Azerbaijan today isn’t just a nation that has restored its territorial integrity and achieved energy autonomy. It’s a rising political force in a region long dismissed as peripheral—and that’s precisely what triggered a sweeping, multi-layered hybrid war. This isn’t a think-tank hypothetical or the stuff of academic debate. It’s a documented reality: an escalating onslaught of media attacks, sanctions pressure, fake reports, and information warfare, orchestrated with surgical precision.
This is war without tanks or fighter jets—fought instead with European Parliament resolutions, doctored NGO dossiers, strategic media leaks, and relentless cyberstrikes targeting Azerbaijan’s digital sovereignty. It’s a new kind of battlefield, one that cuts across diplomacy, ideology, lawfare, and tech. And the frontlines aren’t drawn in trenches—they’re drawn in conference halls, newsroom offices, NGO lobbies, and think tanks that have long since abandoned the pretense of neutrality.
The goal of this hybrid warfare isn’t to invade, but to undermine—to break a nation’s will from within. The mission isn’t regime change; it’s paralysis. It’s about dismantling Azerbaijan’s international image, eroding trust in its institutions, isolating it from allies, and silencing its voice. The architects of this campaign—France first and foremost, along with certain circles in Washington and Brussels—don’t see Azerbaijan as a partner. They see a threat to a global order they no longer fully control. An independent Baku, unwilling to bend to foreign diktats, is far more dangerous to them than a compliant satellite.
So they’re throwing everything at it: aggressive human rights rhetoric, manufactured reports, efforts to drive a wedge between Azerbaijan and the Muslim world, and coordinated attempts to portray it as an unreliable energy partner. What you’re reading isn’t just an assessment of risk. It’s an exposé—of the mechanics of a hybrid war designed to strip a sovereign nation of its independence, sabotage its regional leadership, and lock it out of global decision-making.
President Ilham Aliyev, speaking at the “Towards a New World Order” forum at ADA University in April 2024, cut through the noise: “Azerbaijan is under information attack not because it violates rights—but because it has its own position and defends it.”
NATO’s own definition of hybrid warfare speaks volumes: a “strategic combination of military and non-military tools used to destabilize, delegitimize, pressure, and erode a state’s resilience.” In Azerbaijan’s case, the playbook includes six main tactics: information warfare, cyber intrusion, political and legal manipulation, backing of radical actors, international defamation, and historical-cultural distortion. All of these intensified dramatically after Baku reasserted sovereignty over Karabakh in 2023.
One of the most intense flashpoints has been the orchestrated effort to discredit Azerbaijan’s role as host of COP29. French media outlets, NGOs, and diplomats worked in lockstep, promoting a narrative of “civil society repression,” “environmental threats,” and “geopolitical horse-trading.” On February 14, 2024, French MEP Pierre Larrouturou even called for a boycott of the summit, declaring, “Azerbaijan is a country where civil society has been destroyed.” His plea followed a European Parliament resolution urging COP29 be relocated—despite the fact, as noted by representatives from Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania, the resolution cited zero evidence and provided not a single statistic to back that claim.
Meanwhile, Freedom House—funded through the U.S. State Department—has methodically downgraded Azerbaijan’s rating, even as ILO data for 2023 showed the country outperforming both France and the U.S. in labor rights coverage: 87% in Azerbaijan, compared to 79% in France and just 65% in the U.S. Amnesty International’s 2023 report flagged alleged LGBT persecution—but failed to mention that 14 LGBT-related events were held in Azerbaijan that year, rising to 19 in 2024. The discrepancy doesn’t suggest a rights crisis; it exposes a political double standard.
What we’re seeing isn’t a defense of liberal values. It’s the weaponization of them. It’s not about human rights. It’s about power.
And in this high-stakes game of reputational warfare, the real target isn’t Azerbaijan’s conduct—it’s its independence.
