Florian Irminger: “The biggest mistake is replacing Putin’s oil and gas with Aliyev’s oil and gas”

“Azerbaijan is in its worst state since joining the Council of Europe,” says Florian Irminger, an international human rights defender working in the fields of human rights and climate justice. For many years, he has worked on issues related to human rights, civil society, and international institutions in Europe, the UN, Central Asia, and the South Caucasus. He has also closely followed the situation in Azerbaijan. We discuss with Florian Irminger how repression in Azerbaijan has changed over the past 15 years, and how independent media and civil society have been dismantled. He also speaks about the silence of the European Union and the Council of Europe, how energy interests have pushed human rights principles into the background, and how international passivity has strengthened impunity in Azerbaijan. Florian Irminger also says that on April 18, he was denied a visa to visit Azerbaijan. He had planned to come to Baku to observe ongoing court proceedings in the country.