The Duran Podcast - Azerbaijan's game against Russia

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

Azerbaijan's game against Russia

I'm here with Alexander Merkiris. And joining us once again on the Duran is Stanislav. Stannislav, how are you doing? Where can people follow your work? Oh, good. Yeah, so you can either follow me on YouTube, Mr. Slavic man, that's with a K, not a C, or Telegram. That's Stastodaya Abratna, is the Russian language channel, and Stasasas there is the English channel. And I do have an X account that I'm starting to build up on.

just under Stasker Pemnik. All right. So, Alexander Stanislav, let's talk about the developments between Azerbaijan and Russia. Alexander. Absolutely. I mean, this is a topic that's attracting a huge amount of attention. Now, Stanislav has actually been there. He knows Azerbaijan.

I have never been to Azerbaijan. But we have on the Duran already done a program about this. I suggest that organized crime is played. a major role in the whole affair, both in terms of the gang that has been sorted out, if I could put it like that, by the Russian authorities and the Caucasus, and in terms of the reaction from the Azerbaijani authorities, that I understand that this is a country where organized crime has a very, very significant political and social role. But it's likely that there are also geopolitical factors and economic factors.

So somebody who knows the country and has been there, Staniislav can tell us more. So Stalyslav, over to you. What are your initial thoughts about this situation? Well, as my background, when I was director of supply chain for Halliburton, Eurasia, Azerbaijan was one of my country, so I spent quite a bit of time over the two and a half years there. It was also one of my favorite places because all the oil is on the north side. of the peninsula and you drive over the spy of the peninsula and you're in Baku and you can relax in the city in the evening, as opposed to most places are very far away from any kind of civilization.

Baku itself, the history with Azerbaijan is even during the Soviet periods, the Azerbaijani's were very actively pushing their people into throughout the Russian Federation and into key locations and into key positions. So this started quite a long time ago. Azerbaijanis in Russia right now are about a 2 million person diosporus, so it's pretty big, all things considered. A lot of old have been able to grab various local markets, food markets, things like that, in their hands.

So they do control quite a bit of area. And there's been problems with Azerbaijani mind for, Well, since the 90s, since the collapse of Soviet Union. You know, the Azerbaijani's that I worked with in Azerbaijan, we're all, for the most part, very nice people. But there's laugh, you know, we're nice because we got rid of all of our criminal element into Russia. And there's a lot of truth in what they say. The encounters I've had with most Azerbaijani's in Russia have not been positive.

And the same thing goes with most Russians. Again, very difference in the people between the ones living in Baku and the ones in Russia. What has been coming out is that this criminal element is not just a criminal element. It also has been signing with the Ukrainians. I mean, the government itself has been siding with the Ukrainians, but the criminal element has been working basically in contact. And I've seen documents to this point, government documents, that

that various police agencies, particularly on the federal level, not a local level. Local level, they tend to start getting corrupted because that's what these various

organizations, ethnic market organizations, they do. They either intimidate or they buy out the local police to look the other way, as most criminal organizations do around the world.

On the federal level, things are much different. there is a very strong connection between these various mafia organizations and Azerbaijani intelligence that's also working directly with Mossad, MI6, CIA, and of course, the SBU, which would explain how a lot of information that has been leaked in, especially site information, to the West throughout Russia. and the federal agencies have started seriously looking into this and then to this connection. I was going to ask you about this because Yakutunburg, which seems to be,

Yakutunburg, which seems to be the center of this particular gang, which has been cleaned out now, is, of course, in the Urals, which is one of the major industrial areas of, and one of the centers of Russian military industries. Now, is it possible that these people were passing information about weapons production to the West from these local factories in military-industrial complexes that apparently are heavily clustered that? It's very possible. What actually got the federal services looking into that area, particularly at those criminal elements in Yucatirium. but it's now expanded past the Qatirin. Almost right after that, there was raids that were carried out in Varanish,

and now it's expanding out quite a bit through other parts of Russia, including near Moscow. Now, what got things tipped was a guy by the name of Ibrahim. Ibrahim was head of the diaspora for Azerbaijani Persians, and he happened to be living in Yucetirian. He was outspoken and they feel themselves to be an oppressed minority in Azerbaijan. The 71-year-old man disappears. He gets kidnapped.

