Foreign intelligence warns of dangers of azerbaijan’s “Western Azerbaijan” discourse
The discourses of “Western Azerbaijan” and the “return of Western Azerbaijanis,” promoted by Azerbaijan at the state level, are factors that significantly and negatively impact peacebuilding.
This is noted in the “Armenia-Azerbaijan” section of the 2026 report on Armenia’s external risks, published by the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Republic of Armenia.
Following the Declaration of August 8, Azerbaijan has not only failed to reduce said propaganda but has significantly intensified it.
In 2026, one of the tasks of the RA Foreign Intelligence Service will be to continuously assess the purpose behind Azerbaijan’s state-level promotion of the “return of Western Azerbaijanis” theme. Specifically, efforts will be made to determine whether this discourse is evolving into a new ideology or if it is aimed at countering the topic of the return of the Armenians of Artsakh.
The report also mentions the fact of the continuous increase in Azerbaijan’s military expenditures. This growth exceeds the increase in spending for other sectors and is often carried out at the expense of those very sectors.
According to the report, hybrid threats conditioned by the 2026 elections are expected to become more comprehensive.
Hybrid operations conducted against Armenia, per the report, pursue several objectives: to devalue the possibility of establishing peace, to render its achievements meaningless, to disrupt the positive atmosphere, and to manipulate the sensitivities of citizens displaced from Artsakh.
The Service predicts that in 2026, hybrid operations aimed at influencing the “TRIPP Route” project will also significantly intensify. This is especially relevant as regional and extra-regional actors targeting the program have already been carrying out somewhat overlapping actions since the second half of 2025.