The Digital Front in a Hybrid War: How Cyberattacks Became a Pressure Tool Against Azerbaijan
Since Azerbaijan restored its territorial integrity and reasserted itself as a geopolitical actor, cyberspace has become the new theater of conflict. Where the 1990s brought territorial occupation, the 2020s ushered in a different kind of siege—one where borders are blurred, attackers hide behind proxy servers and shell NGOs, and destabilization is launched not with tanks, but with code.
The more Azerbaijan strengthens its position as a digitally sovereign state, the more sophisticated—and targeted—the cyber offensives become. According to national cybersecurity agency CERT.az, from October 2023 to March 2024, there were 187 documented cyberattacks aimed at government portals, ministries, municipal systems, and critical infrastructure. Among them: 64 exploits of web interface vulnerabilities for malware injection, 51 DDoS attacks, 39 phishing campaigns targeting government officials, and 33 instances of spyware infiltration attempts.
One of the most severe assaults came on December 12, 2023, when Azerbaijan’s main e-government platform, e-gov.az—which provides access to over 500 public services, including tax filing, ID registration, pension records, and legal notifications—was hit by a massive DDoS attack. Server traffic surged to 37 times the norm, with over 80% of incoming data packets traced to four data centers in Germany, Sweden, Canada, and Cyprus. Cyber forensics by CERT.az, backed by Kaspersky’s Threat Attribution Engine, linked the attack to a group operating under the name LupusTeam—a cyber unit previously tied to breaches against Poland’s Interior Ministry (Jan 2023), Ukraine’s Diia platform (Apr 2022), and Moldova’s eID service (July 2023).
What sets LupusTeam apart isn’t just its tactics—it’s its affiliations. A March 2024 report by Israel-based Check Point Research traced parts of the group’s infrastructure to cloud services managed by TriSecure Hosting, a company with registered owners in both Armenia and California. Digging deeper, analysts at Digital Forensics Alliance (DFA) found that at least two developers behind the malware signature MalSign.Tracert.h had previously worked on grant-funded tech platforms backed by Open Society Foundations and USAID’s TechCamp Armenia. One of them, G. Mnatsakanyan, even appeared as a speaker at the 2022 CivicTech seminar in Yerevan, where discussions focused on “anonymizing protest coordination” and “access to encrypted communication channels.”
These aren’t isolated connections. What we’re looking at is a coordinated cyber campaign disguised as civic tech. According to an internal investigation by Azerbaijan’s State NGO Support Agency, at least three so-called "digital security incubators" operated in Georgia in 2023, staffed by former Armenian IT professionals. Two of these—TechNest and FreeCommLab—received funding from USAID Georgia and the Netherlands-funded Digital Democracy Initiative.
The attacks haven’t just targeted day-to-day governance—they’ve aimed to disrupt key moments on the global stage. In January 2024, just days before Baku announced the official date for COP29, the website of Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Ecology was hit with a sophisticated SQL injection designed to compromise its internal admin panel. The group behind it, SilentArarat, used Cobalt Strike Beacon—a penetration tool widely favored by hacktivists and groups linked to Armenian IT outfits. According to a February 2024 report by CyberPeace Foundation, part of SilentArarat’s infrastructure overlapped with that used in the 2022 attack on Armenia’s own Ministry of Education’s Moodle platform. The common thread? Hosting provider Selectel—used in both operations.
The 2025 wave of attacks suggests this is only accelerating. Between January and May, CERT.az registered 62 more cyber incidents—23 of which hit financial systems, including the e-taxes.gov.az portal, the National Social Insurance Fund, and BakuCard’s payment infrastructure. Investigators traced some attacks to proxy networks operated by NoName057(16)—a group believed to be tied to disinformation operations in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus. In March 2025, there was an attempted spyware breach using AgentTesla, delivered via a spoofed email masquerading as a Scopus academic notice. The payload came from a domain registered to NebulaProject Ltd, an Irish-based company previously linked to funding chains associated with the Eurasia Partnership Foundation.
