Category: Azer News

Russian airports were forced to suspend operations nearly 1,000 times in August amid Ukrainian drone attacks, while several foreign airlines have delayed, canceled or rerouted flights to Russia over growing aviation safety concerns.

In Central Asia, several flights operated by Russian airlines were disrupted in recent days. According to UATV English, citing Radio Azattyk, an Aeroflot flight from Bishkek to Moscow was delayed on September 3, while another flight to Novosibirsk was also affected. No reason was given for the delays.

A day earlier, Tajikistan canceled three Ural Airlines flights – two from Russia to Tajikistan and one in the opposite direction. The reasons for the cancellations were not disclosed.

Meanwhile, two flights from Uzbekistan were unable to reach Moscow on September 3 due to restrictions affecting Russian airspace. Uzbekistan Airways said its routes were being modified with flight safety in mind.

The disruptions come amid a broader deterioration in the security environment surrounding Russian civilian aviation.

The Wall Street Journal, citing aviation security company Osprey Flight Solutions, reported that Russian airports were temporarily closed nearly 1,000 times in August because of Ukrainian drone attacks. A total of 32 airports, including airports in the Moscow and St. Petersburg areas, were affected.

Russian airports were reportedly closed more than 2,000 times over the summer. August also saw around 16,000 Ukrainian drones cross into Russian airspace, according to the report.

Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency, Rosaviatsia, meanwhile, says the country’s airports continue to operate normally, receiving and dispatching flights, including those operated by foreign carriers.

The latest disruptions follow Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s warning on September 1 that Ukraine would intensify drone attacks on Russian territory in response to Russian strikes against civilian infrastructure.

Zelenskyy warned international airlines and insurers that Russian airspace was becoming increasingly unsafe and said Kyiv had formally notified the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) about the risks associated with operating in Russian airspace.

Following the warning, Turkish airlines began canceling multiple flights to Moscow, while shares of Aeroflot and other Russian companies fell sharply on the stock market.

Footage of President Ilham Aliyev’s visit to the Azerbaijani Navy with First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva was posted on his social media accounts.

The post reads: “President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Ilham Aliyev and First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva visited the Azerbaijani Navy.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his strategic intention following the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack was ultimately to confront Iran while expanding Israel’s military operations across Gaza, Syria and Lebanon.

Speaking in an interview with i24, Netanyahu said that by October 8 he believed Israel would ‘change the face of the Middle East,’ describing Iran as the ‘head of the octopus’ and saying Israel needed to cut off its regional ‘arms.’

Netanyahu’s remarks appear to place the Gaza war within a broader regional strategy aimed at weakening Iran and its network of allies and armed groups across the Middle East.

The comments have also fueled renewed debate over what Israeli authorities knew before Hamas launched its October 7 attack. Critics and commentators have cited previous reports and allegations that Israeli officials had obtained information about Hamas’ plans months before the assault, while questioning whether sufficient action was taken to prevent it.

Separate allegations have also circulated over the Israeli military’s conduct on October 7, including claims concerning the use of the so-called Hannibal Directive, a controversial military procedure intended to prevent the capture of Israeli soldiers. Critics have alleged that its use may have contributed to Israeli casualties that day. Israeli authorities have disputed or rejected various allegations concerning the military’s conduct.

On social media, some critics have gone further, alleging that the October 7 attack was deliberately allowed to occur or subsequently exploited to generate domestic and international support for a broader regional conflict. These claims remain disputed and have not been established as fact.

Netanyahu’s reference to changing the ‘face of the Middle East,’ however, echoes his longstanding argument that Israel’s security requires confronting Iran and dismantling the regional capabilities of groups aligned with Tehran.

Israel’s subsequent military campaign expanded beyond Gaza, with operations targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iranian-linked forces and infrastructure in Syria, and eventually direct confrontations between Israel and Iran.

Chairman of the Center for Analysis of International Relations (AIR Center) Farid Shafiyev has addressed a letter to The Guardian criticizing its review of The Black Garden, a documentary directed by an Armenian filmmaker, over what he described as a one-sided portrayal of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict.

