Abstract
Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, has launched a fierce verbal attack on Armenia, which he has called a fascist state. “Fascism must be destroyed,” he said in an interview on local TV networks on January 7. “Either the Armenian leadership will destroy it, or we will.”
This rhetoric is strongly reminiscent of baseless claims used by Vladimir Putin about Ukraine to justify Russia’s invasion. He has claimed that Ukraine must be “denazified”.
There are also reports that Azerbaijan’s acquisition of advanced Israeli weapons have increased recently, according to Israeli journalist Avi Sharf, national security, cyber and open source intelligence editor at Israeli news outlet Haaretz.