Media monitoring in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, 11-15 December, 2023

● Investigative journalist Hafiz Babali has been sentenced to three months of preliminary arrest on charges of “smuggling in conspiracy with a group of persons.” Four other employees of the Abzas Media publication face similar charges.

● Renowned opposition figure and former political prisoner Tofik Yagublu was detained in Baku. During a search in his apartment, the police discovered 5,000 euros, 2,500 manats (about $1,500), and an undisclosed amount of US dollars. Yagublu is accused of fraud, production, and use of false documents, according to his lawyer Agil Laij.

● British Ambassador to Azerbaijan Fergus Auld expressed disappointment over the arrest of journalist Hafiz Babali, emphasizing the importance of press freedom for democracy. The ambassador’s tweet faced criticism from civil society members in Azerbaijan, urging concrete actions from Western structures.

● Baku is preparing a response to Armenia’s comments on the peace treaty received in late November. Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov stated that Azerbaijan’s position will be conveyed to Armenia soon.

● “Baku finds Yerevan’s proposal to withdraw troops from the border unacceptable. Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov, during a press conference with his Turkish counterpart in Baku, stated, ‘The Armenian-Azerbaijani border is not delimited; who can guarantee that nothing will happen there?’ The head of the Armenian Foreign Ministry mentioned the day before that discussions between Baku and Yerevan are underway regarding the Armenian initiative to withdraw troops from the border.

● The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry criticized the Dutch government’s statements against Baku, demanding “respect for the principles of international law.” The Netherlands had announced assistance to Armenia “following Azerbaijan’s attack on an ethnic Armenian enclave.”

● A 12-year-old boy died of measles in the city of Shirvan, marking the fifth death among children from this infection.

● For the first time in history, the Qarabag football club advanced to the playoff stage of the UEFA Europa League. The team from Agdam secured a 2:1 victory over the Swedish champions, the Heken club, in Baku.

The photo, published by Tofig Yagublu’s daughter, depicts a police cordon in the courtyard during a search at his house:

● The European Commission has granted Georgia candidate status for accession to the European Union.

● “Georgia belongs to the common European family,” stated Vladimir Zelensky.

● Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili congratulated Bidzina Ivanishvili, considered the shadow ruler of Georgia, crediting his leadership for the victory. Garibashvili invited everyone to celebrate in Freedom Square in Tbilisi today.

● The French President extended congratulations to Georgia on achieving candidate status and to Ukraine and Moldova for starting EU accession negotiations.

● “We heard the voice of the Georgian people and their European aspirations,” wrote President of the European Parliament Roberta Metzola on her page.

● President Salome Zurabishvili expressed gratitude to the Ukrainian people for their struggle, stating that she would join the public celebration announced by the Prime Minister.

● President of Moldova Maia Sandu described it as a historical moment and an important step for Georgia.

● Ambassadors to Georgia of EU member states released a joint video message congratulating Georgia on obtaining EU candidate status.

🇪🇺🤝🇬🇪 “Georgia has been granted the candidate status! On this historic day, the European Union and our Members States have one message to the people of Georgia” – Watch the video message of the EU Ambassador Pawel Herczynski and the Ambassadors of the EU Member States ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/RVQv3X1dIQ

— EU Delegation Georgia 🇪🇺 (@EUinGeorgia) December 14, 2023

● “Armenia is prepared to take effective and concrete measures to open communications in the region,” stated Nikol Pashinyan.

● Vladimir Putin expressed that he does not consider it in Armenia’s interest to terminate membership in the CIS or the EAEU, the CSTO. He emphasized, “It was not Russia that abandoned Nagorno-Karabakh; it was Armenia that recognized NK as part of Azerbaijan. The Armenian partners did not specifically inform the Russian side about making such a decision.”

● Armenia and Greece have signed an agreement on military-technical cooperation.

● “Yerevan hopes for additional support from the international community to address the problems of the Karabakh Armenians,” said Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Vahan Kostanyan.

● Baku deemed Yerevan’s proposal to withdraw troops unacceptable. Jeyhun Bayramov, responding to Ararat Mirzoyan’s statement, asserted at a press conference with his Turkish colleague that “the Armenian-Azerbaijani border is not delimited, so no one can guarantee that nothing will happen there if the troops are withdrawn.”

● The ruling party convened its sixth meeting in December. The reason for such activity in the meetings is still unknown.

● The Yeraskh Armenian-American metallurgical plant near the border, intermittently shelled by the Azerbaijani Armed Forces since June, will be relocated to the village of Ararat in the Ararat region.