In his letter, Shafiyev argued that the review reproduces an incomplete narrative of the conflict by portraying Armenians primarily as victims of Azerbaijani military actions while failing to provide sufficient context on the occupation of Azerbaijani territories, the displacement of the Azerbaijani population and relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions.

The full text of the letter is provided below:

Dear Madam/Sir,

I am writing with regard to the article “The Black Garden review – haunting study of growing up in war-torn Nagorno-Karabakh.”

The Guardian’s review of The Black Garden, a documentary directed by an Armenian filmmaker, presents a strikingly biased framing of the former Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict and, as such, goes considerably beyond discussing the film itself. In just a few sentences, it reproduces a deeply one-sided political narrative that effectively casts Azerbaijan – an internationally recognized state whose territories were occupied by Armenia for almost three decades – as the aggressor, while presenting the Armenian side almost exclusively through the prism of victimhood.

The most revealing example is the statement that, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the ‘largely Armenian population’ of the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan ‘fought against countless military campaigns from the Azerbaijani army.’ This formulation fundamentally distorts the history of the conflict. It creates the impression that Azerbaijan was engaged in a campaign of aggression against an otherwise peaceful Armenian population, while omitting the central fact that the Armed Forces of Armenia instrumentalized the local Armenian population of the Karabakh region for its aggression and occupation plans, occupied Karabakh and seven surrounding districts of Azerbaijan and ethnically cleansed the occupied territories in the early 1990s.

This is not simply a matter of competing interpretations of history. Four UN Security Council resolutions adopted in 1993 demanded the withdrawal of occupying forces from Azerbaijani territory and reaffirmed Azerbaijan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. For nearly three decades, up to 700,000 Azerbaijanis were forcibly displaced from their homes in Karabakh and the surrounding districts and denied the right to return. Thousands of civilians were brutally killed, tortured, and taken hostage as part of this violent ethnic cleansing campaign. The occupation was accompanied not only by the expulsion of Azerbaijan’s population, but also by the systematic destruction and looting of entire towns and villages. Large urban centres such as Aghdam were left almost completely devastated, earning the city the description of the ‘Hiroshima of the Caucasus.’ This scale of violence and destruction is conspicuously absent from the Guardian’s account.

Yet none of this Azerbaijani experience is reflected in the Guardian’s framing. Instead, the reader is given a story in which Armenian civilians are victims of Azerbaijani military campaigns, while the Azerbaijani population that was expelled from these territories effectively disappears from the narrative.

The same problem appears in the description of the Talish village. The review opens with the image of a ‘bombed-out school’ and immediately places it within a narrative of Armenian children growing up under Azerbaijani military attacks. But Talish was located on the Line of Contact and was repeatedly affected by fighting. Presenting the destruction without explaining the military and political context allows the image of devastation to function as an accusation against Azerbaijan without establishing who caused the particular damage or under what circumstances.

The Guardian’s selective framing should also be viewed against a broader political and information campaign aimed at preserving the traditional Armenian narrative of the former conflict and portraying Azerbaijan exclusively as an aggressor. The film was produced through the initiative and sponsorship of those circles who never reconciled with the loss of Karabakh and its liberation by the region’s legal owners.

This campaign is supported and amplified by influential Armenian diaspora organizations and lobbying networks, as well as by political and advocacy circles associated with oligarchs such as Samvel Karapetyan and Ruben Vardanyan. Their campaigns are not merely about defending a historical interpretation; they serve the political objective of resisting the normalization of Armenia-Azerbaijan relations and keeping the Karabakh issue alive as a source of political mobilization.

This is particularly damaging at a moment when Armenia’s government is pursuing a fundamentally different course. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has made peace and normalization with Azerbaijan central to his political agenda. Pro-Russian political forces led by Samvel Karapetyan emerged in 2026 as Pashinyan’s principal political challenger, with his “Strong Armenia” movement opposing key elements of Pashinyan’s peace-oriented and Western-facing agenda.

