Rights activists in Azerbaijan say the government’s recent sentencing to prison of an opposition party leader on charges of slander is another sign of how defamation laws are being used against political opponents and civil society activists in the country.

Last month the Baku Appellate Court upheld the five-month prison sentence given to Ali Aliyev, the chairman of the opposition Citizens and Development Party on defamation charges under a lawsuit filed by a border guard.

Ali Aliyev and his lawyer, Javad Javadov, say his imprisonment is a violation of his freedom of expression and retaliation for his political activities.

Border guard Emil Jafarov filed the lawsuit against Ali Aliyev in response to his comments in a YouTube interview in which Aliyev expressed his doubts about Jafarov’s chances of surviving a deadly helicopter crash on November 30 of last year during training flights at the Garaheybat airfield in the Khizi region. Some 14 servicemen died in the crash and two were injured, one of whom was Lieutenant Colonel Emil Jafarov.

Azerbaijan’s Prosecutor General’s Office blamed the helicopter crash on pilot error. However, Ali Aliyev had suggested the possibility Russia was involved, speculating it could have been sabotage. In his interview, Aliyev argued that it was impossible for someone to survive a deadly helicopter crash with no burns and only minor injuries. So he suggested that Jafarov’s presence on the flight was staged to back up the government’s explanation.

Aliyev’s lawyer complained of unfair treatment by the court and said his client was not given the chance to defend himself.

Human rights defender Zafar Ahmadov told VOA that defamation in Azerbaijan has reached unbearable levels, but high-profile slander cases like Aliyev’s are highlighting the issue and leading to more public discussion.

“There is no criminal act here. Of course, he should have been released. It has been proved once again that this is a political order. But in any case, Ali Aliyev, with his arrest, has served a sacred cause, which today has probably given a great impetus to the fight against defamation in the world, including Azerbaijan.”

Debate over criminalizing defamation

Independent lawyers and human rights activists believe that articles criminalizing defamation and insult in the media should be removed from the Criminal Code, which carries a penalty of more than $500 and maximum imprisonment of 3 years.

In addition, Article 323 of the Criminal Code, which deals with the dissemination of defamatory statements against the president of Azerbaijan, carries a punishment of imprisonment for up to five years.

Lawyer Khalid Agaliyev says that the issue of abolishing criminal liability for libel and insult has been on the government’s agenda several times.

“Relevant laws and drafts have been developed, particularly with the support of the OSCE,” he said. “But in the end, the government has not approved them.”

The media legal expert believes that the criminal liability for defamation intimidates the media, journalists, and those who exercise the right to freedom of expression, in the first place, and discourages criticism.

“The abolition of accountability will further encourage people to express themselves freely. Apparently, the government does not see the need for this and is delaying the adoption of the law,” Agaliyev said.

Azerbaijan committed to removing or changing its libel and insult laws upon its accession to the Council of Europe. But it has not yet done so.

Zahid Oruj, a member of the Azerbaijani parliament and chairman of the parliamentary Human Rights Committee, told VOA that not all Council of Europe member states have adopted legislation on defamation.

He said that the Azerbaijani government has been actively working to include the project on defamation to be considered in its legislative system. According to him, under the new law, journalists will not be punished in a criminal court, but they could still face administrative liabilities.

“The Azerbaijani government, especially with collaboration of OSCE and the relevant structures of the Council of Europe, has been actively lobbying, promoting, advocating, holding joint meetings, raising awareness and doing other activities to include this project in our legislative system, especially since 2012. In other words, journalist’s actions would not be treated at the level of criminal law, and sanctions against them would be removed from the relevant law. But the journalists administrative liability would remain,” Oruj said.

In his view, finding consensus on the issue is a challenge.

“In other words, it is not so easy to find a trilateral agreement between the media, relevant government agencies and society, which is necessary for the adoption of such a law.”

Local and international organizations report that defamation charges against citizens, public and political figures, and especially journalists, have increased in Azerbaijan in recent years.

Lawyer Agaliyev says that between 2017 and 2019, journalists were sued 72 times for slander and insult.

Azerbaijan is among 56 countries included in Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report in the “non-free” category. Azerbaijan, along with 15 other countries, had the worst score in the category of political rights and civil liberties.

This story was originated in VOA’s Azerbaijani Service.
…

With Russia’s ground invasion largely stalled and stuttering, a minority view is emerging among some Kremlin watchers that Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s days are numbered.  

“Whatever Putin does, he does not look as if he can survive for long,” tweeted Anders Aslund, a Swedish economist and former economic adviser to the governments of Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Ukraine. 

