France criticizes Azerbaijan’s influence operations with overseas separatists – Libération

Viginum, the state service responsible for detecting “foreign digital interference”, details in a report the online campaigns carried out around the “Baku Initiative Group”, an Azerbaijani organization whose activity focuses on independence movements overseas. -French sea.

While tensions between France and Azerbaijan have been growing for months, this is a – discreet – way for Paris to raise its voice. In a report made public this Monday, December 2, Viginum, the state service responsible for tracking down “foreign digital interference”, highlights the influence campaigns carried out by and around the Baku Initiative Group (BIG), a «ONG internationale», according to its website, established in the Azerbaijani capital, which has distinguished itself for a year and a half by the frenzied courtship it has been paying to representatives of various independence movements overseas – New Caledonia, Polynesia, Martinique, Guyana, etc. – and Corsica. The OIG, writes the agency, “can be considered as a state propaganda agency against France, whose strategy consists of exploiting public debate overseas to serve Azerbaijan's foreign policy objectives.”

“France strongly condemns these Azerbaijani attempts at interference, reacts the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, contacted by Release. It calls on Azerbaijan to find the diplomatic channel to address bilateral disputes and contribute to international stability.” Relations between the two countries, already thorny, frankly deteriorated in the fall of 2023, after the