Despite near-total government control over the media, RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service has built a high-impact social-media presence in Azerbaijan and a reputation as a leading source of independent news.
With voting under way in Azerbaijan's snap presidential election, there have been reports of irregularities, including busloads of voters traveling from one polling station to the next.
The OSCE has slammed Azerbaijan's snap presidential election for being held in a "restrictive environment" and lacking genuine pluralism with incumbent strongman Ilham Aliyev on the verge of a landslide victory that will hand him a fifth consecutive term as president.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev is expected to win a fifth consecutive term in the country's elections on February 7. International watchdogs have described the vote as neither free nor fair amid reports of voting irregularities and an election boycott by major opposition parties.
Azerbaijan's incumbent strongman, President Ilham Aliyev, appears to be heading for a fifth consecutive term in office, as voting ended in a snap election he announced following Baku's swift and decisive victory over ethnic Armenian separatists in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Azerbaijan on January 24 said it was suspending its cooperation with the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) amid deteriorating relations with Brussels.
Lenders owned by autocratic Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's family have increased their share of the banking sector's assets nearly threefold to 43 percent since 2015, when the government carried out crippling devaluations of the national currency, an RFE/RL investigation has found.
Azerbaijani activist Ahmad Mammadli was summoned on January 23 to the anti-corruption directorate at the Prosecutor-General's Office and questioned in a forgery case that he calls politically motivated.
Azerbaijani officials said on January 23 that three employees of a military plant in the eastern city of Sirvan were hospitalized due to injuries they sustained in an explosion at the industrial facility.
An explosion at a furniture-making facility in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, set off a fire that left at least three people dead. Dozens were reported injured as rescue workers rushed to help survivors out of the rubble.
The number of people killed in an explosion and fire at a furniture workshop in Baku has risen to seven.
Four babies have died in a late-night blaze at a perinatal clinic in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, according to the country's Emergencies Ministry. Dozens of patients, including babies in incubators, were evacuated from the facility, according to news reports.
A fire at the Perinatal Center in Azerbaijan's capital, Baku, killed four infants early on January 9.
A court in Baku on December 29 started preliminary hearings in a case against Azerbaijani activist Baxtiyar Haciyev, who has been in pretrial detention for more than a year.
Azerbaijani authorities have arrested the eighth journalist since November amid what rights activists says is a crackdown on independent media.
Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry has ordered the expulsion of two French diplomats due to "activities incompatible with their diplomatic status."
Relatives of the jailed director of Azerbaijan’s Kanal 13 internet TV channel, Aziz Orucov, said on December 21 that their payment cards, including cards for monthly pension payments, have been blocked.
The leadership of the ruling New Azerbaijan Party (YAP) has nominated Ilham Aliyev for a new presidential term ahead of a February vote in the dynastic, oil-rich Caucasus nation.
The lawyer for investigative journalist Hafiz Babali in Azerbaijan said on December 14 that his client was detained the day before on a charge of illegal foreign-currency smuggling, which the journalist rejects.
Azerbaijan and Armenia exchanged prisoners of war on December 13, with Baku releasing 32 Armenian soldiers captured in 2020-2023, while Yerevan released two Azerbaijani soldiers captured in April 2023 as part of an earlier announced agreement on several goodwill steps.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has signed a decree announcing an early presidential election in the country on February 7.
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