Aslund believes a major power struggle is already evident inside the Kremlin. Others who hazard that Putin’s position is becoming precarious point to the public opposition to Russia’s war on Ukraine by Arkady Dvorkovich, a veteran Russian government official and a former Russian deputy prime minister. 

Dvorkovich last week told the American magazine Mother Jones, “My thoughts are with Ukrainian civilians,” he said, adding, “Wars are the worst things one might face in life… including this war.”

“Wars do not just kill priceless lives,” Dvorkovich was quoted as saying. “Wars kill hopes and aspirations, freeze or destroy relationships and connections,” he explained.

Other seasoned Kremlin watchers are not yet persuaded Putin is at any immediate risk, saying the opposition is mainly coming from Yeltsin-era oligarchs who have little political sway and are intimidated by the security strongmen around Putin. The strongmen are nicknamed “siloviki” and, like Putin, came into politics from the security, intelligence or military services.

They share Putin’s revanchist aim of reversing the territorial losses suffered when the Soviet Union splintered apart.

“There is a general feeling that, objectively, a split is already happening among the elites: former Yeltsin oligarchs versus Putin’s conservative elites. This isn’t a confrontation or a political struggle; it is simply a case of two camps exhibiting opposing views about how to proceed in the current situation,” according to Tatiana Stanovaya, an independent analyst and non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center, a think tank.

“The former has the economy in their hands and the latter control politics. The oligarchs are intimidated and under pressure, while the conservative elites are on horseback with drawn swords.”

Dvorkovich’s voice has been a very rare one from within Russia’s political upper echelons to express criticism of Putin’s war on Ukraine. And he appears already to have been punished for the dissent. He was immediately labeled a traitor for his remarks by Russian lawmakers. And a few days after he expressed his opposition, he stepped down as chair of the Skolkovo Foundation, a high-tech fund set up to help diversify Russia’s economy and to build a Russian rival to Silicon Valley outside Moscow. 

The Skolkovo Foundation also published a recanting statement from Dvorkovich, in which he condemned Western sanctions on Russia and derided a world order in which “Nazism and the domination of one nation over others is possible,” a reference to the United States. 

Aside from Dvorkovich, no senior Kremlin-associated figure has stepped out of line. On Monday Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, who served as Russian president from 2008 to 2012 and as Putin’s prime minister from 2012 to 2020, became noticeably more bellicose.

Medvedev has presented himself at various times as a modernizer and technocrat and might have been regarded as someone likely to harbor reservations about the invasion. But he has ratcheted up his support for the war and Monday launched veiled threats against Poland in an essay that dubbed “imbecilic” Polish leaders as “vassals” of the United States. He described Poland as the “most evil, vulgar and shrill critic of Russia.”

And he echoed Putin’s oft repeated grievances against the West for what the Russian leader sees as a minimizing by the West’s politicians of Russia’s role in defeating Nazi Germany.  Medvedev accused Warsaw of trying to scrub Soviet “liberators” out of history. 

“In Poland they dream of forgetting about the Second World War. Firstly, about those Soviet soldiers who defeated Fascism and expelled the invaders from Polish cities. The Fascist occupation is openly equated with the Soviet. It is difficult to come up with a more deceitful and disgusting rhetoric, but the Poles succeed,” he wrote.

Only a handful of Russia’s oligarchs and super-wealthy have spoken out against the invasion. Billionaire Mikhail Fridman, founder of the country’s largest private bank Alfa Bank, was the first, calling for an end to the “tragedy” and “bloodshed.” Metals mogul Oleg Deripaska wrote on Telegram earlier this month: “Peace is very important! Negotiations must begin as soon as possible!” And Oleg Tinkov, another billionaire banker, has described the conflict as “unthinkable and unacceptable.” 

Nonetheless, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency has fueled speculation about the prospects of Putin being overthrown as a result of a Kremlin coup. On Facebook, the Chief Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine claimed it had information that a “group of influential people in opposition to Vladimir Putin is being formed among the Russian business and political elite.”

Angry at the personal financial losses of the war they are enduring thanks to Western sanctions and frustrated by the lack of military progress on the ground, “their goal is to remove Putin from power as soon as possible,” the agency claimed. It identified a top Russian spymaster, Alexander Bortnikov, who is one of five key members of Putin’s inner circle, as a potential successor. “It is known that Bortnikov and some other influential members of the Russian elite are considering various options for removing Putin from power. In particular, poisoning, sudden illness, or other ‘accident’ is not excluded,” the agency concluded. 

