The Duran Podcast - Russia angered with Azerbaijan double game with Ukraine

Episode Date: July 6, 2025

Russia angered with Azerbaijan double game with Ukraine

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the situation in Azerbaijan, and maybe we can discuss a little bit what is going on in Armenia. So let's start with Azerbaijan and this dispute, this row that we see unfolding between Russia and Azerbaijan. And it revolves around criminal gang activity of Russian citizens who are from Azerbaijan, but they are Russian citizens. And we're talking about a mafia syndicate or a mafia group that the Russian authorities have been going after since the early 2000s. And they finally got this group or most of this group. Some people died in the raid of this group. And Azerbaijan has been very upset with what the Russian authorities have done by busting this criminal organization. and their retaliation has been completely just off the charts.

They're arresting journalists. They're arresting everyday citizens from Russia who are living in Azerbaijan. They're arresting them. It looks like they're roughing them up. They're charging them with all kinds of crimes, allegations that they're Russian spies in Azerbaijan. And they're not backing down as of the recording of this video. It looks like Azerbaijan is not engaging in any diplomacy, nor does it have any desire to engage in diplomacy with Russia.

We're talking about two countries that do have good relations, and Aliyev and Putin do get along. They do speak to each other, and they do get along. But it looks like Azerbaijan, for some strange reason, wants to escalate. Now, maybe this is just confined to this crime syndicate, and maybe that's what this is all about. or the debate is maybe this has some geopolitics behind it. When you look at Azerbaijan, you do look at a country that allegedly has been helping Ukraine, definitely a country that has been helping Israel in the conflict with Iran. And when you look at a map, you can see the importance of Azerbaijan's location and the position it plays as an energy power in the region.

So what are your thoughts on what's happening with Azerbaijan and Russia? And I would also add quickly that Azerbaijan and Aleyev are also very, very close allies of Erdogan in Turkey. I was going to say that, yes, with Erdogan, yes. And we know. Exactly. And we always know with Erdogan that all these incredibly intricate and overcomplicated games get played.

Well, you mentioned in a previous video that Erdogan, in one of the games that he plays with Russia, he actually provided much of the artillery from Syria to Ukraine. So I imagine that has angered Russia. But these are the games that Erdogan plays. All the time. All the time. And absolutely. And in fact, it seems that Azerbaijan, even whilst it's been developing ever closer relations with Russia or seems. to be developing better relations with Russia, has also been providing a great deal of support to Ukraine as well. Now, I'm going to say this. I've been discussing the situation, the internal setup in Azerbaijan with a number of people, including people who have been there. And in fact, one of them actually, well, I'm not one of the people that I've contacted,

but that person actually, there was a person who actually posted a comment. comment on my live stream on locals, who's actually done work in Azerbaijan. And it all basically corroborated what I've been hearing, which is that in Azerbaijan, the government is deeply interconnected with various crime syndicates and that the system there is very, very corrupt and has been for a very, very long time. I don't think most people who know, Hezabashan would dispute that. So I suspect that the proximate cause to this particular crisis is that the gang that has been rounded up by the Russian authorities in the Urals, which is essentially an Azerbaijani gang, has strong connections with the crime syndicates that underpin the government in Azerbaijan and that there is a major desire or push from the members of the, you know, the affiliates, if you like, in Azerbaijan,

of the people that who have been arrested in the Ural's, that they're pushing the government of Azerbaijan to get these people back and to bring these prosecutions in Russia to stop. And that the reason all of these Russians are being arrested in Azerbaijan is because there's some kind of idea, firstly, using these arrests as a means to put leverage on Russia and perhaps ultimately to swap these people for the people who have been arrested by Russia. So I suspect this is the proximate cause of the crisis. But I think that there are other factors at play as well. I think that the Russians have recently increasingly got wind at the fact that, well, they're not got wind at the fact. They've become increasingly frustrated about the way in which Azerbaijan,

along with Turkey, have been playing this double game with Ukraine. The Russians in their missile and drone strikes against Ukraine have recently been attacking various big oil refineries in Ukraine, as was first also pointed out to me by somebody, a completely different person on the same locals' live stream. But as I have since confirmed, it seems that Azerbaijanian oil, which is shipped to Europe, is often refined in these Ukrainian refineries. So the Russians targeting these refineries was both a signal to Azerbaijan that they've just been going too far and they've been playing the Russians too much.