● A swap of detained servicemen occurred on the border between Azerbaijan and Armenia, with Azerbaijan releasing 32 detainees to the Armenian side in exchange for two servicemen arrested in Armenia.

●  Another yet journalist of the independent Abzas Media was detained in Baku. Hafiz Babaly is an author of corruption investigations published by the otlet. Read more here: https://shorturl.at/klFN0

●  This morning 20 more families (86 people) of IDPs moved to the town of Lachin for permanent residence. Thus, as of today, 383 families (1,475 people) have been provided with accommodation in the place.

●  Activist Mahyaddin Orujov has been detained. It is not reported what the young man is accused of. Orujov was released in mid-November after serving 30 days of administrative arrest.

●  Azerbaijani chicken is set to make its way to China as Beijing grants approval for imports. The move comes after a ban on poultry imports from Azerbaijan was imposed by China in 2006 due to the detection of “bird flu” in the country.

●  A total of 32 Armenian war prisoners were returned by Azerbaijan yesterday, with 23 individuals still in Azerbaijani captivity, as per official reports.

●  Armenia reciprocated by releasing two Azerbaijani servicemen – Agshin Babirov and Huseyn Akhundov.

●  After the prisoner swap, US believes peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan is possible: US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.

● The peace treaty is not ready for signing, there’s no final draft, but there’s hope it can be agreed on at the upcoming foreign ministers meeting in January: ambassador-at-large Edmond Maroukian.

● To commemorate the 120th anniversary of Aram Khachaturian, a piano played with feet is now on display in Yerevan’s Shoghakat Park.

● Another leader has left the country’s main opposition party. “From now on my political life is no longer connected with the United National Movement, this story is over,” Nugzar Tsiklauri said.

Tsiklauri said that the name of the new party, which will unite the politicians leaving the UNM, has not been thought up yet. But it is already known that the founding congress will be held closer to February.

●  “If Georgia’s European future is at stake, I would consider anything” – this is how President Zurabishvili responded in an interview with Radio Liberty/Free Europe when asked whether she is considering the possibility of creating a party and participating in the 2024 parliamentary elections.

●  Poland’s new Prime Minister Donald Tusk expresses support for Georgia and said Georgia “can always count on” him.

● Yet another meeting of the Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism ended without results in the village of Ergneti in the Georgian-Ossetian conflict zone. The main issue of the meeting was the recent killing of Georgian citizen Tamaz Ginturi by the Russian military.

“Russia’s position was extremely destructive and they tried to present the killing of Ginturi as a legitimate action of the so-called border guards,” Irakli Antadze of Georgia’s special security service, said after the meeting.

●  Salome Zurabishvili: “It would be wrong to join the EU without the occupied territories.”

●  The Georgian Parliament has passed a third reading of a bill allowing citizens to vote in elections in a non-electronic way – using laminated ID cards. According to the current Georgian legislation, only those Georgian citizens who have electronic ID cards have the right to participate in the 2024 elections.

●  The ruling Yeni Azerbaijan Party has nominated Ilham Aliyev as its candidate in the extraordinary presidential election to be held on February 7, 2024.

● “That Azerbaijan will host the 29th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29) in 2024 in Azerbaijan is the result of our determination to contribute to global efforts to combat climate change,” President Aliyev wrote on social media. Read more here

● “The EU’s policy in the South Caucasus is only aimed at forcing Russia out of the region, while using what we have achieved in the process of peaceful settlement between Armenia and Azerbaijan,” said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin.

● “A Russian peacekeeper died in Karabakh after an APC drove off a mountain road,” the Russian Defense Ministry said. Two others suffered moderate to severe injuries.

●  New amendments have been adopted to the criminal code: demonstration, distribution, manufacture, purchase, carrying or transportation of attributes and symbols aimed at violation of territorial integrity of Azerbaijan will now be punishable with up to five years in prison.

● Dissemination of information on the movement or dislocation of personnel and military equipment of the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan will carry a prison sentence of 3 to 8 years.

●  More than 1600 trucks are stranded at the customs posts of Azerbaijan. The accumulation of trucks is connected with the movement restrictions at the customs post “Verkhny Lars” between Russia and Georgia due to bad weather.

●  Azerbaijan had to dispose of over 41 tons of potatoes from Belarus due to the presence of rot.

● Armenia has been granted membership in the UNESCO Council for the Implementation of the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict for a four-year term, as reported by the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture, and Sports.

● “Preservation of the country’s water resources is a matter of national security,” PM Pashinyan said at a meeting at the Ministry of Environment. “The question is how much water we waste and how much fish we get as a result, because we can buy fish from outside, but we can’t buy water if we need it.”

