It’s been a notable week for Azerbaijan’s efforts to control both foreign and Azerbaijani narratives about itself. Russian-Israeli-Ukrainian blogger Alexander Lapshin got a three-year prison sentence for traveling to Nagorno Karabakh -- the first such sentence of its kind. And Azerbaijani journalists who tow the government line received some state-financed accommodation, too -- 255 free apartments, complete with high-speed internet connections.
Perhaps it's no surprise that events related to both milestones occurred on the same day, July 20.
The first, the sentencing of travel-blogger Lapshin to three years in prison for allegedly illegally traveling to Karabakh and calling for its independence from Azerbaijan has sparked relatively little international blowback.
Lapshin was extradited to Azerbaijan from Belarus in early 2017 -- the first such foreigner to be so treated for crossing into breakaway Karabakh without first obtaining Azerbaijani permission. Acknowledging "moral" rather than "legal" guilt "before the people of Azerbaijan,"he pled innocent to the charges against him.
Lapshin’s lawyer, Eduard Chernin, who plans an appeal, has raised the possibility that his client could be extradited to one of his three countries of citizenship. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, however, responded that Lapshin’s potential extradition to Russia is “not a Kremlin topic,” RIA Novosti reported.