Azerbaijani media reps: Necessary to improve awareness in Ukraine about Azerbaijan

People in Azerbaijan are much more aware of the events in Ukraine than vice versa, and it would be good to change this situation.

This was the main message of the speakers from Azerbaijan - Media Director of Global Media Holding Hamid Hamidov and Director of Report News Agency Fuad Huseynaliyev at the round table “Ukraine-Azerbaijan: strategic partnership in the face of challenges to the global world order,” Report informs.

“We are more interested in what is happening in Ukraine, we know more about the events in Ukraine,” Hamidov said, adding that almost any average citizen of Azerbaijan can say where the theater of military operations in Ukraine is now, where the city of Bakhmut is located, what part of the territory of Ukraine was occupied by Russia, etc.

And, on the contrary, there is no special knowledge about the 30-year-old conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia in Ukraine, there is no great interest on the part of Ukrainians in Azerbaijan. And even with such interest, it is extremely difficult to find something in the Ukrainian media on this topic, says the media director of Global Media Holding.

“The situation changed somewhat during the Karabakh war of 2020. I know that the experience of this war in Ukraine was carefully studied,” Hamidov noted, but adding that this is not enough and he would like more attention from the Ukrainian media to the events in the South Caucasus: “We have a lot in common, we should know each other better.”

In turn, the director of Report News Agency Fuad Huseynaliyev noted that in 2021 the agency he leads signed a cooperation agreement with the major Ukrainian news agency UNIAN. After that, the Ukrainian media gets news about Azerbaijan through UNIAN.

“But I will join the words of Hamid Hamidov, information about Azerbaijan is extremely scarce in Ukraine,” he said.

As a result, Ukrainian journalists who visited Azerbaijan this year were, on the one hand, amazed by Baku, and, on the other hand, were shocked by the complete devastation and destruction in the de-occupied territories.

He noted that this visit made it possible to fill the existing vacuum to a certain extent, more materials about Azerbaijan and attempts to understand and convey the truth about the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict began to appear in the Ukrainian media.

“It would be good to receive information from primary sources, from the Azerbaijani media and experts, and, say, not through the Russian media, from where the news can be presented in a distorted form, often through the prism of the Armenian side,” Huseynaliyev added.

Meanwhile, Azerbaijani media are turning to Ukrainian media for reliable information about the events taking place there, especially since the majority of Azerbaijani society supports Ukraine and wishes it victory and the restoration of its territorial integrity, he said.