Disappears and reappears in the hands of the security services of the Azerbaijani's in Baku. So at that point, the federal services in Russia started really looking into this because obviously he'd been kidnapped out of Yucetarianburg. Obviously, it was done by people that got him across those smart. across the border and were directly working with Azerbaijani intelligence services. And then everything else started piling up with possibilities of them working directly, a very strong link of them working directly with Western intelligence services to undermine Russia and the Russian security. On top of that, there had been whispers, and now it's no longer whispers,

that Azerbaijan has been directly feeding both weapons and ammunition to Zelensky, So it's obviously come out as a hostile local power to the Russian Federation, to the Iranians, and to the Georgians. Georgia also has claims on Azerbaijan on territory that's in Azerbaijan. That's a historically Georgian territory. And Azerbaijan is very actively destroying the Georgian cultural traces in those areas. So basically, it's in a bad situation that all of it. neighbors are very upset with it, including, well, Armenia temporarily, at least for now, is siding with Azerbaijan because of the government. But I think by the end of summer,

beginning of fall, there are going to be very big changes in Armenia. And nothing good for Peshinyan and his bunch. I would agree with that. Can you tell us, is there anything in, is there any connection to the war with Iran, the 12-day war, with Iran, in any of this, because there's been a lot of speculation about this in independent media that Azerbaijan sided with Israel and that some of the missile and air strikes on Iran took place from Azerbaijanian airspace. And there's even reports of drop tanks being found washing up on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Have you heard anything about this? So we know that Azerbaijan was the stage and ground for drones, drone attacks on northern Iran.

There's been, I think, three, maybe now even four fuel tanks that have discarded fuel tanks that have popped up on the shores of the Caspian that the Iranians have been picking up. So obviously, there were fighter bombers coming in from that side, and the extended tanks are for extended flight, so they don't have to refuel in mid-air. You don't have to bring in extra transport, fuel transports. And they're discarded. The tanks are discarded because they're drag on aerodynamics.

So they drop them once they're used up to fuel. And again, this is, I think, the fourth tank that's floated up, a third or fourth tank. So it's obvious that there were at least some flights heading that way. Now, considering Israel was arming Azerbaijan against Armenia, actively arming them. And that's a known fact. there's no, it's not any kind of a conspiracy or conjecture. We know that for a fact. The Armenians were very upset about that, obviously.

Poshinian was under some kind of delusion that NATO was going to side with him, and the Israelis, well, you know, things don't quite work out that way, especially when Turkey is part of NATO. And the Israelis at their own time were also in the 2008 war, we're arming the Georgians against Russia. So they're very actively disrupting the peace process or any peace instability in the caucus. Mossad is working hand in hand with the Turkish security services. This is nothing new, unfortunately.

So at this point, I think since it looks like most of the power, decision-making power, seems to be more in the hands of the generals of Iran at this point. there may be some kind of form of retaliation against Azerbaijan. But Azerbaijan, all of these processes against Russia are very quickly escalating. There's been multiple steps taken from both sides at this point, and that's heading toward escalation very quickly. And Armenia is the only link Azerbaijan really has right now to Turkey. And Armenia, it looks like Pashnianan is prepared.

to allow Azerbaijanis to immigrate back into Armenia. That seems to be the next step that they're about to put through, which are probably more than likely bringing Armenia to a severe crisis problem. A local Mufthi has already said that they're going to reestablish all of the Azerbaijani Shiite sites in Armenia, because they're expecting a large influx of Azerbaijanis into Armenia. So that seems to be the process of turning Armenia back into a cocoanite,

either of Turkish or Azerbaijani, which again will bring Armenia to an absolute crisis. What is Turkey's role in all of this? Sorry. I was going to ask you, what is Erdogan's role in all of this? I mean, just to give one example, I presume any fighter bombers from Israel carrying out attacks from Azerbaijani territory onto Iran would have had to overfly Turkey, because I can't see, frankly, how else they could have got there. So what is Erdogan's role in all of this? Well, absolutely. They would have had to overfly Turkey. There's no other way. The question then is, did they overfly Georgia or Armenia? Georgia says no, Armenia doesn't say anything, so more likely they overflew Armenia,

at least in the southern tip, where Pesignan is preparing to hand over about a half-dozen Armenian villages to Azerbaijani. So I guess Armenians there, too. At this point, Turkey is playing. Erdogan is trying to put his posterior on every single stool he can find, which never worked out well. It's hard enough to sit on two stools. It's much harder to sit on a half-dozen stool.

but it looks like that's what he's trying to do. His big dream is pan-Turkey stand, which will go somewhere between from Constantinople out to half of the Altai and swallow up a third of Russia or more. He wants us to be a super Turkish state. Obviously, nobody's going to exactly hand over their territory to him, but he's working very hard on that. Aleev is already playing with fire in that Erligan has flat out said, one people, two governments.

Well, everybody understands if there's one people to governments, sooner or later it's going to be one people, one government. And that doesn't mean there's going to be any rule for Aleev and his clan once Erdogan decides that it's time to reunify with Azerbaijan. In all truth, in all truth, these peoples were never under any kind of one Caeserity. There were always many different tribes of Turks that set up different kingdoms. The Ottomans were able to unify as one of those kingdoms. They were able to unify a large number of these Turkish tribes, but only the ones in Asia Minor. They were never able to unify with the Turkish tribes in Central Asia, definitely not in the Altai mountain area where they came from originally.