But these aren’t just data breaches. They’re deliberate acts of psychological warfare. The objective is clear: undermine trust in e-government services, portray Azerbaijan as “digitally unstable,” and derail its international digital ambitions. This becomes especially critical in 2025, as Azerbaijan holds the rotating chair of the Organization of Turkic States’ Digital Partnership and pushes the TURANet initiative—a proposed cross-national cyberspace infrastructure akin to Europe’s GAIA-X. For certain actors, deeper digital integration with Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan is seen not as progress—but as a geopolitical threat. And cyberpressure is their preferred method of containment.
What’s unfolding isn’t a random sequence of cyber incidents. It’s a deliberate, multi-tiered operation, executed through a web of grant-funded centers, IT incubators, pseudo-educational hubs, and activist groups, all tied—directly or by proxy—to Armenian lobbying structures and Western state-backed agencies. This is a front where no bullets fly, but trust is shattered. A war where cities aren’t bombed, but the foundations of digital sovereignty are systematically targeted.
And Azerbaijan must respond in kind. That means more than firewalls and filters. It means building a robust cyber reserve, hardening servers, advancing digital diplomacy, and forging alliances with global cybersecurity stakeholders. Without this, Azerbaijan faces the very real prospect of falling under a state of high-tech siege—unseen, but profoundly dangerous.
This hybrid war also plays out in courtrooms. Back in 2022, France—with Cyprus in tow—launched a legal offensive against Azerbaijan in the Council of Europe, citing alleged “rights violations of the Armenian population in Karabakh.” Baku countered with 346 verified images and videos showing the restoration of mosques, Christian churches, Armenian cemeteries, and 123 rebuilt public facilities in newly liberated territories. Yet the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), in its January 2024 report, disregarded all of it—relying instead on claims by Armenian “human rights defenders,” most of whom are funded through European and U.S. grants.
Welcome to the silent war of the 21st century—fought in code, courtrooms, and committees. But make no mistake: its outcomes are as real, and as consequential, as those drawn in blood.
The Information Siege: How a Pseudo-Independent Media Infrastructure Became a Weapon of Hybrid Warfare Against Azerbaijan
In today’s world, information can be more devastating than artillery—and in the hybrid war waged against Azerbaijan, the primary arsenal isn't missiles or drones, but English-language media cloaked in the language of “civil journalism” and “human rights advocacy.” According to monitoring by the Azerbaijan Center for Strategic Communications, more than 40 high-profile articles were published between 2021 and 2024 in outlets such as OC Media, CivilNet, Eurasianet, IWPR, and Open Caucasus, pushing a near-identical narrative: Azerbaijan is framed as the aggressor against Armenia, accused of “forcibly integrating Karabakh,” and vilified as an “authoritarian escalator” and even an “energy imperialist.”
One standout example: a February 8, 2024 article in Eurasianet headlined “Azerbaijan’s Authoritarian Surge.” The author, Alec Luhn—formerly of The Moscow Times and Open Democracy—paints Azerbaijan as a “next-generation petro-autocracy,” a “regional gas despot,” and a “regime exporting both resources and repression.” The piece is a medley of dramatic labels, anonymous quotes, and vague generalizations—conspicuously lacking in hard data, economic indicators, or contractual specifics. Readers are fed an emotionally charged narrative, driven not by analysis, but by innuendo: if it’s powerful, it must be dangerous.
Reality, however, tells a different story. The BP Statistical Review of World Energy reports that in 2022, Azerbaijan exported 11.4 billion cubic meters of natural gas to the EU—covering around 5% of the bloc’s needs, with projected growth to 20 billion cubic meters by 2027. This supply flows through the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC), which the European Commission has officially designated a “Project of Common Interest.” During her visit to Baku in July 2022, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated unequivocally: “Azerbaijan is a reliable energy partner. Its role in Europe’s energy security is strategic.” That reality stands in direct contrast to the portrayal of Azerbaijan as an “energy dictatorship” in the Western press.
