"Rossiyskaya Gazeta" targeting Azerbaijan, but risks hitting "Sputnik" Another provocation

The Russian media continue to allow blatant provocations against Azerbaijan. Thus, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper has reprinted a report from the Armenian newspaper Yerkramas known for its provocative and anti-Azerbaijani views on the opening of a Russian centre in the area of temporary responsibility of the Russian peacekeeping contingent in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.

In this report, the Karabakh region, which is the internationally recognized part of Azerbaijan, is shown as a separate state. The report also emphasized that the activity of the Russian centre was directed at the "cultural rapprochement of the peoples of Russia and Karabakh".

In light of the blocking of several Azerbaijani news outlets, including Caliber.Az, in Russia, due to their objective coverage of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the publication of this provocative report, in which the separatist wisp is presented as a separate state, raises a quite legitimate question. Why are Russian media outlets allowed to bring distorted and pro-Armenian news to their audiences, while Azerbaijani outlets are not allowed to cover Russia's war against Ukraine objectively?

Moreover, this is a blatant provocation against Azerbaijan, with which Russia has special relations. It is backed by the Declaration on Allied Interaction between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Russian Federation signed in Moscow on February 22 of this year. The first paragraph of the document states that the parties build their relations based on allied cooperation, mutual respect for independence, state sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability of state borders.

At the same time, it is not a privately-owned publication, but a political and public daily newspaper founded by the government of Russia. It appears that the editorial board of a state-owned newspaper opposes interstate documents signed at the highest level, and replicates provocative anti-Azerbaijani information.

In this case, it is either incompetence of the editorial board of a state-owned newspaper, which reprinted the nonsense of an Armenian tabloid, or an order from someone up the ladder. However, this does not change the essence of the deed. Thus, it gives the Azerbaijani side another good reason to consider further activities of the local branch of the Russian state-owned newspaper Sputnik-Azerbaijan in its territory, whose activities raise numerous questions among the Azerbaijani public. Especially against the background of the rabid anti-Azerbaijani propaganda carried out by the Armenian branch of this Russian state news agency.

By the way, this is not the first provocation of Rossiyskaya Gazeta against Azerbaijan. In 2016, its website published a report that the Karabakh separatists had renamed the occupied Azerbaijani territories "Artsakh". One can only wonder why the Russian government publication is so favourable to the Karabakh separatists.