And it was also something that infuriated Azerbaijan, the authorities in Azerbaijan, because especially at a time when the price of oil has been falling, Azerbaijan's budget is very tight, there's less money to distribute and to provide cuts to the various people in Azerbaijan. and the attacks on the refineries were seen by some people in Azerbaijan as basically Russia heating at them. So all of these things have come together and they provoke this crisis. The important thing is that the Russians so far are standing by, standing firm on what they're doing. I've also had it suggested that the Russian decision to go after this.

organized crime group. Now, the Russians have apparently known about it for some time, is again a signal to Azerbaijan that they've had enough of what the Azerbaijanians have been doing, both in Russia itself and in Ukraine. And again, that this is what has provoked the reaction from Azerbaijan to all of these things. So in other words, the Azerbaijanians feel themselves under pressure, the Russians were also angry that Azerbaijan did make itself available to Israel to carry out the attacks on Iran. I think this is universally believed. Apparently drop tanks from Israeli drones and perhaps aircraft have been seen floating in

the Caspian Sea. so things of that kind. So as all of this has come together, the Russians decided that the moment had come to take a tough stand and they've acted in a way that basically harms not just Azerbaijan, but some of the top people in Azerbaijan, people involved in the oil trade, people involved in the kind of criminal activities we've been discussing in the Urals. And this is, provoke this extremely angry reaction in Azerbaijan and this desperate wave of arrests in order to get their people in Yakatrimburg, free and back in Azerbaijan. We'll see where this goes.

So, I mean, Azerbaijan is not going to escalate unless it has the support of Israel, unless it has the support of its main patron, which is Turkey and Erdogan. And from what I understand, it's the U.S. UK and BP that is heavily invested in Azerbaijan energy. So I imagine the UK may be playing some sort of role in all of this. So Azerbaijan is obviously escalating with Russia, but it's doing so knowing that it has the support of these three countries, most notably Turkey and Erdogan. I wonder if Russia is also sending messages to Erdogan by... by clamping down on all of Azerbaijan's activities.

Because at the end of the day, this is Israel, this is the UK, and of course, it's Erdogan that are up to all of these games that are being played in the region, either towards Iran or in support of Ukraine and against Russia. Yeah, absolutely. I think the Russians are sending a message to Erdogan too, by the way. Unquestionably, look at what Erdogan has been doing. There is no way that Azerbaijan would be assisting Israel to conduct strikes against Iran unless the government in Ankara, Erdogan, were, shall we say, intensely relaxed with

Azerbaijan doing that. Yet, at the same time as those attacks on Iran were taking place from the territory of Azerbaijan, Erdogan was fiercely denouncing Israel. So it shows you, again, the incredibly complex duplicitous game that Erdogan incessantly plays. And I think the Russians are basically telling Erdogan, look, enough's enough. We've gone along with this, but you've been crossing too many of our red lines recently. You've crossed our red lines by supplying all those shells to Ukraine from Syrian army stocks.

You've facilitated apparently the supply of other things through Azerbaijan to Ukraine. And you've also played this game with the attack on Iran, which is a BRICS partner. So, you know, this is our way of responding to what you've been doing. And we're going to take a tough line against your Azerbaijani proxies. And we're going to round up their people in the Urals. And we know perfectly well what they've been up to. And we've up to now sort of tolerated it, but they've been going too far as well. And we're going to go after the refinery.

that Azerbaijan relies upon to pump its oil. And I'm going to make a guess that there will be a conversation between Putin and Aliyev. And there's also going to be a conversation before long between Putin and Erdogan, and something eventually is going to be patched up. So this is the kind of very complicated game that gets played between these three. It is exhausting and very, very, very, very. I think, you know, frustrating to have to discuss it in this way. But I think in the end, some kind of deal will be done.

There's this type of stuff that Erdogan loves to do. Absolutely. He loves this stuff. He loves it. So what's he doing with Armenia? What is going on with Armenia because Paschiyan met with Erdogan a couple of weeks ago, which was quite a historic leading, Armenia. The leader of Armenia meeting with the leader of Turkey.

And over the past couple of days, the signals from the Armenian members of parliament and high-level officials in Paschignan's government, strangely enough, has been in support of Azerbaijan and, I guess you could say indirectly, Turkey, the UK, the West Israel, against Russia. I mean, they've actually, it appears they've actually sided in this row between Azerbaijan and Russia. They've been siding or leaning towards Azerbaijan, which is beyond bizarre. One of the Armenian officials actually started to talk about banning Russian media in the country, a country which has very close ties to Russian. To Russia, people speak Russian. I've been there half a dozen times. Everyone speaks Russian. Pretty much everyone speaks Russian.