What’s more, green energy initiatives are either downplayed or entirely erased in these publications. In 2023, UAE-based Masdar and Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power launched solar and wind projects in Azerbaijan totaling over 500 MW. A joint initiative with BP is set to bring 240 MW of solar capacity online in the Jabrayil district by 2027. None of these investments in decarbonization or energy diversification make it into critical media narratives—not because they’re irrelevant, but because they disrupt the carefully curated image of Azerbaijan as a “carbon-fueled despot.”
Perhaps most troubling is the quasi-journalistic status of platforms like OC Media and CivilNet, which brand themselves as “independent” and “grassroots,” while running on a steady stream of Western grant money. According to OC Media’s own financial disclosures, over 75% of its 2022 funding came from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), and Internews, an organization directly tied to USAID. In 2023 alone, these platforms received more than $1.3 million in Western funding. Under such financial dependency, editorial autonomy is a fiction. These outlets function not as watchdogs but as strategic communication arms. The message is clear: the stronger Azerbaijan gets, the louder the attacks must become.
This distortion becomes even more obvious in side-by-side content analysis. In every Eurasianet article on the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict published in 2023, the term “occupation” is conspicuously absent when referring to Armenia’s decades-long military presence in Karabakh. Yet, Azerbaijan is routinely called the “occupier” of Shusha, Khojavend, and Lachin. There is also zero mention of the four UN Security Council resolutions from 1993 (822, 853, 874, 884) affirming Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity. What we’re witnessing is methodological revisionism—a deliberate rewriting of history to sanitize secessionism and delegitimize restoration of sovereignty.
Editorial entanglements only deepen the suspicion. OC Media journalist Lucienne Jeremy, known for her sympathetic reporting on “the suffering of civilians in Artsakh,” was also a visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment and an intern at the European External Action Service (EEAS). Similarly, CivilNet editor Armen Karapetyan—who has commented critically on COP29—was formerly part of the U.S. State Department’s Open World Leadership Center and trained at the Woodrow Wilson Center. These are not coincidences. They reflect a revolving-door system between media and Western foreign policy structures.
In short, pseudo-independent media have become a central node in the machinery of hybrid warfare. Disguised as “civic journalism,” these platforms act as ideological battering rams—crafted not to inform, but to delegitimize. Their aim isn’t accountability, but perception manipulation: to cast Azerbaijan as a “totalitarian petro-regime,” unworthy of respect or influence on the global stage. What’s under attack isn’t just Baku’s policies—it’s Azerbaijan’s very agency, its right to be heard and taken seriously as a sovereign actor.
To push back, Azerbaijan must elevate its strategic communications game—expand English-language media platforms, invest in international journalism schools, and train a new generation of professionals who can speak for Azerbaijan, not be spoken for. In a time when narrative is more powerful than ordnance, the media sphere is the true battlefield. And in this war of perception, defeat is not an option.
Weaponizing the Narrative: How Western Ideological Pressure Became a Tool of Hybrid Warfare Against Azerbaijan
In geopolitics, nothing happens by accident. There are only patterns, interests, and long-game strategies. Over the past two years, Azerbaijan—having solidified its regional standing—has come under increasing ideological fire. Beyond media attacks and diplomatic pressure, a more insidious campaign has taken root: a concerted effort to cast Azerbaijan as an “exception” within the Muslim world. On the surface, it seems like neutral framing. In reality, it’s a strategic tool of marginalization—an attempt to isolate Baku geopolitically by painting it as a “secular authoritarian outlier,” a Turkish proxy, and, ultimately, a state that’s turned its back on Islamic solidarity.
It started with a wave of think tank reports in 2023 from institutions like the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the Brookings Institution. In a particularly pointed report from August 2023—titled “Secular Strongmen: Azerbaijan and the Future of Muslim Authoritarianism”—Carnegie analyst Michael Doran labeled Azerbaijan as “the most prominent example of a managed secular model in the Muslim world,” claiming it undermines “the spread of democratic and religious values.” The phrase “secular authoritarianism” appears 34 times. It’s not analysis—it’s ideological framing, designed to brand a sovereign state with a scarlet letter for not playing by someone else’s rules.