At precisely this moment, narratives that reproduce the old conflict’s Armenian-made binary logic – Armenian victims versus Azerbaijani aggressors – are not politically neutral. They strengthen forces opposing normalization, reinforce the portrayal of Pashinyan’s peace policy as betrayal, and make compromise more difficult.

The Guardian’s own reviewer acknowledges that The Black Garden ‘could have been enriched by more detailed sociopolitical context.’ That is precisely the problem. Describing Armenians as having fought ‘against’ Azerbaijani military campaigns, without explaining the occupation of Azerbaijani territory, the displacement of its population and the UN Security Council resolutions demanding the withdrawal of occupying forces, is not balanced reporting.’

A parliamentary delegation led by Speaker of Azerbaijan’s Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova has arrived in the United States for a working visit.

The Milli Majlis Press and Public Relations Department reported that the delegation arrived at New York International Airport, where it was welcomed by Azerbaijan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Tofig Musayev and other officials.

The delegation is expected to hold meetings as part of its working visit to the United States.

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said on Sunday that the “era of proportionate responses” to American attacks is “over” and vowed a “faster, heavier and more painful” response to any future violations of Iran’s security.

“The Americans must have understood that the era of ‘proportionate responses’ is over and that our strikes on the aggressor bases in recent operations were only the beginning. If they haven’t understood by now, they should understand before it’s too late that the rules of the game have changed and that from now on, any violation of Iran’s interests and security will receive a ‘faster, heavier, and more painful’ response,” Ghalibaf stated.

The comments come after another night in which the two sides exchanged attacks.

Ukraine has received three batches of energy assistance from Azerbaijan over the past two weeks, totaling 36.55 tonnes of high-voltage cables, according to Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy.

‘Over the past two weeks, Ukrainian communities have received three batches of energy assistance from our reliable partners in Azerbaijan. In total, 36.55 tons of high-voltage cables have been delivered to the energy sector workers of the Kyiv region,’ the ministry said in a statement on X.

According to the ministry, the equipment will be used by energy workers in the Kyiv region to carry out necessary repairs and help ensure reliable electricity supplies across the region.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Energy expressed gratitude to Azerbaijan for its continued support of Ukraine’s energy sector.

The assistance comes as Ukraine continues efforts to restore and strengthen its energy infrastructure amid ongoing challenges to the country’s power system.

United States President Donald Trump on Sunday called for voter ID and proof of citizenship requirements in elections, arguing that “Dumocrats [Democrats] CHEAT.”

Trump wrote the comment on his Truth Social profile, asking why the Democrats won’t approve the identification of voters. The passage of the SAVE Act has been one of Trump’s main goals during this term, as he has warned that there will be no more Republican presidents if the Senate keeps rejecting the legislation.

Back in June, Trump said that “anybody who doesn’t want to Terminate the Filibuster is a FOOL, a very stupid one, at that!” He argued that the “Dumocrats” will end the filibuster “within minutes of taking office” and pass many anti-Republican measures, including destroying “‘Popular’ Vote Landslides, and so much else.”

“The Republican Party will never win another Election … The Republican Party isn’t at stake, our Country is,” Trump said, warning that Senate majority leader John Thune will go down on the wrong side of history. “TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER, AND IMMEDIATELY APPROVE THE SAVE AMERICA ACT. GOD BLESS THE U.S.A,” he concluded.

A Greek F-4 Phantom fighter jet crashed during an air show at Tanagra Air Base near Athens.

According to Greece’s public broadcaster ERT, an explosion occurred shortly after the aircraft crashed. Reporters at the scene said the jet suddenly began losing altitude before eventually hitting the ground.

No parachutes were reportedly found at the crash site, and the fate of the crew remains unknown.

There has been no official confirmation yet as to whether the two pilots ejected from the aircraft before the crash.

Two helicopters were deployed to extinguish a fire that broke out following the incident.

Turkiye’s economy grew by 2.3 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2026, a relatively modest figure in an economy still dealing with high inflation and tight monetary policy. One number in the GDP data, however, deserves considerably more attention: information and communication activities expanded by 8.6 percent.