●  Russia is always ready to accept negotiations on Azerbaijani-Armenian settlement: Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin.

●  The number of road accidents has decreased in Armenia. According to the Interior Ministry, 529 cases were recorded last month: this is almost 300 less than in October.

●  A book by Eduard Margarov, a player of the legendary Ararat-73 club, titled “Football with a smile” has been published.

●  Armenian President Vahagn Khachaturian and Vladimir Zelensky talked “on their feet” in Buenos Aires, where they’d arrived for the inauguration of the Argentine President.

●  Chief Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs Zare Sinanyan is leaving on a working visit to Ukraine. During the trip, she will visit Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Kiev and Kharkiv and meet with representatives of the Armenian community.

●European Georgia chairman Giga Bokeria held a briefing outside the Inguri hydroelectric power plant in Western Georgia, where he spoke about the potential of using the plant’s reservoir as “an important tool in the fight against the occupiers.”

“80% of the energy produced by the plant is supplied to the occupation regimes, and this against the background of systematic kidnappings and murders of Georgian citizens,” Bokeria said. This, in his opinion, may indicate that “Georgian authorities are in collusion with occupiers and puppet regimes.”

The Ingur HPP is located right in the zone of the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict and is the only joint Georgian-Abkhazian project. The reservoir and part of the diversion tunnel are on the Georgian side, while the other part of the tunnel, the HPP building and four overflow HPPs are on the Abkhaz side. The parties jointly operate the HPP and share the electricity it produces, with the Abkhaz side receiving 40 percent and the Georgian side 60 percent. We have a story about this unique cooperation

●The chairman of the ruling Georgian Dream party Irakli Kobakhidze accused the opposition TV channel Formula of spreading “LGBT propaganda” after the release of a new episode of the popular Georgian TV series My Wife’s Girlfriends.

Kobakhidze did not like the part of the episode in which one of the heroines – six-year-old Niako – tells her mother that boys are bad: “first they give u something and then they beat you” and that she only likes her girlfriends.

● “They wanted to breed a new kind of Georgian, a new human. I would say that it was an attempt to change our national identity, our DNA, Georgianness,” Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili said. According to him, all the problems of Georgia’s education and youth are because of the reforms after the Rose Revolution (led by ex-president Saakashvili).

● Charges of violation of privacy have recently been brought against 14 citizens in Georgia, five of them have been detained, the Special Investigative Service reports.

● Azerbaijan marks the 20th anniversary of the death of the country’s third president Heydar Aliyev. He led Azerbaijan from 1993 to 2003.

● The special quarantine regime in Azerbaijan has been extended until April 2, 2024. Read more here

● Reporter of Kanal 11 Internet TV Teymur Kerimov has been detained, as reported by his colleagues and friends. They say Kerimov has not been contacted since Monday noon. There have been no official reports about the reporter’s detention. There is no exact information about his whereabouts.

●  “The EU monitoring mission in Armenia is being used as a propaganda tool against Azerbaijan. The mission has failed to achieve its stated objectives of promoting regional stability and confidence building between Baku and Yerevan. Even more destabilizing initiatives are being put forward, such as arming Armenia, including through the EU. Such initiatives undermine the authority of the EU as a neutral mediator,” Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Ceyhun Bayramov said at the Eastern Partnership Summit.

● Azerbaijan has officially become the host of the COP29. Baku will host the 29th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change next year,” COP28 chief Sultan Al Jaber said.

●  More than 1.5 thousand trucks are waiting for departure at the customs posts of Azerbaijan. The accumulation of trucks is due to the restriction of traffic due to bad weather at the customs post “Upper Lars” between Russia and Georgia.

●  Kazakhstan has increased oil exports through Azerbaijan. In January-November, KazTransOil exported 3.062 million tons of Kazakh oil from the port of Aktau, 50% more than a year earlier.

●  A workshop “Eco Elements” was held as part of the volunteer week in Azerbaijan (pictured). Eco-volunteers made eco-friendly bags and different things from plastic waste.

● The European Union will increase the number of observers in Armenia from 138 to 209. The decision was made by the foreign ministers of the EU member states,” European diplomacy head Josep Borrel said.

● On the margins of the Eastern Partnership ministerial summit, the foreign ministers of Armenia and Ukraine exchanged views on the prospects of bilateral cooperation.

●  Directors of 11 kindergartens in Yerevan have been removed from their posts after a high-profile criminal case. The matter concerns abuses in supplying food for preschool institutions.