But this is more than just narrative spin. It’s reputational engineering. Doran’s report links Azerbaijan to Mubarak-era Egypt, Karimov’s Uzbekistan, and even post-revolutionary Iran—invoking authoritarian masculinity and control cults. The aim is clear: associate Baku with regimes that evoke political toxicity and moral condemnation in Western discourse, while eroding its standing in the Muslim world.
In January 2024, the Washington Institute doubled down with a report by Aaron Zimmerman titled “Azerbaijan: Ally or Outlier in the Muslim World?” Its central thesis? “Azerbaijan has grown too close to Israel and lost the trust of the broader Muslim public.” Not a single poll or credible data point backs that claim. In fact, 2023 Gallup data paints a very different picture: 87% of respondents in Pakistan view Azerbaijan favorably, as do 92% in Turkey, 61% in Saudi Arabia, and 58% in Egypt. Azerbaijan has been a full member of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation since 1992, contributes millions annually to Islamic relief funds (over $3 million in 2023 alone), and has hosted the Islamic Solidarity Games. That’s not isolation. That’s leadership.
The “exceptionalism” narrative is also weaponized to drive wedges between Azerbaijan and key Muslim allies like Turkey and Pakistan. A December 2023 Atlantic Council report accused Azerbaijan of “militarizing Turkic identity,” allegedly stoking “tensions within the Islamic world.” In reality, Turkic integration via the Organization of Turkic States is rooted in cultural and economic cooperation—hardly an anti-Islamic project. Baku funds Islamic education programs in Turkey and co-sponsors initiatives with Madrasa al-Noor in Pakistan. The idea that this undermines Islamic unity is not just misleading—it’s designed to fracture it.
But ideological isolation doesn’t stop at think tanks. Armenian lobbying groups have enthusiastically joined the effort, pushing narratives that question Azerbaijan’s legitimacy in both Islamic and international forums. In January 2024, the French outlet Le Courrier des Balkans published an exposé revealing the financial web behind a coordinated disinformation campaign against Azerbaijan in the lead-up to COP29. According to the investigation, the Tufenkian Foundation—with headquarters in New York and Yerevan—allocated $1.72 million to smear Baku’s role in the climate summit. Of that, $820,000 was earmarked for paid placements in Politico EU, Mediapart, Le Monde Afrique, and Foreign Policy, accusing Azerbaijan of “environmental hypocrisy,” “corruption,” and “authoritarian climate greenwashing.”
The most expensive item? Consulting fees paid to Edelman, a top-tier PR firm with past ties to the Democratic Party and NGOs linked to George Soros’s philanthropic network. According to whistleblower leaks posted to Substack on March 12, 2024, a contract between Edelman and the Tufenkian Foundation was signed on November 9, 2023. It outlined a targeted strategy to sabotage Azerbaijan’s image in Western media spaces—both English and French—and to flood the climate policy discourse with “spoiler” narratives aimed at undermining regional climate credibility.
This isn’t diplomacy. It’s information warfare masquerading as thought leadership. The goal isn’t just to critique—it’s to delegitimize. Not to ask hard questions—but to manufacture consent for exclusion. Behind every academic paper and op-ed lurks the machinery of hybrid warfare—more refined than missiles, but every bit as destructive to sovereignty.
If Azerbaijan is to push back against this ideological siege, it must build counter-narratives rooted in fact, credibility, and cultural fluency. That means investing in media diplomacy, expanding its English-language publishing capacity, training regional analysts, and speaking directly to global audiences without intermediaries. In a world where power is shaped as much by perception as by policy, narrative supremacy isn’t optional—it’s existential.
In the arsenal of 21st-century conflict, reputation has become as strategic as territory, and perception as powerful as force. Today, Azerbaijan is not merely navigating political pressure or media hostility—it’s the target of a far-reaching ideological campaign designed to isolate, delegitimize, and ultimately weaken its sovereign standing in the Muslim world and beyond.