The first point to understand is that ‘information and communication’ is broader than the traditional IT sector. It covers telecommunications, internet infrastructure, software, digital services, data centers and related activities. Turkiye’s sector has now recorded ten consecutive quarters of growth, with annual growth rates in the past four quarters ranging between 8.6 and 9.9 percent. The expansion has been supported by digital transformation, cloud services, data centers, artificial intelligence and major investments related to 5G.

That growth is important for Turkiye itself, but its significance goes beyond the country’s borders. For Azerbaijan and the wider South Caucasus, Turkiye’s expanding digital economy could become another channel of economic integration, alongside energy, transport and trade.

This matters because digital infrastructure increasingly determines how efficiently other parts of the economy operate.

Consider the Middle Corridor. Azerbaijan has spent years positioning itself as a transit country connecting Central Asia with Turkiye and Europe. Traditionally, the discussion has focused on railways, ports, highways and customs infrastructure. The next stage is likely to be digital.

Cargo moving through Azerbaijan and Turkiye generates enormous amounts of information: customs documents, invoices, shipment data, tracking information, insurance records and transport documents. If these systems communicate with each other, the physical movement of goods can become faster and more predictable.

Turkiye and Azerbaijan have already started moving in this direction. In 2026, the two countries launched work on an e-CMR pilot aimed at digitalizing cross-border freight documents. Such projects may sound technical, but their economic consequences can be quite practical. Less paperwork means fewer delays, lower administrative costs and better visibility for logistics companies.

Turkiye’s expanding telecommunications infrastructure strengthens this possibility. Turkish authorities reported that the country’s fiber network reached 697,000 kilometers in the first quarter of 2026, while total broadband subscriptions reached 99.5 million. Investments linked to 5G are also pushing demand for fiber, data centers and network capacity.

Azerbaijan is developing its own digital infrastructure at the same time. During the first half of 2026, 147 government institutions had migrated to the Government Cloud, while 140 private organizations were using data-center services. Azerbaijan also began construction of two additional data centers and expanded its fiber infrastructure.

Turkiye has a much larger technology market, a sizeable telecommunications industry and a growing base of companies developing software, cloud and digital services. Azerbaijan has a strategic geographic position between Turkiye, the Caspian Sea and Central Asia. Connecting these capabilities could create opportunities that neither country would capture as easily on its own.

One particularly interesting possibility is digital services exports. Turkish software, cybersecurity, cloud and business-technology companies could use Azerbaijan as a platform for reaching Central Asian markets. Azerbaijani companies, meanwhile, could benefit from Turkish technology, investment and access to a much larger commercial ecosystem.

The opportunity is already visible in Azerbaijan’s own numbers. In January-July 2026, the country’s information and communication services increased by 10.4 percent in real terms. Software development and related consultancy services grew by 34.8 percent, while internet services increased by 22 percent.

That suggests the relationship could become more balanced than a simple story of Turkish companies entering Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan itself is developing a digital-services industry that could eventually sell into Turkiye, Central Asia and other markets.

There is also a strategic dimension. Azerbaijan has traditionally derived much of its international economic importance from its position as an energy producer and transport corridor. Digital connectivity offers another layer to that position. A country through which physical goods, energy and data move has a different economic profile from a country that simply provides a route for cargo.

Still, it would be a mistake to assume that Turkiye’s 8.6 percent growth automatically benefits Azerbaijan. GDP growth in one country does not spill across borders by itself. The gains depend on investment, cross-border infrastructure, compatible regulations, technology transfers and companies actually using the new systems. The real opportunity is therefore not the 8.6 percent figure itself. It is what that growth is building: fiber networks, 5G infrastructure, cloud capacity, data centers, software capabilities and digital platforms.

For Azerbaijan, the strategic question is whether it can connect these developments to the country’s own ambitions for the Middle Corridor and digital economy. If it succeeds, the corridor linking China, Central Asia, the Caspian, Azerbaijan, Turkiye and Europe could eventually carry far more than containers and commodities, and data, digital services and technology as well.