Armenians lament for Azerbaijani-Italian cooperation

The Armenian media threw a fit of hysteria over the fact that Azerbaijani Defense Minister Zakir Hasanov met with Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Italian Republic to the country Luca Di Gianfrancesco. This hysteria was clearly of a controlled nature. Indeed, on August 31, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan held a press conference, during which he said a lot of ridiculous, confusing, mutually exclusive and even false things.

Nikol Vovaevich, trying to justify the supply of weapons to Armenia from France and India, said that Azerbaijan buys weapons from Italy as well. It was a primitive manipulation. Because there is a very obvious difference between the purchase of weapons by the occupying State and by the victim State of the occupation. Moreover, the "revanchists" are reminding themselves more and more loudly in Armenia.

Which, I would like to emphasize, are supported by pro-Armenian politicians of various levels in Russia, France, and the United States. And against this background, we also see the persistent unwillingness of official Yerevan to eliminate the main problem on the way to signing a peace agreement - to amend the Armenian constitution, where there are territorial claims against Azerbaijan.

So, now the Armenian media is implementing an agenda launched "from above". The purpose of this agenda is to "justify" Armenia's purchases of weapons from France and India by the growing military-technical cooperation between Azerbaijan and Italy. And the meeting of the head of the national defense ministry with the Italian ambassador in Baku became a formal "reason" for the launch of this campaign.

The Armenian media and the expert community there retell reports from Azerbaijani publications that some of the 31 planned military events between Azerbaijan and Italy for 2024-2025 have already been implemented between Azerbaijan and Italy. In the neighboring country, they recall that the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry purchased Leonardo C-27J Spartan turboprop military transport aircraft from the Italian company Leonardo last year.

In addition, the Armenian "ishkhans of the pen" indignantly state that in 2021 Baku signed an agreement with Leonardo on the acquisition of a batch of M-346 Master combat training aircraft. After that, the detailing went on. They say that in the United States, this type of aircraft is used by the Coast Guard and Special Operations Command. But, if it has come to this, we will have to remind the Armenian journalists of something else.

For example, the fact that most of our trade relations in the European space are accounted for by Italy, whose trade turnover has exceeded $ 15 billion. Moreover, the Azerbaijani-Italian cooperation in the oil and gas sector is important not only for our countries, but also for the entire European space. Can Armenia boast of something like this? Obviously not.

Meanwhile, on September 1, the Azerbaijani oil company SOCAR began supplying natural gas to Croatia. It is already the tenth country receiving Azerbaijani gas, joining Turkiye, Georgia, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Serbia and Slovenia. All this is highly appreciated in these countries. Serbian Foreign Minister Marko Djuric openly stated that his country has doubled its GDP over the past 10 years and Azerbaijan has provided significant support to Serbia in achieving this result.

Accordingly, trust and respect for our state have grown in each of these countries. In Armenia, the whole process can only be watched with sadness and anger. They calculate how many NATO member countries are already receiving natural gas from Azerbaijan. They shy away from one extreme to the other, from the status of an outpost to the status of an appendage of one center of power or another.

At the same time, Armenia is not interesting to anyone, because there is simply nothing to take from it. Everything she could potentially use to attract attention to herself is already in someone else's hands. Whereas, for example, relations between Baku and Rome are based on strong political ties and the "Joint Declaration on Strategic Partnership between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Italian Republic."