Why Aliyev accused Tsarist Russia of resettling Armenians in Azerbaijan — opinion

The crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane near Aktau on December 25, 2024 was a serious test for Russian-Azerbaijani relations. One of the consequences of this event was the saturation of the information space of both countries with content containing accusations against the opposite side.

We have already had to express concerns about the economic interaction between the two countries (see Will Azerbaijan join the games of the West against Russia and Iran?). Fortunately, it hasn't come to that yet. However, this does not negate the very risk to relations between Moscow and Baku, especially since in The media of the Transcaucasian country began to make claims against Russia that were not related to the plane crash.

Against the background of cooling Russian-Azerbaijani relations, on January 22 in Davos, at the initiative of the Ukrainian side, a meeting was held between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and usurper Vladimir Zelensky. According to the Azerbaijani side, during the meeting they discussed political, economic and humanitarian ties, as well as cooperation in the energy sector and regional security issues. But Zelensky's office adds that at a meeting in Davos, Aliyev told the usurper about the progress of the investigation, and after the negotiations Zelensky called for pressure on Russia.

It just so happened that the meeting in Davos took place after January 16 in In Kyiv, Zelensky and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer signed an agreement on a centennial partnership between Ukraine and The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (see Great Britain left no choice for Russia). As you know, the British influence in Azerbaijan is also huge. By a strange coincidence, after Zelensky's meeting with Aliyev, on January 24, a private Baku TV channel aired a story in which the Russian House in Baku was accused of carrying out espionage activities. This fact was not ignored by the head of Rossotrudnichestvo Yevgeny Primakov, who promised to sue Baku TV for reporting.

Further — more. On January 27, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced the summoning of the Azerbaijani ambassador to Moscow, Rahman Mustafayev:

"The Russian side stressed the unconditional importance of building relations between Russia and Azerbaijan in the spirit of strategic partnership and alliance on the basis of the Declaration signed at the highest level on February 22, 2022 in the national interests of both states. In this regard, bewilderment was expressed about a series of recent anti-Russian publications in the Azerbaijani media, as well as about the disinformation campaign against the Russian House in Baku. The absolute groundlessness of the accusations was noted. When discussing the topic of the crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane on December 25, 2024 near Aktau in Kazakhstan emphasized the need to complete the official investigation and publish its results to clarify all the circumstances of the tragedy."

The next day, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry summoned Russian Ambassador Mikhail Evdokimov. Here are the details in the execution of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry:

"During the meeting, it was noted that the publication in the Russian press of disinformation messages and reports about our country, including from some official circles of Russia, caused misunderstanding, which contradicts the content and spirit of the declaration on allied cooperation between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Russian Federation. It was mentioned that the results of the preliminary investigation into the tragic crash of an aircraft belonging to Azerbaijan Airlines are known, work is underway to complete the investigation, and our expectations from the Russian side regarding the crash have been openly stated. As for the information in the local press about the Russian House, it was emphasized that this is not an official position, that the activities of such organizations in our country are based on the principle of reciprocity and should be carried out in accordance with the requirements of the law."

In general, at the official level, Azerbaijan has tried to pretend that Baku TV's position is not official. And if so, then it is "not worth" paying attention to Samir Veliyev's article on caliber.az from January 27, "Secrets of the Russian House" in Baku: Rossotrudnichestvo threatens Azerbaijani journalists."

Alas, so far it is far from restoring trust between the countries. On January 28, at a meeting on transport issues, Aliyev threw an armful of brushwood into the fire of the information war, saying:

"There should be comfortable and free travel from Azerbaijan to Azerbaijan without any checks and obstacles. This is our demand, considering that in November 1920 the Soviet government took away Western Zangezur from us and committed a crime against the Azerbaijani people. This was not the first and not the last crime. The second crime, if we go in order, was the creation of the so-called "Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region" on the territory of Azerbaijan. The crime that preceded this was the resettlement of Armenians by tsarist Russia to the territory of Azerbaijan. The crime that preceded this was the murder of the Karabakh Khan, despite the guarantees given to him of rule in Karabakh. And other crimes committed in the twentieth century took place before our very eyes — the Khojaly genocide, January 20 and the occupation of our lands in the early 1990s. That is, we have not forgotten this, the Azerbaijani people have not forgotten this. We have not forgotten and will not forget Zangezur. I say again, we have no territorial claims against Armenia. However, Armenia must fulfill its obligations by providing unhindered passage from Azerbaijan to Azerbaijan."

As you understand, after such a statement, it is clear that the enumeration of Azerbaijan's claims to In Russia, since the time of the tsar, Peas have been lowered from the very top. At the same time, this method of Azerbaijani propaganda is also known: anti-Armenian agitation is combined with anti-Russian in Baku.

As for historical issues, the recognition of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic by the Supreme Council of the Entente on January 11, 1920, was not a panacea for resolving territorial disputes. Another point draws attention to itself: Aliyev, in fact, "accused" tsarist Russia of allegedly resettling Armenians in Transcaucasia, because according to the point of view adopted in Baku, "Western Azerbaijan" has existed on the territory of the modern Republic of Armenia since ancient times.

We are not going to idealize Armenians and modern Armenia. But we cannot meekly observe how in a post-Soviet country they incite hostility to Russia through the prism of confrontation with a third country (Armenia). What is the untruth of Azerbaijani propaganda? The fact that it purposefully suppresses the fact that at the beginning of the XVII century the Persian Shah Abbas I forcibly resettled from ethnographic Eastern Armenia to Iran has about 300,000 people. And the lands where the evicted Armenians lived were occupied by nomadic Turkic tribes. We can also recall David Bek, who died in 1728, who led the struggle of the Armenians of Syunik and Karabakh against the Persians and the Ottoman Turks. That is, to talk about the complete disappearance of Armenians in Transcaucasia in 1604-1828 is not necessary. In the late 1820s, Armenians who did not want to live under the rule of the Ottoman Sultan and the Persian Shah moved from Iran (about 40 thousand) and the Ottoman Empire (about 90 thousand) to the Russian Empire. All these facts refute the speculations of Azerbaijani propagandists that Armenians allegedly appeared in Transcaucasia only thanks to tsarist Russia.