But that seems to be the dream and holy grail of Erdogan right now, and he's moving in that direction. How does Russia react to all of this? I mean, they've been rounding up these people in Russia itself. Are they going to take any action against Azerbaijan, or are they at the moment restricted because of Armenia stance? Well, no, there's actually quite a few actions that Russia can take. Russia for a long time tried not to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.

That's obviously turned out to be a disastrous policy because everyone else is interfering in the internal affairs of those countries. So if you're not interfering but the British and the French or the Americans or the Turks are interfering, you're obvious at a very big disadvantage because your people are never going to be in power. They're going to be removed. And the people that are going to be in power, put in power, like Pushingian, are going to be extremely hostile to you. So that's been, and that's been a big criticism of Moscow from various sectors in Russian society, Russian educated society, that, you know, we can't keep playing white and fluffy and innocent

because everybody's just going to beat us the death. And that's exactly what we've seen happening. Now, what's been happening on the Russian side, there's several non-military actions Russia could take. The escalation's heading up anyways, because in Voronish, they started rounding up illegals. In other areas, they started rounding up illegals. There's a man by the name of El-Shan Ibrahimov,

who's been in Russia since the late 90s. He was a Russian citizen, and I'm saying was. He was head since 19, since 2018, he's been head of the Azerbaijani diaspora, their representative in the Moscow province. He's even been an advisor to Sabian, who's the mayor of Moscow. Now, Ilshan has now been, he's had his Russian citizenship stripped, and he's been sent back to Azerbaijan. If it hasn't already been, it'll be within the next two or three days. So there's been actions taken like that, at that nature. Plus, on the flip side, as what we saw from Azerbaijan,

Azerbaijan arrested Sputnik journalists. That's one. But the videos we saw of the people with the beaten faces, those weren't the journalists. Those were a group of what we believe were Russian liberals that ran away back when mobilization started. even though none of them were even on the list because mobilization at that point for Ukraine was 2% of the reserve and the reserve is everyone that served in the military. And these guys had never served in the military for most of them.

Nobody needed them. They didn't know what the business end of a rifle is, but they all ran. It was insane what was happening. And a large chunk of them ran in Azerbaijan. In fact, at that point, I was working on a project for an Azerbaijani company as a business advisor, their business expert. And the other people that work on the project, they offered everyone, if you want to move,

we'll move you to Azerbaijan. And they offered that to me. I'm like, yeah, this is my motherland. I'll stay and fight. I'm not going anywhere. But the other people were very liberal in mind, and I think one or two of them moved. So what we're looking at,

more than likely, these were some of these liberals that are now living in Azerbaijan. Russian citizens who were rounded up to make a point, beaten. I mean, they were obviously very bruised, beaten on their faces. Someone had eyes on their faces, dry blood, and they were humiliated.

So more likely these are liberals that the Azerbaijani government rounded up, that were in Azerbaijan, Russian citizens, to make some kind of a pressure point. It backfired because the public opinion in Russia has skyrocketed against Azerbaijan. And people have been complaining about the mafia, the Azerbaijani mafia for years. And they're happy the government's finally taken some kind of out. actions. But just to see how integrated it is, Aliyah's son has a $35 million mansion, his 27-year-old son, has a $35 million mansion at the edge of Moscow, which is the street where all the extremely rich people live. And he, by the way, is in debt

on taxes, some like $10,000 they refuse to pay on taxes. So I'm not sure, it. It is grounds for confiscation because he refuses to pay the taxes. So, you know, you never know, they might actually confiscate his mansion. But the fact that 27-year-old can afford a $35 million mansion already tells you something about that family and the family ties. Additionally, what Moscow has taken is the direct action against Aleev's assets outside of Russia. And I'm talking about two oil refineries in Ukraine. Everybody's been wondering from day one, why the hell they weren't destroyed to begin with back

in 22, 23. They weren't touched until last week. Both refineries were destroyed, heavily bombed. Turns out they were not just getting oil from Sakhore, which is the Azerbaijani oil and gas company, but they were apparently

personally owned or through some slice of them were personally owned by Aleev. So that's his own assets are being destroyed now actively in Ukraine. Plus, again, the oil can't go there. And on top of that, the Haifa refinery, which was heavily damaged by Iran, was also being fed by Azerbaijani oil. So with the price of oil, not exactly super high,