●  Dr. Pablo Elmasyan from Argentina (an ethnic Armenian) is taking part in the Buenos Aires-Montevideo charity ultramarathon. He has until December 16 to run 600 km, all funds raised will be used to support health care programs for Karabakhi Armenians, the FIDEC Armenia website reports.

● Georgia’s EU candidacy bid may fall through if Hungary vetoes Ukraine, EURACTIV writes, citing senior EU diplomats.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who boasts about his ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, has threatened to veto the aid and enlargement talks at the 14-15 December summit. EURACTIV sources expecting Orbán to budge described a possible compromise throwing the start on negotiations with Ukraine to March under final conditions. Others, however, worry that this time the Hungarian leader may not be persuaded.

● Meanwhile, 79% of Georgians support the idea of Georgia becoming a part of the EU family, as found by a new poll by the American National Democratic Institute (NDI). This is 3% less than in March. The support for European integration is highest in cities and among young people, and lowest in provinces where ethnic minorities live compactly. 11% consider joining the European Union unacceptable.

●  The parliament’s legal affairs committee supported in the first reading the abolition of non-electronic identity cards issued before July 28, 2011. If adopted, the change would come into force on July 1, 2024.

●  In the city of Nis, during Ilham Aliyev’s visit to Serbia, the Serbia-Bulgaria gas interconnector was inaugurated, with the presence of Presidents from Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, and Serbia.

●  Ilham Aliyev stated that the volume of Azerbaijani gas supplied to Europe is expected to reach approximately 12 billion cubic meters this year.

●  Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Ceyhun Bayramov has departed for Belgium to participate in the meeting of foreign ministers from Eastern Partnership countries. No meetings with the Armenian Foreign Minister are scheduled in Brussels.

●  Shalva Papuashvili, the Speaker of the Georgian Parliament, has arrived in Baku for discussions with Azerbaijani counterpart Sahiba Gafarova and other officials, focusing on inter-parliamentary relations between Azerbaijan and Georgia.

●  The title of Cultural Capital of the Turkic World has been transferred from Shusha to the city of Anev in Turkmenistan. This happened at the official ceremony to close the year “Shusha – Cultural Capital of the Turkic World – 2023”.

●  A procession of Santa Clauses took place in the center of Baku (shown in the video).

● The French Foreign Ministry has announced an additional allocation of 15 million euros in urgent humanitarian aid to Yerevan. This brings the total aid provided by France to Armenia to 27.5 million euros.

●  Members of the youth wing of the Republican Party placed wreaths outside the Ombudsman’s office, in a symbolic protest against what they said were “dead” human righs in the country (pictured).

●  President Vahagn Khachaturian attended the inauguration ceremony of the President of Argentina.

●  Scandalous blogger Julia Finess has been detained in Yerevan and a criminal case of hooliganism has been opened against her. In a recent incident, Finess and her friend, both Russian citizens, engaged in disruptive behavior in the center of Yerevan, including throwing fruit at a fresh juice seller, trampling flowers in a flower shop, and using offensive language.

●  “The brutal beating by local militia resulting in the death of another Georgian citizen in occupied Abkhazia is a tragic reminder of the blatant violations of elementary human rights in the territories occupied by Russia. Sad 75th anniversary!”: that’s president Salome Zurabishvili responds to reports of a Georgian citizen, some Temur Karbaia, dying at the hands of Abkhaz police in Gali.

“The so-called police detained the man and beat him severely. Then, realizing he was dying, they attempted to save him by transporting him to Sukhumi. Unfortunately, he did not survive”, leader of the “Movement for Abkhazia” Nukri Nodia had said earlier.

●  “Going forward to the future, leaving the past with the past,” former chairman of the opposition “National Movement” Nika Melia said he was leaving the party and creating a new political force.

“Unfortunately, the National Movement, too, has made oligarchic rule, behind-the-scenes influence and persecution of dissent its political standard, closing the door to democracy”, he said.

●  Georgian Airways has started operating regular flights on the Tbilisi – St. Petersburg – Tbilisi route,” the press service of the Pulkovo airport management company reports.

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the airspace of Europe is closed for Russian airplanes, but as Pulkovo promises, now Georgian Airways planes will allow Russian citizens to fly from St. Petersburg via Tbilisi to more than 10 international destinations, including Vienna, Amsterdam, Berlin, and many other cities where Georgian Airways flies.

●  “For those who just can’t let go of Christmas, Georgia should be their number one festive destination”. CNN put Georgia and, in particular, the capital, Tbilisi, on its list of “perfect winter wonderlands” to visit during Christmas. Some of the others are: Bruges (Belgium), Colmar (France), Tromsø (Norway), Wrocław (Poland).

Media monitoring in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, 4-8 December, 2023