There have been unverified reports that Bortnikov’s star has been falling in the Kremlin and that Putin may be blaming him partly for the lack of military progress on the ground as the battle plans were likely drafted on the pre-war intelligence Bortnikov was feeding him. But that might also disqualify him as a potential successor for any in the elite who really want Putin out, a Western security official told VOA. 

He said he “can’t see any of the security people around Putin,” men like Bortnikov or Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council, who worked with Putin closely for years in the KGB, turning on him. “If Putin goes down; they go down,” he said.

Other Western intelligence sources VOA spoke with also were skeptical of the Ukrainian coup claim, suggesting it may have been made to sow doubts about loyalty within the top echelons of Putin’s Kremlin. “Bortnikov has been a hawk, remember he has been a loyal intelligence apparatchik and is cut from very much the same Soviet cloth as Putin and has set about with relish suppressing dissent and has even justified Stalin’s Great Purge,” said one Western official.
…

A Russian court found jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny guilty of large-scale fraud on Tuesday, a move likely to see the time that President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic spends in jail extended by years. 

Navalny is already serving a two-and-a-half sentence at a prison camp east of Moscow for parole violations related to charges he says were fabricated to thwart his political ambitions. 

In the latest criminal case against him, which he has also dismissed as politically-motivated, he could have up to 13 years added to that sentence. 

A gaunt Navalny stood besides his lawyers in a room filled with prison security officers as the judge read out the accusations against him. The 45-year-old seemed unfazed, looking down as he flipped through court documents. 

Prosecutors had asked the court to send him to a maximum-security penal colony for 13 years on charges of fraud and contempt of court. A ruling is expected later on Tuesday. 

Navalny was jailed last year when he returned to Russia after receiving medical treatment in Germany following a poison attack with a Soviet-era nerve agent during a visit to Siberia in 2020. Navalny blamed Putin for the attack. 

The Kremlin said it had seen no evidence that Navalny was poisoned and denied any Russian role if he was. 

After the last court hearing into his case on March 15, Navalny struck a typically defiant tone, writing via Instagram: “If the prison term is the price of my human right to say things that need to be said … then they can ask for 113 years. I will not renounce my words or deeds.” 

Russian authorities have cast Navalny and his supporters as subversives determined to destabilize Russia with backing from the West. Many of Navalny’s allies have fled Russia rather than face restrictions or jail at home. 

Navalny’s opposition movement has been labeled “extremist” and shut down, although his supporters continue to express their political stance, including their opposition to Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine, on social media. 
…

The European Union’s top diplomat said Monday that he has ordered the suspension of combat training for soldiers in Mali until he receives guarantees from the government there that the trainees will not be working with Russian mercenaries. 

Rebel Malian troops have launched two military coups in recent years. The junta has postponed elections meant to usher in civilian rule, and the EU is concerned that Mali’s leaders are working with mercenaries from the Wagner Group, which is accused of rights abuses in Africa and the Middle East. 

The 27-nation bloc has been training the Mali armed forces since 2013. It had planned to continue to do so despite the severe instability and political upheaval that has wracked the country since 2012. 

“Clearly, our training mission cannot be implicated, in any way, in activities that could call into question the European Union’s reputation,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters after chairing a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers. 

Borrell said he’s still waiting for guarantees from Mali’s junta, and until then he has ordered the commander in charge of the EU training “to adapt the activities of the mission to the circumstances they are facing.” 

“We should maintain training activities that are not directly related to training Malian troops in military combat,” Borrell said, but he added that the mission would not yet be cancelled. 

France announced last month that it all its troops would leave Mali by the summer amid tensions with the military junta, but Paris said it would maintain a military presence in neighboring West African nations. 

French President Emmanuel Macron has accused Mali’s authorities of neglecting the fight against Islamic extremists. 

More than 107 civilians have been killed in recent months in Mali in attacks by the army and jihadist groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group, Human Rights Watch said in a report last week. 

Mali’s soldiers were responsible for at least 71 of the deaths recorded since December 2021, the international rights organization said. Mali’s army has contested some of the report, while adding that it is investigating a number of the attacks and allegations. 

The army has been accused of abuses against civilians in southwest and central Mali as soldiers try to stem violence from jihadist fighters who have been staging attacks for nearly a decade. 
…

As the Ukraine crisis continues, the West is rethinking its dependence on Russian energy, analysts say. 

According to Russian thinking, Europe’s energy dependence on Moscow would prevent it from interfering with Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Yet on February 22, two days before the invasion, Germany halted the $11 billion Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea gas pipeline project designed to double the flow of Russian gas to Germany. 

Large oil companies have announced that they would exit the Russian market, with BP leaving on February 27, Exxon on March 1, and Shell on March 8.   