and three of their main customers knocked out and destroyed, and possibly even Haifa won't be restated for at least half a year to a year, depending on how much the real damage was, you know, that's a pretty big hit on the economy. But an additional step that Russia can take very easily and probably will be taken soon is mass deportation of legal and semi-legal Azerbaijani's in Russia. You return some like 200,000 people to Azerbaijan. I mean, we're not talking about a very large nation. That's a huge amount of men that get returned back in Azerbaijan to have no jobs,

are pissed off, but there's the government and there's the fault of why they got kicked out. So this could create a lot of problems for Aleev and his clan. How strong is his control of Azerbaijan? Because, I mean, as far as I can remember, I mean, I can remember somebody called Aliyev running Azerbaijan for decades. I mean, his father, as we both know, Gaidar Aliyev was the first secretary of the, um, Azerbaijan. Virginian Communist Party, and I can remember him being a prominent politician in the Brezhnev era. So, I mean, how strong is Aliyev's grip in Azerbaijan? Yeah, Azerbaijan is a modern version of a monarchy.

There's a lot of these types of countries. North Korea is a monarchy with a socialist economy. Grandfather, father, son. This case, father's son. Syria was the same thing in its time, father to son. You know, they do this election thing, but you know, the power that's going to be there, you know who's going to get elected, and it just passes on. I'm a monarchist, so I don't have a problem of that in itself.

But the power is very strong, but like in any country, it's not indisputable. They have destroyed basically any organized opposition to them. but if you jump 200, 300, 400,000 people back into a country of about 9, 10 million, that's going to cause a huge amount of destruction. I mean, it's going to be giant waves, economic, criminal waves. They're going to come right back into Baku and then throughout the rest of Azerbaijan. It's going to be a lot of problems. Additionally, with the borders closed, you've got to remember, too,

Azerbaijan sells a lot of fruits, vegetables, things like that, into Russia. You close down those import paths that's going to be an additional hit on the economy plus they've already lost a lot of the oil revenue that they were otherwise getting. So that there's a lot of steps and if

pressure comes in from Iran in the south and then from the rest of the neighborhood, I mean if Armenia, not if, when, Armenia changes governed and they will be I'm putting my money on that. Azerbaijan is going to be in a very very difficult position

And any kind of hostilities with Iran, that Saifan oil line is within artillery range on the south from Iranians. They can easily be destroyed or damaged. And you're talking probably the main piece of infrastructure in Azerbaijan, economically-wise. Okay. Last question for me. What about Aliyev himself and his relations with Putin? I mean, they're supposed to get on quite well. Is there any chance that they'll be able to sort this out between them?

Well, I mean, there's always chances to sort things out. And Asia is always, and this is part of Asia, we're dealing with Azerbaijan. Asia is always this, as they say in Russian, Tonka Adjila, is a very fine-tuned thing. So, yeah, things, people turn around, people switch sides. That's a thing in Asia, you know, that no alliance is very permanent or very stable. But at the moment, the way this thing is going, it looks like it hasn't reached a crisis point yet. On the flip side, on the Azerbaijani side, they're closing down all the Russian language schools. That's been already, the letters already been sent out.

So this is still continuing to escalating. And we'll probably continue to escalate throughout the summer. Whether or not it gets to actual artillery fire, you've got to remember, too, that Azerbaijan and Russia didn't react, which brought the Kremlin under a lot of criticism. During the Karabakh War, I guess we'd call that, it was a war, or action, anti-terrorist actions, what the Azerbaijaniers are calling it. Azerbaijan fired an anti-aircraft missile and destroyed a Russian helicopter that was flying inside of Armenia. The military wanted to respond, but no.

The Kremlin stopped them. So that brought a lot of, and they talked it out and all that. But that brought a lot of criticism and a lot of pressure that we didn't respond. And personally, I think we should have responded. We should have responded very, very vigorously. I would have actually, you know, in my opinion, we should have cleared the skies of anything that was flying Azerbaijani aircraft, taking them all down just for one day, just as a response. That's the level of response in those areas people understand.

and respect. And I think that they lost a lot of respect and a lot of fear of Russia when Russia did not respond to that blatant attack on a Russian helicopter inside of Armenia. Well, Stanislav, this is where we stop. But thank you very much for explaining all this. The East is a complicated country, the white sun of the desert, a very famous Russian film, the equivalent, if you like, of Casablanca. if for Americans who understand what it's all about.

Thank you very much for your very clear and thorough explanation. This is very complicated but fascinating story. We may come back to you again as it develops. And probably about Armenia too. Absolutely, absolutely. Always a pleasure. Thank you, Stanislav. Once again, where can people follow your work?

Yeah, you can follow me on YouTube at Mr. Slavic Man, again with a K, not a C. Stas Tudai Abratna on Telegram is the Russian channel Stas was there on telegram the English language channel and you can also follow me on X Stascarpernic All right Thank you Statslav

Thank you Thank you