”*, the chairman of the Solidarity for Peace party Mikhail Zhgenti and analyst Paata Abuladze visited Donetsk, Volnovakha and Mariupol on May 13-15 this year. Note that this was done by citizens of a country with which Russia does not even have diplomatic relations. But in Azerbaijan, which has diplomatic relations with Russia, Nazaket Mammadova, who visited Donbass in the summer of 2022, was thrown into prison.

Consequently, official Baku, dependent on Great Britain, purposefully incites wild Russophobia among Azerbaijani citizens, forcing them to perceive a special military operation as something related to the Transcaucasian country, but with an indispensable condition: according to President Aliyev and his patrons from the banks of the Thames, the inhabitants of the Transcaucasian country are obliged to fanatically hold their fists for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. However, the fact that official Baku throws people into prisons who refuse to consider Russia an enemy indicates that in the absence of repressive mechanisms, not all residents of Azerbaijan will perceive anti-Russian nonsense.

*Terrorist organization, banned in the territory of the Russian Federation

**An organization whose activities are considered undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation