While the European Parliament was unable to send a delegation to monitor polling stations as it has in previous years, the chairman of the Russian Federation Council’s foreign affairs committee, Grigory Karasin, told local media the polls were being organized effectively and could even act as a model for Russia’s own presidential election later this year.
“We [observers] will bring some experience from Baku to ourselves,” he said. The head of a delegation from the Georgian parliament also maintained that the voting had taken place without issue, according to Azertag.
Opposition activists in the country have posted unverified clips of altercations between polling station staff and election monitors, and of individuals allegedly casting their ballot multiple times.
In September, Azerbaijan’s armed forces launched a 24-hour lightning war to take control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway region that had been home to around 100,000 ethnic Armenians. Virtually the entire population fled to Armenia in the wake of the assault, despite Baku’s insistence they could continue living there if they accepted being governed as part of the country.
The snap election was called shortly afterward.
Aliyev and his wife, who serves as his vice president, cast their ballots earlier at a polling station in Khankendi, known to its former Armenian population as Stepanakert. The city is now almost entirely uninhabited following the mass exodus.
