ILHAM ALIYEV: [edited] “Azerbaijan will not arrest citizens who fight for Ukraine, but will arrest those who fight for Russia”

10 comments

1. The tweet was too long for the title. Full text:

   >ILHAM ALIYEV: “Azerbaijan will not arrest citizens of Azerbaijan who fought or are fighting on the side of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, but will arrest those who fought or are fighting on the side of russia, thereby supporting the occupation of the territories of the sovereign Ukrainian state.”

2. Quietly, this at least in part the product of them replacing Russia as a military supplier with a more west-aligned one (Israel).

3. Russia dropping the ball in such a way with Azerbaijan should’ve clued everyone in on how they would do in Ukraine as far as 5 years ago.

   The timeline is interesting, and it’s easy to call out looking back, but hindsight is 20/20. Looking back, Russia’s impotence in this theater that’s strategically critical for them does clue us in on them being less powerful than what everyone thought prior to Feb 2022.

   * skirmishes between Armenia and Azerbaijan started before the USSR broke up. Moscow had bigger problems, so it just kinda went along till the breakup.

   * First Nagorno-Karabakh war breaks out, and ends with an Armenian victory and full control of Nagorno-Karabakh.

   * Skirmishes continue until 2020. Meanwhile, Armenia is firmly aligned with Russia, while the Azeris pull away. Azerbaijan reforms its military with Turkey’s and Israel’s hardware and expertise, while Armenia stays with the Russian model and hardware.

   * 2020 – another full war breaks out, and it clearly illustrates the changes in warfare. As far as I’m aware, this was the first conventional conflict with very heavy use of drones. The Azeris win a decisive, 44 day war, and Russia deploys peacekeepers to the Lachin corridor connecting Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.

   * 2022 – Russia invades Ukraine. We’re all here, so we know it doesn’t go as planned and finally shatters the illusion of Russian military capability and doctrine.

   * 2022 – 2023 – Azerbaijan sees the weakness of Russia’s force projection, and blockades Nagorno-Karabakh for 9 months. Russia’s response is, as expected, impotent, and Azerbaijan launches another offensive in September of 2023, completely disregarding Russian peacekeepers, and taking full control of Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia does nothing for its ally.

   * On Christmas of 2024, Russia shoots down Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 which further erodes the relationship.

   All of this brings us to today, with this clean and unambiguous fuck-off from Azerbaijan to Russia.

4. Things are getting heated between Russia and Azerbaijan. Both two evil dictatorships. And countries like Ukraine and Armenia suffer from it.

5. Is this the kind of thing where we as Redditors should say “Based Aliyev” or something like that?

6. This needs to be the official EU stand as well

7. Aliyev: Go get some payback

8. Where is the source for this?

9. Based

10. Armenia be like: “let them fight”

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