While global events are immediately met with sanctions, the fact that no steps were taken against Armenia during its 30-year occupation is the most obvious example of double standards in the international arena.
elchi reports that President Ilham Aliyev stated this at the opening ceremony of the Islamic Development Bank Group’s 2026 Annual Meetings held in Baku.
Touching upon the existing sanction mechanisms in world politics, the head of state sharply criticized the contradiction between declared pseudo-values and real politics:
“Today we hear about sanctions every day. As soon as something happens, sanctions are immediately imposed. However, no one imposed sanctions on Armenia. If sanctions had been imposed on Armenia in a timely manner for violating international law, occupying the territory of a sovereign country, and committing war crimes, the conflict between the two countries would not have lasted so long.”
President Ilham Aliyev noted that the reason the conflict dragged on for nearly 30 years was the biased position of the mediators. He revealed the true intentions of the forces managing the negotiation process:
“During these 30 years, there were numerous useless, endless, and meaningless rounds of negotiations, the only goal of which was to provide a fake umbrella for the talks. That goal was to keep our lands under Armenian occupation forever. This was the hidden desire of those who had the mandate to achieve peace and the liberation of our territories.”
In his speech, the head of state emphasized that the inaction of the three permanent members of the UN Security Council, who were co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group — France, Russia, and the USA — was not accidental:
“Can you imagine that these giant countries could not force Armenia to liberate Azerbaijani territories? No, of course not. They simply did not want to. They wanted our lands to remain under Armenian occupation, and this was their joint decision.”