As Baku prepares to host COP29, the largest international climate summit, the Azerbaijani government has ramped up its crackdown on the remaining vestiges of its civil society.
A few months ago we described Qatar as a “cunning state”. Cunning means the quality or skill of being clever at planning something to reach your goals, even by tricking others. Lately, it has emerged that Azerbaijan has also resorted to cunning strategies to punch above its weight.
An Azerbaijani pro-democracy activist was placed in pre-trial custody on Tuesday (30 April) on smuggling charges he denied in the latest of a series of cases that have prompted Western concern about free speech and human rights.
Armenia has agreed to return several villages to Azerbaijan in what both sides said on Friday (19 April) was an important milestone as they edge towards a peace deal after fighting two wars since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Wednesday (3 April) on Azerbaijan's leader to ease tensions that have flared again with Armenia, ahead of a US-EU bid to support Yerevan economically.
Azerbaijan has positioned itself as a significant energy trade partner for the EU following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, amid accusations that Baku would be involved in 'laundering' sanctioned Russian gas and oil.
Azerbaijani police on Wednesday (6 March) raided the offices of a TV station, the interior ministry said, in the latest sign of a crackdown on independent media.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev secured a fifth consecutive term in elections on Wednesday (7 February), official results showed, an expected outcome after his country's historic victory over Armenian separatists last year.
Azerbaijan will hold snap leadership elections Wednesday (7 February) with President Ilham Aliyev poised to secure a fifth term on a wave of popularity fuelled by his army's sweeping victory over Armenian separatists.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Sunday (28 January) that he has proposed the signing of a non-aggression pact to Azerbaijan, pending a comprehensive peace treaty between the arch-foe Caucasus neighbours.
Emboldened by its military victory over separatists in 2023, Azerbaijan has expressed distaste for the EU’s involvement in peace talks with neighbouring Armenia and is instead proposing its own path to normalisation.
Arch-foes Armenia and Azerbaijan said Thursday (7 December) they would exchange prisoners of war and work towards normalising their relations, in a joint statement hailed by the EU as a "breakthrough". The Caucasus neighbours have been locked in a decades-long conflict …
President Ilham Aliyev on Tuesday (21 November) accused France of inciting conflicts in the Caucasus by arming Azerbaijan's longtime rival Armenia, with which it has fought two wars.
The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan met in Iran, their first talks since Azerbaijan secured control over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, with Russia saying the main issue had been resolved pending further work on a peace treaty.
Azerbaijan's defence ministry said on Monday (23 October) it had begun joint drills with its ally Turkey near the border with Armenia, weeks after Baku recaptured Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenian separatists.
Foreign ministers from Iran, Turkey and Russia will meet their counterparts from Azerbaijan and Armenia in Tehran on Monday (23 October) and discuss progress towards a peace agreement between the two South Caucasus neighbours, Iranian and Russian state media said.
A victorious President Ilham Aliyev said he had achieved a decades-long "Azerbaijani dream" by retaking Nagorno-Karabakh from ethnic Armenian separatists, as he raised his country's flag in the region's main city on Sunday (15 October).
Azerbaijan's president scolded the European Union and warned that France's decision to send military aid to Armenia could trigger a new conflict in the South Caucasus after a lightening Azerbaijani military operation last month.
As EU leaders gather in Granada today, their most publicised agenda item is the situation with Armenia after Azerbaijan took control of Nagorno-Karabakh following a 24-hour military operation that ended almost four decades of tension.
A United Nations team visiting Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan said on Monday (2 October) they were struck “by the sudden manner in which the local population fled their homes”, but stopped short of accusations of ethnic cleansing.
More than three quarters of the 120,000-strong population of the ethnic Armenian breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh had fled by Friday afternoon (29 September) after defeat by Azerbaijan, a faster-than-expected mass exodus that looked likely to be total.
Ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh said on Thursday (28 September) they were dissolving the breakaway statelet they had defended for three decades, where more than half the population has fled since Azerbaijan launched a lightning offensive last week.
A former head of the breakaway ethnic Armenian government in Nagorno-Karabakh was arrested by Azerbaijan on 27 September as he tried to escape into Armenia as part of an exodus of tens of thousands of people.
Thousands more Armenian refugees fled Nagorno-Karabakh on Tuesday (26 September) as officials in Azerbaijan's war-scarred separatist statelet raised the death toll from a fuel blast to 20. Nearly 300 are injured, some severely burned.