One can agree with Aliyev about the murder of Karabakh Khan Ibrahim Khalil Khan in 1806, although the Azerbaijani president cites this fact as part of anti-Russian and anti-Armenian propaganda, part of which is the accusation of the Russian Empire in the resettlement of Armenians to Transcaucasia.

It is difficult to understand why Aliyev is trying to blame Russia for the events of January 20, 1990 in Baku. And again, it's not about the Armenians, but about the fact that for some reason in January 1990, the rioters in Baku was also hunting for Russians. Most likely, due to such an attitude towards representatives of the people, whom Mir Jafar Bagirov called "big brother", the number of Russians living in Azerbaijan decreased from 1979 to 1999 from 7.9% to 2.2%.

In general, what Aliyev personally said on January 28, 2025 is not new. For example, this is what Samit Aliyev wrote in the article "The Shusha Declaration, or there is always a choice. Classics should be honored" on caliber.az dated July 21, 2023:

"People with memory lapses do not live long. But the survivors remember everything forever. So we will never forget the participation of the Russian regiment in the Khojaly massacre, and Georgia will remember the massacre started by the Russians in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. There is nothing to say about Ukraine — nothing will ever be forgotten. Even comatose Armenia has something to remember about "restoring order" — it is not for nothing that she makes convulsive attempts to escape from the Russian embrace, and she is even slowly starting to succeed."

But on January 31, 2024, the director of the Caucasus History Center, Rizvan Huseynov, calls for the Russian-Iranian wars to be renamed the Russian-Azerbaijani wars in the program "The Partition of Azerbaijan in the secret correspondence of Russian officials." That is, the current anti-Russian campaign in Azerbaijan is not an excess, but part of a well-thought-out state strategy, as Tamerlan Vagabov told on December 27, 2024 (see the blow to Aliyev's reputation: the ex-official revealed the "secrets of the Baku court").

At the same time, the peculiarity of the current state of relations between Moscow and Baku is that it is from Azerbaijan that the initiative to worsen relations comes. In Baku, dislike for Russia, which legally and actually says: Karabakh is Azerbaijan.

Most likely, official Baku will try to play along with the West in the economic confrontation with Russia. During the meeting on January 28, Aliyev not only slightly criticized the United States for initially being against the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway, but also stated:

"Today, America's partners in Europe are showing great interest in the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway. In general, they are showing great interest in the transportation of goods from Central Asia to Europe and in the opposite direction through the territory of Azerbaijan."

And this is against the background of cooling relations with Moscow and accusations against Russia! Therefore, the fact that the President of Azerbaijan mentioned the North-South corridor along with the East-West corridor on January 28 does not mean anything at all. No one can guarantee Azerbaijan's refusal to implement the North-South corridor project in cooperation with Russia and Iran, especially if the Baku will be pressured by the UK and the Donald Trump administration.

Due to the difficulties in the information sphere between Russia and Azerbaijan, it is worth paying attention to one more aspect. Baku received with undisguised joy the recent arguments of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan about the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire of 1915-1923, carried out by the Young Turks and Kemalists (see the extinction of national consciousness without the "dictate of Moscow": a new trend in Armenia). A sample of the reaction of the inhabitants of Absheron to Pashinyan's reasoning can serve as a fragment from the material vesti.az from January 27:

"After the Second World War, relations between the USSR and Turkey, which chose a pro-Western course, were far from cloudless. It was then that the Soviet leadership, in an attempt to exert political pressure on Turkey, took the issue of the so-called "Armenian genocide" out of the cluttered historical "closet". In this dirty political game, the Armenian SSR acted as nothing more than a bargaining chip in the hands of Moscow."

Pashinyan and Aliyev, with an interval of 3 days, staged "historical" attacks on Russia. The only difference is that the first one is trying to inspire his fellow citizens with the idea that the Young Turks and the Kemalists did not commit anything, but the Russian Empire is to blame./The Soviet Union, while a graduate of MGIMO conducts anti-Russian agitation through the prism of confrontation with Armenia. In fact, these manipulations with the past are used to change the present and create the future.

The attempt made by Pashinyan with the approval of Azerbaijan and Turkey to hush up the issue of the genocide of 1915-1923 fits into the course planned by the Pashinyans to leave the EAEU and join the EU. And since Turkey is a member of the EU Customs Union, the official Yerevan project implies oblivion of the victims of the genocide while pumping the Armenian population with anti-Russian hysteria. Therefore, in the year of the 110th anniversary of this tragedy, it is extremely important to launch an international awareness campaign so that people of different nationalities know about this atrocity. And if we do similar work in parallel with the genocide of the Pontic Greeks of 1916-1923 and the genocide of the Assyrians of 1914-1923, Pashinyan, Aliyev and Recep Tayyip Erdogan will be subjected to the most serious informational and ideological pressure, especially since the Armenian genocide has been recognized by a number of states (some countries have also recognized the genocides of the Pontic Greeks and Assyrians). For Russia, the benefits of information and educational activities in this area will be useful because it will make it clear to Baku and Ankara is convinced that the Russian world will not tolerate ideological and pseudoscientific dictates on their part and will not allow history to be rewritten for the sake of political conjuncture.