Russia & CIS

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has offered condolences to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi over two bomb blasts which struck Coptic churches in Egypt on Sunday.

Prime Minister of the State of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu has sent a congratulatory letter to President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, Trend reports.

President of the Republic of Finland Sauli Niinisto has sent a congratulatory letter to President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev.

A delegation led by President of SOCAR Rovnaq Abdullayev met with Iran's oil minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh.

"Regrettably, the situation in the international arena has become more tense ushering a new phase."

Astronomers have detected an atmosphere around the super Earth-like planet GJ 1132b, a discovery which could help pave the way to finding life outside our solar system.

A Chinese delegation headed by director of the Office for International Military Cooperation of the Central Military Commission, Rear-Admiral Guan Yuefei has held meetings at the Ministry of Defense and the Naval Forces of Azerbaijan.

Yesterday’s US airstrikes on the Al Shayrat airfield near Homs seems to have been calculated to allow the Trump administration to appear to be acting decisively without necessarily getting bogged down in a conflict or creating a serious confrontation with Russia. To this end, the Pentagon warned Russian authorities about the strikes ahead of time and Russia did not take any steps to activate its air defenses in Syria. At the same time, by warning Russia, the U.S. government ensured that the strike would have very little effect on Syrian military capabilities. Damage reports indicate that the aircraft that were destroyed at the air base were under repair. Most likely, Russian officials warned the Syrian government that the attacks were coming and any valuable aircraft at the base had time to depart prior to the strikes.

As Vladimir Frolov highlighted just yesterday, the use of chemical weapons by Syrian government forces has placed Russia in a difficult position. Russian efforts to deny Syrian government culpability in the attacks have strained credulity. At the same time, Russian leaders clearly felt that they could not hang Assad out to dry. Assad’s goal may well have been to scuttle any chances for peace negotiations to proceed, in order to force his somewhat reluctant Russian ally to agree to an offensive that would culminate in the elimination of rebel forces from their area of control around Idlib. Russia is thus put in a bind, as it can neither give up on Assad nor fully control him.

In this situation, the U.S. airstrikes may help Moscow out of its difficult situation. Russian leaders can now turn the focus away from the chemical weapons attack itself and toward the U.S. airstrikes as a violation of Syrian sovereignty. At the same time, Assad has been put on notice that the U.S. is not going to stand idly by if he persists in using chemical weapons, which may make him more reluctant to take that risk again, eliminating that method of putting pressure on Russia from his toolkit.

All in all, Russia is unlikely to take steps in response to the airstrikes beyond the usual Foreign Ministry protestations, as long as the strikes are a one time demonstrative act, rather than the start of a more sustained U.S. campaign against the Assad regime in Syria. If the United States continues to attack Syrian government forces, on the other hand, that will place Russia in a difficult position, where it has to choose between abandoning its ally and risking a serious military confrontation with the United States. How Vladimir Putin would choose to act in this circumstance is very much unclear. The consequences of forcing Russia into this choice could be very risky.

Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that the US attack on Syria was an act of aggression against a sovereign state. The US missile attack on Syria was strongly condemned in Iran. Turkey, however, which the US used to call its staunch ally, announced support for the missile attack on the Syrian airbase

The Caspian Flotilla of the Russian Navy kicked off tactical exercises in Russia's Southern Military District. About 20 ships and support vessels take part in the naval maneuvers. Naturally, the exercises have not remained unnoticed. Many in Russia and abroad were expecting the Caspian Flotilla to attack targets in Syria again

In mid-March, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a meeting with the government. One may say that the meeting was somewhat enigmatic. The Kremlin press service reported that "the main topic of the meeting will be the improvement of intergovernmental fiscal relations." Yet, the published transcript of the meeting ends abruptly

For many in the west, Russia has always been a pariah, the danger from the East, enshrined in many popular sayings about freezing easterly winds and frosts, enshrined today in political diatribes and sheer, barefaced lies in the media as a powerful "them" is created to justify the "us": NATO.

The Republic of Azerbaijan once again underlines that it shall never reconcile with the occupation of its territories, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry told Trend on April 1.

The appeal of the Russian Ministry of Justice to the country’s Supreme Court regarding the All-Russian Azerbaijani Congress is unlikely to be of a political nature, Nikita Isaev, leader of the New Russia public and political movement, told Trend Apr. 1.

The current account deficit of Azerbaijan's balance of payments amounted to $1.36 billion in 2016, said the balance of payments of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA).

Tens of thousands of Australians were stranded by floodwaters on Saturday after the remnants of a powerful cyclone swept along the country's east coast, cutting roads, destroying bridges and killing two people, Reuters reported.

Participation of Russian singer Julia Samoilova in "Eurovision" in Kyiv is impossible even with the threat of a boycott of the contest.

Saturday is election silence day in Armenia. Any campaigning by the political forces running for parliament in the country is banned from this day on until the end of voting, on Sunday at 8pm.

Relationship between Azerbaijan and China has reached a high level of political dialogue and active economic cooperation, Deputy Head of the Foreign Relations Department of the Presidential Administration of Azerbaijan Arastu Habibbayli said in an interview with the Xinhua News Agency.

Ukraine will not send observers to the parliamentary election in Armenia on April 2.