Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, top stories this morning

●  Sunday marked six years since the start of the Second Karabakh War in 2020. In Azerbaijan, 27 September is observed as a national Day of Remembrance. At noon, the country came to a standstill for a minute of silence. The Foreign Ministry, president and all ministries issued statements. Memorial events were held across the country throughout the day. President Ilham Aliyev and First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva, as well as groups of ministry and organisation employees, visited Victory Park in Baku, where they laid wreaths at the Victory Monument.

●  In a social media post, President Ilham Aliyev wrote, among other things: “On 27 September 2020, a 44-day war began, as a result of which the Azerbaijani army liberated a significant part of the territories that had been under occupation [by Armenian forces]. During the fighting, 2,908 Azerbaijani servicemen were killed and six went missing. As a result of Armenia’s military aggression, 93 civilians were killed and 454 wounded. On 10 November, the leaders of Azerbaijan, Russia and Armenia signed a trilateral statement. Subsequently, the Aghdam, Kalbajar and Lachin districts were returned to Azerbaijan. Following the local anti-terrorist operation on 20 September 2023, Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity was fully restored.”

●  Azerbaijani youth and volunteer organisations sent a statement to international organisations on the sixth anniversary of the Second Karabakh War. “The liberation of our historic lands in Karabakh and Eastern Zangezur, which had been under Armenian occupation for around 30 years, became a national victory and a triumph of international law,” the statement said. The authors recalled the deaths of civilians in Armenian strikes on the cities of Ganja, Barda and Tartar. The statement stressed that Azerbaijan, having won the war, extended a hand of peace to Armenia. The authors also highlighted “the active participation of young people who grew up amid forced displacement and occupation in the historic mission of rebuilding the territories liberated from occupation and restoring life there”.

●  Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan marked Azerbaijan’s Day of Remembrance with a post on X: “Karabakh is Azerbaijani land and will remain so forever.”

●  An Azerbaijani citizen was killed and several others wounded in a drone attack in Kyiv. The Russian strike hit a market where they were selling agricultural products.

●  A two-day Azerbaijan International Investment Forum was held in Baku over the weekend under the theme “Restoring Trust in a Fragmented World: The South Caucasus as a Pillar of Global Connectivity and Investment Stability”. The forum was held under the patronage of the president, who also took part in one of the sessions. The session began with moderator Adebayo Ogunlesi, CEO of Global Infrastructure Partners, presenting ChatGPT-generated data on what President Ilham Aliyev had achieved over more than 20 years in office.

According to the data presented:

• GDP grew tenfold to $76 billion, while GDP per capita increased more than eightfold to $7,500.
• The poverty rate fell from 45% to 5%.
• The assets of the State Oil Fund grew 90-fold to $75 billion. While oil production declined, gas production increased tenfold. Azerbaijan is now a key natural gas supplier to Europe and Turkey.
• The non-oil sector grew 4.5-fold.
• Azerbaijan restored control over its internationally recognised territories.

In his speech, Ilham Aliyev said, among other things:

More than $350 billion in investment has been attracted over the past 20 years.

The economy’s priorities are oil and gas production, renewable energy, logistics, mining and food security.

The short-term goal is to minimise the use of natural gas for electricity generation and redirect the volumes freed up for export.

Freed-up energy capacity will be used to develop data centres, with active negotiations underway with leading global companies.

Azerbaijan is an active participant in two international transport corridors — East-West and North-South — and transit freight through Azerbaijan is growing rapidly.

A contract with Exxon will be signed to develop oil and gas fields with hard-to-recover reserves. If exploration is successful, this could lead to a new oil and gas boom in Azerbaijan.

A contract with Total will be signed for the second phase of development of the Absheron field, which will increase gas production in Azerbaijan.

The focus is not only on renewable energy generation but also on energy storage.

Investors are not needed for domestic purposes. However, investment is needed to develop infrastructure serving the interests of transnational companies.

This includes laying an undersea electricity cable from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan across the Caspian Sea to connect Central Asia with Azerbaijan and then Europe.

Another project involves laying a cable across the Black Sea from Azerbaijan via Georgia to Romania.

On training personnel, Aliyev said that when the first production-sharing agreement was signed in 1994, more than 90% of employees were foreign specialists. Today, the share of foreign specialists in the country is around 5%.

Aliyev also urged investors not to believe “false news” in the media. Participants in such forums, he said, can see everything for themselves, ask people what they think about the country and its development, and whether they believe it is moving in the right direction — and make their own decisions.

●  The Foreign Ministry published a report on Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov’s intensive diplomatic week on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. According to the ministry, Bayramov held 37 bilateral meetings with counterparts, heads of international organisations and officials from various countries. Seventeen bilateral documents were signed as a result of the meetings. The minister also spoke at 11 high-level events.

