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Qabil Ashirov

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Reading an article recently published by Politico, a prominent European news agency on Azerbaijan's alleged 're-exporting' of Russian gas to Europe, one might conclude that either the author has lost his mind or the editor is ignorant of the facts. Frankly speaking, the article resembles the work of a defiant teenager trying to assert himself by challenging societal norms. Even, calling this collection of words an article is improper.

The author claims that after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the EU turned to Azerbaijan to replace the Russian energy it had relied on for years. This claim alone proves that the author lacks information about the current economic and political situation in Europe, let alone Azerbaijan. It is worth noting that the EU made a significant mistake by relying on a single energy source and, following the outbreak of the Ukrainian war, tried to diversify its energy sources, which should have been done long ago.

On the one hand, Azerbaijan has neither the ambition nor the resources to replace Russian gas in the European market, nor does the EU demand it. In other words, Azerbaijan cannot replace Russia with a capacity of its energy resource roughly six times lesser than it in the European market, and even if Azerbaijan somehow had enough gas to replace Russia and provided it to Europe for free, the EU would not accept it. As mentioned earlier, the EU aims to diversify its energy sources.

Another fact that confirms the author's detachment from reality is that Azerbaijan has not imported any gas from Russia in 2024.

In an attempt to tarnish Azerbaijani-Ukrainian relations and defame Azerbaijan, the author goes to great lengths. He exaggerates the oil trade between Azerbaijan and Russia and comments on Azerbaijani-Russian relations. Frankly, I didn't bother to verify the truth of his claims. Even assuming he is correct, the author's assertion that Russia can finance over 1,000 newly recruited soldiers with this revenue is misleading. It is crystal clear that 1,000 soldiers cannot change the fate of the Ukrainian war. On the other hand, Russia exports gas to some European countries through pipelines traversing Ukraine. With the revenue from this pipeline, Russia can recruit many more soldiers. Additionally, Russia's trade turnover with pro-Western countries, such as Armenia, has soared, earning Moscow billions of dollars from this trade. However, the author does not touch upon these issues.

To tell the truth, the author is not the only journalist who exaggerates Azerbaijani-Russian relations. Several other journalists have either hinted or openly criticized Azerbaijan's relations with Russia. All of these can be described with one word - hypocrisy.

Firstly, Azerbaijan has always recognized the territorial integrity of not only Ukraine but all countries suffering from either separatism or invasion. In this regard, Azerbaijan is decisive. However, Azerbaijan has not witnessed the same level of concern in the Garabagh issue. The countries that criticize Russia today and provide Ukraine with weapons acted completely contrary during the Garabagh wars. Take France, for example. Today, Paris arms Ukraine, but during and even since the II Garabagh War, it has been providing Armenia with weapons. Members of the separatist regime in Garabagh used to travel frequently to France. Unfortunately, we did not see any sanctions against the political leaders who committed the Khojaly massacre and destroyed Azerbaijani cities the way they did for Russia, which affected an ordinary citizen. Even some Western or pro-Western media outlets, including Ukrainian ones, aired Armenian propagandists under the guise of neutrality. It is interesting that we do not see the same neutrality in the light of the Ukrainian war.

Furthermore, it is worth recalling that when Russia attacked Georgia in 2008, one of the Western media outlets denounced then-president of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili and said that he should have remembered that big countries, such as the USA and the EU, do not commit suicide for their little allies, such as Georgia. We saw the dark and hypocritical face of the West in 2008. We saw how they used our neighbor fraternal Georgia, and we do not intend to repeat the same mistake.

In a nutshell, if you have any problem with Russia, please solve it yourselves and do not involve us in it. We are not going to be a tool of the West like some others.