There are a lot of Russians that live there. I mean, this is a country with very close connections to Russia. It seems bizarre that you would have government officials talking about banning Russian media. Well, indeed. And I ought to say that I know there's some people who have been floating the possibility of a Turkish-Zerbanian-Iromanian alliance against Russia. That is such an unnatural alliance that if it's ever set up, it will not last very long. I mean, there's already a political crisis developing in Armenia. Parasinian is now in conflict with the Armenian Church.

He's been trying to arrest some of its hierarchs. Anybody who knows how central the Armenian church is to the culture of the Armenian people would know what an incredible and extreme that thing that is. Armenia, by the way, was the first country to adopt Christianity. It did so before Constantine the Great made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. So the Armenians are the oldest Christian nation. And here we have Paschignan going after the Armenian church. And he's also arresting various people in Armenia, who he says have ties with Russia.

and the rhetoric is very strong. But to anybody who's followed Paschignan closely, none of this is strange because Paschignan is somebody who absolutely wants to realign Armenia with the West. And he's not, I think, exactly pro-Turkish or pro-Ehrer-one, but what he is, viscerally, is very anti-Russian. and basically what he wants to do is to sever the historic relationship between the Russians and the Armenians and between the Russian people and the Armenian people. So this is why he's taking these extraordinary steps, as I said, meeting Erdogan,

who by the way denies the things that the Turks did to the Armenians in the 1890s and early 1900s. ever happened. That's Erdogan's unflinching stance. But, you know, Pachinian wants to be more sympathetic to him. Pachinian speaks favorably of Azerbaijan in this conflict, because as I did, for him, the enemy is Russia. And he needs Erdogan's agreement if Armenia is to join NATO, which is, of course, also Faschignan's objective. So you can see where all of this is going. As I said, this is also utterly unnatural that sooner or later it's going to fail. And I think that, in fact, I'm getting indications that in Armenia, even some of Pashinian's

base is starting to turn against him. And as you know, I was recently in Georgia. And Georgia has been also through this whole process, a sort of arc where Georgia politicians come to power through color revolutions, lead Georgia into an enormous confrontation with Russia. Georgia loses territory, just as Armenia has lost territory. And Armenia has been, and Pasinian has been ceding more villages, border villages, to Azerbaijan, not just Nagorno-Karabakh, but other territories as well, to Azerbaijan also. So, ceding territories, historic Georgian land, historic Armenian land. Well, of course, we were talking about Georgia, the south of the settings, and the Abkhazians

might dispute that. But anyway, that's the way it's perceived in Georgia itself. creating an extraordinary system of controls. And eventually in Georgia, people suddenly had enough. And the whole system collapsed. And gradually, Georgia has been escaping from this nightmare. And as I realized when I was there, they want to now try to return back to a more tradition.

foreign policy, which involves good relations with Russia. And I suspect Armenia is going to follow that track too, but at a probably much faster pace because the connections between Armenia and Russia are even stronger. Yeah, very bizarre stuff that Pashinyan is pursuing a... It is not bizarre. It is not bizarre. One of the things, well, it is bizarre. It's very bizarre.

It's very bizarre. into an alliance which has as one of its main members, Turkey reestablishing relations with Turkey. I mean, even Biden, even Biden recognized the Armenian genocide. That says quite a lot if the U.S. president goes against Turkey and actually recognizes the Armenian genocide. Obviously, Erdogan's not going to recognize that. But still, it's a policy that doesn't make any sense. Just looking at the geography of Armenia, it doesn't make any sense. It makes absolutely no sense. It's completely irrational. In fact, well, in Georgia, people that I spoke with there were telling me that the previous foreign policy and domestic policies followed in Georgia were crazy. And it's the same kind of craziness, if you like, that you're seeing in Armenia. It's the kind of thing that comes. If you're like, if you're like, that you're seeing in Armenia. It's the kind of thing that comes. If you're like,

your country to be taken over by Western financed NGOs, that was what happened in Georgia. That's what's happened in Armenia, because the people who run those have a psychological and financial interest in taking you down these bizarre paths. Now, in Georgia, they, as I said, managed finally to escape from that. In Armenia, they're only starting to. Yeah, always those NGOs. Absolutely. Always those NGOs. All right.

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