●  Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni thanked President Ilham Aliyev for supporting efforts to regulate fuel prices in Italy. Azerbaijan’s state-owned SOCAR announced that, following Italy’s Eni, it would introduce price caps on petrol and diesel across the network of its subsidiary Italiana Petroli (IP). SOCAR said the company had responded to the Italian government’s call to support families and businesses that have been facing high fuel prices for more than six months amid geopolitical instability.

●  Azerbaijan’s Media and Broadcasting Council issued a statement about “unfounded biased publications circulating on social media in Turkey and aimed at damaging the brotherly relations between Azerbaijan and Turkey, as well as creating a negative perception of these relations among the public”. It stressed that “these are not random initiatives by individuals, but part of a targeted campaign managed by certain circles”. “Azerbaijan does not rule out taking appropriate measures, including restricting entry to those organising and carrying out the campaign to discredit Azerbaijan,” the statement said.

●  Ganimat Zahid, editor of the opposition newspaper Azadlig, who works in exile, announced the first “Congress of Azerbaijani Political Exiles”. Zahid said details of the discussions would be published in both text and video formats. Preparations for a second, more representative congress in the near future were also announced.

●  Azerbaijan drew 1–1 with Lithuania in its opening match of the new UEFA Nations League season. The game was played in Vilnius. Earlier, Lithuania had beaten Liechtenstein 2–0 in its first group match.

●  The Azerbaijan Grand Prix, held on the Baku street circuit from 24 to 26 September, has ended. British Mercedes driver George Russell won the race, followed by Red Bull’s Max Verstappen of the Netherlands in second and his teammate Isack Hadjar in third. The Baku circuit has 20 corners and 51 laps, with a total race distance of 306.049 km.

Photo Gabriel Cattaruzzi

● Sunday marked six years since the start of the Second Karabakh War in 2020, which lasted 44 days. Early on 27 September 2020, Azerbaijan launched an offensive along the entire line of contact with the former unrecognised Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and in some sections of the Armenia-Azerbaijan border. Armenia declared martial law and announced general mobilisation. On the night of 9–10 November, the leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia signed a trilateral statement, after which hostilities ended and Russian peacekeepers were deployed in Karabakh.

● Social media was flooded with criticism after Public Television aired no coverage of the anniversary of the 44-day war.

● On the sixth anniversary of the start of the 44-day war, members of parliament from the pro-Russian opposition parties Strong Armenia and Armenia, members of the Hayakve civic movement, and former leaders of the former unrecognised Nagorno-Karabakh Republic visited the Yerablur military pantheon.

● Opposition MP Anna Grigoryan demanded that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan answer why he failed to take steps that could have prevented the 2020 war, and instead took actions that brought the war closer and effectively gave Aliyev free rein to commit war crimes.

● Nzhde Iskandaryan, former state minister of the former unrecognised Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, said new protests by Karabakh Armenians in Armenia could take place. He said municipal authorities had refused to approve an application for a protest, but people still intend to take to the streets because their socioeconomic situation is becoming increasingly difficult.

● Armenia’s foreign minister and the UN High Commissioner discussed programmes aimed at integrating Karabakh Armenians into life in Armenia.

● Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called Azerbaijan a “friendly and brotherly country” and honoured the memory of Azerbaijani servicemen killed in the fighting over Karabakh. Erdoğan also said: “Karabakh is Azerbaijani land and will remain so forever.”

● Two rescuers suffered smoke inhalation in a major fire at an electrical substation in Yerevan, with one hospitalised. The fire took more than two hours to extinguish. Power outages affected 14 streets, leaving around 5,000 subscribers in Yerevan without electricity. The cause of the fire is still under investigation. Romannos Petrosyan, interim manager of Electric Networks of Armenia, was at the scene. He told journalists that an internal investigation would be conducted across all departments and the legality of employees’ actions would be assessed.

● Travelling to the United States on a tourist visa for the purpose of giving birth and securing US citizenship for a newborn is not permitted, the US Embassy in Armenia warned. “A consular officer reviewing a visa application may refuse to issue a visa if there are grounds to believe that you are travelling for the purpose of giving birth,” the statement said.

● EU ambassadors travelled to Syunik province, where they reviewed work carried out under the “Resilient Syunik – Team Europe” initiative and discussed future priorities. The Dutch Embassy in Armenia said the group of ambassadors and partners saw first-hand how joint investments are working in practice. They visited a dairy company in Kapan, reviewed work to improve access to drinking water in Lehvaz, and visited Meghri Fruits, where Team Europe support has helped expand production, create new jobs and enter new export markets.

● Justice Minister Srbuhi Ghalyan was elected first vice-chair of the 15th UN Congress on Crime Prevention.

● Roscosmos cosmonaut of Armenian origin Harutyun Kiviryan has joined the crew of SpaceX’s Crew-14 mission, which is scheduled to travel to the International Space Station (ISS) in spring 2027.

Top stories in Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia from 23-25 September, 2026