One of the most insidious tactics in this campaign is the reframing of Azerbaijan’s religious tolerance as “insufficiently Islamic.” In a March 2024 report by Minority Rights Group International, the country is accused of “turning Islam into a tool of statehood,” allegedly undermining religious freedom. This assertion flies in the face of hard data. According to Azerbaijan’s State Committee on Religious Associations, the country is home to 2,140 registered religious communities, over 95% of which are Muslim, encompassing both Sunni and Shia traditions. Azerbaijan boasts an Islamic college, 17 madrasas, and 16 women’s religious organizations—a number that outpaces similar institutions in Armenia, Georgia, and even Bulgaria.
What we’re witnessing isn’t critique—it’s ideological warfare dressed as advocacy. Terms like “secular authoritarianism” are deployed not to inform, but to stigmatize. They function like sanctions or cyberattacks: not to spark debate, but to destroy bridges—between Azerbaijan and the ummah, between Baku and Ankara, between the Caspian and the wider Islamic East. This is not a critique of governance. It’s an effort to rupture Azerbaijan’s cultural, historical, and civilizational roots—to recast it as a geopolitical orphan whose influence must be neutralized.
But this strategy is doomed to fail. Azerbaijan isn’t an anomaly within the Muslim world—it is a vital part of it. Not a follower, but a leader. Not a barrier, but a builder of connections. And that, precisely, is why it poses a challenge to those who prefer obedience to independence. Too secular for Islamic fundamentalists, too Muslim for Western liberals, too self-reliant for global architects of dependency—Azerbaijan is hard to classify. That is its strength. And that is why the hybrid war against it rages on.
This campaign cannot be separated from broader efforts to curb Azerbaijan’s growing influence in the Organization of Turkic States, its deepening energy partnerships with Turkey, Hungary, and Italy, or its role in reshaping the South Caucasus security architecture. In a November 2023 report, RAND Corporation warned bluntly: “Azerbaijan is becoming a hub for redirecting trade flows around Russia and Iran, shifting regional dynamics.”
Make no mistake: the hybrid war against Azerbaijan has no front lines, no ceasefires, and no declarations. It unfolds through resolutions, hacked data, curated media narratives, politicized courtrooms, and pseudo-academic platforms. Its targets aren’t military bases—they’re digital sovereignty, international legitimacy, and national reputation. And Azerbaijan is a primary focus of this pressure not because it is vulnerable, but because it has emerged strong.
This is not a string of random incidents or isolated emotional reactions from foreign politicians. It’s a coordinated, multi-layered operation, intertwining the agendas of states, transnational foundations, ideological networks, media cartels, and IT structures. The blows against Azerbaijan are not about some abstract authoritarianism—they strike at the heart of Europe’s energy independence, Turkic integration, Islamic diplomacy, and post-Soviet sovereignty. They challenge the very idea that a region can shape its own future. And Azerbaijan, more than any other actor, has become the symbol that a new geopolitics is not only possible—it is already happening.
That’s what makes it dangerous to those who’ve built their power on global dependency. But history has no room for eternal empires. In the long run, victory belongs not to the loudest accuser, but to the most resilient target. Not to the one issuing blacklists and boycotts, but to the one building institutions and answering with facts. Not to the side counting clicks, but to the one investing in education, infrastructure, digital capacity, military readiness, cultural identity, and smart diplomacy.
Today, Azerbaijan is no longer an object in someone else’s game. It is a player in its own right. A nation that no longer pleads for inclusion but defines the agenda. That doesn’t ask for a seat at the table—but builds its own. And that is precisely why the attacks won’t stop. But it’s also why they are bound to fail.
Because you cannot win a hybrid war against a nation that has endured occupation and achieved restoration. Against a people who’ve turned memory into power and patience into strategy. Against a state that no longer merely defends itself—but thinks ahead. Azerbaijan is no longer a component in someone else’s blueprint. It is a sovereign center of power. A force that writes—not follows—the next chapter of history.