As restricting energy trading with Russia becomes popular in the United States and Europe, according to CNN, Moscow faces challenges in shipping its oil and gas to alternative markets such as China and India.  

Analysts told VOA that the European Union’s transition to renewable energy would continue to offset Russia’s influence over European energy in the short term, and that the U.S. would increase supply from domestic producers and perhaps also expand on supply from less friendly foreign sources.  

Europe and America  

Russia is the world’s third-largest oil producer behind the United States and Saudi Arabia, and its gas and oil account for about 40% and 25% of the imports respectively by the 27-member EU, according to the International Energy Agency.                                  

Europe needs to speed up the promotion of clean energy technology and decrease its dependence on Russian oil, coal and gas, said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “We simply cannot rely on a supplier who explicitly threatens us,” she said March 8, as the European Commission unveiled the REPowerEU project, a road map for ending the EU’s reliance on Russian natural gas. The plan also features a key role for renewable energy.  

Yet experts note that building renewable energy infrastructure takes time, and European countries such as Italy and Germany also rely heavily on imported natural gas to transition from fossil fuels to wind, solar and other clean energy. 

Henry Lee, director of the Environment and Natural Resources Program at Harvard University, told VOA Mandarin that while reducing reliance on Russian gas was consistent with EU’s long-term goals, in the short term, people in Europe would feel the pain.  

“If Europe cuts off Russian gas and runs its liquefied natural gas stations at close to 100% of capacity, … they would still face a shortage in the 15-20% range next winter,” he said, even if the EU used all the natural gas now in storage and reduced consumption by 15%. 

“In the longer run, three to five years, the substitution options will be greater,” Lee added.  

Duncan Wood, interim director of the Global Europe Program at the Wilson Center, a Washington-based think tank, argued that Russia’s political influence would significantly decrease as the EU forges ahead with its carbon-reduction plan. 

“In the long term, the energy transition will completely negate the power that Russia has over European energy, and Putin is painfully aware of that. Nord Stream 2 was always going to be the peak of Russian energy power over Europe, but Putin has hastened the decline of that power by his actions in Ukraine,” Wood told VOA Mandarin.  

The U.S., on the other hand, is much less dependent on Russian energy, with about 3% of its oil imports from Russia and no imports of its natural gas.  

“The U.S. has plenty of gas, so prices may go up slightly, but it is in a far better situation than Europe,” said Harvard’s Lee. Natural gas prices have not dramatically fluctuated since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. 

Lee pointed out, however, that oil is a globally traded commodity, “so the U.S. would face the same oil price increases experienced in Europe.”  

Prior to its invasion of Ukraine, Russia was exporting about 5 million barrels daily, according to the IEA, of which 4.3 million were going to Europe and the U.S. Russia was not among the top 10 crude oil suppliers to the U.S. in 2020, according to EIA.

High U.S. energy costs can be addressed by increasing the supply, said Ehud Ronn, a finance professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “That increase can come from potentially friendly, and perhaps less friendly, foreign sources and from domestic producers,” he told VOA Mandarin.  

China and India 

While Europe relies heavily on Russia for energy supplies, Russia in turn depends on fossil fuel exports, which account for more than two-fifths of Russian government revenue. 

Being abandoned by the West will force Russia to seek new partners, and China is a possibility. Before the Ukraine crisis, China was one of Russia’s largest export markets for oil, gas and coal. China absorbed 20% of Russia’s oil, according to the IEA and 25% of Russia’s coal output, according to EIA. Russia exported 16.5 billion cubic meters of gas to China in 2021, and the two nations signed oil and gas deals worth an estimated $117.5 billion in early February, according to Al-Jazeera.  

Ana Maria Jaller-Makarewicz, an energy analyst at the U.S.-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, told VOA Mandarin that while Russia was looking to strengthen its commercial tie-ups to countries in the East, “the continuation of that relationship also depends on the sanctions measures being imposed and how the crisis evolves.”  

The Wall Street Journal reported that Russia is now offering to export oil to India and China at prices 20% below global oil benchmark prices. 

Yet it remains to be seen how the parties will get around the U.S. financial sanctions to get the deals done. Logistics is also a problem because Russia currently does not have enough infrastructure to move energy easily to India and China, said Lauri Myllyvirta, a lead analyst at the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air.  

“In the case of gas, Russia quite simply doesn’t have the physical infrastructure to export anywhere else, as the gas comes to Europe by pipeline,” he told VOA Mandarin. “Similarly, most oil is shipped from ports on the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea. There is limited scope to divert these to the Pacific due to long transport distances and the fact that refineries in those markets aren’t configured to process Russian crudes.” 

 
…