France Launched Azerbaijan's Satellites, Used Against Armenia
France launched Azerbaijan's satellites. Not CubeSats. Billion-dollar ones, used against Armenia.
Pashinyan traveled to an international space summit in Paris, despite Armenia having only a one-kilogram CubeSat launched years earlier. The hosts read the trip as a pretense for a foreign policy meeting with Emmanuel Macron. But Hovik seizes the space theme to deliver an uncomfortable reminder about French cooperation in orbit.
France, he notes, played a major role in launching Azerbaijan’s space program, including its first satellite Azerspace-1 and AzerSky, along with ground stations that France designed, launched, and maintained. These are not CubeSats. They are multi-million-dollar satellites with propulsion systems that hold their orbit, and Hovik says they were used against Armenia in Azerbaijan’s wars over the last five years. So while Macron plays the role of friend and adviser to Pashinyan, French technology helps give Ilham Aliyev’s military an edge from space.
The moment ties into the episode’s larger skepticism about Pashinyan’s foreign policy theater. Asbed reads the official Macron meeting readout, strategic partnership, economic diversification, infrastructure, and only then space, and concludes it was a foreign policy visit dressed as a space summit. Hovik’s satellite history adds a hard edge to that read: the same partner Yerevan courts in Paris helps equip the adversary that seized territory in the 44-Day War and after. It is a caution against mistaking warm optics for strategic alignment in the South Caucasus.
Transcript
Hovik Manucharyan: Well, as an Armenian, I have to dutifully remind our listeners and viewers about French cooperation in space, because France played a major role in launching Azerbaijan's space program. Azerbaijan's first satellite Azerspace-1 Azersky I believe many other sort of satellites and ground stations were developed, designed, launched and also maintained by France until maybe they had a falling out but I still don't know if they're not actively cooperating and guess what those are not CubeSats, those are billion dollar, multi-billion dollar satellites that don't just fall out of the sky, that actually have a propulsion system and are able to maintain orbit and were used against Armenia in various wars that Azerbaijan had over the last five years. So how about that for cooperation, Asbed?
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah, yeah, but like I said, from the readout, you can tell that this was really more of a foreign policy visit than some kind of a
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Asbed Bedrossian: space summit thing, right?