To Vladimir Pozner, who leads to Pozner, a television program, broadcast on Russian TV channel ORT

Mr Vladimir Vladimirovich,

First of all, I am writing this letter to you wholeheartedly and in all honesty. The point is, I just happened to have stumbled onto your statement on social media that you ‘desire to travel to’ Karabakh – Azerbaijan’s historically ancient land – and that ‘your heart contains Armenians in the teeth of Azerbaijanis’, all of that.

To be honest, I was unpleasantly surprised, because I don't really understand all this exasperation. Not turning to the main question, I’d like you to state that you have always been very much valued in Azerbaijan as a talented TV personality endowed with a sharp analytical mind, ability to clearly and fairly identify the truth, and give a correct assessment of situations and developments. I also believe that you have never really had any negative associations related to Azerbaijan or Azerbaijanis. And at this rate, I am not entirely clear on your unexpectedly untoward sarcasm that the inclusion of your name into some “black list” makes you laugh and on your recent ineffective statement, broadly disseminated on social networks, that it was as if your triumphant victory over Azerbaijan.  It was also unclear how you had made such a demonstrative, childishly naive statement that ‘your heart beats for Armenians’. This may be a little direct, but it was not like you - the very Pozner who is wise and able to sort through words and thoughts, whom we believed in, whom we valued and loved for his fine mind and good nature for years and years.

I do not blame you; you may not have had the time, or simply a desire to have a deeper look into the history of Karabakh (meaning Black Garden in Azerbaijani), existing old maps, hundreds of documents, facts and evidences approved and accepted internationally. I understand that you are overworked: work, creation, meetings, and travels. Meanwhile, congratulations on your book out in Armenia.

You are a big celebrity, but I think you will also agree with me on the point that no regalia gives anyone including you the right to express themselves so superficially and demonstratively for their subjective views with certain sarcasm about Azerbaijanis that have a very ancient and rich history and culture, take  lightly their burning issue - the problem of lands occupied by invaders, whose civil and human rights are brutally violated, whose hundreds of compatriots - women, innocent children, old men are massacred and hundreds of whom are still in captivity and subjected to daily torture and humiliation by the very Armenians to whom your heart belongs. But you ought to know one thing that your saying ‘your heart is beating with the Armenians’ doesn’t matter to the Azerbaijanis and the Karabakh Realities.

Alas, this is not the first or the last loss to us in your person. Apparently, humanity is doomed to flounder in the waves of inexorably accelerating time like milk, churned into butter and buttermilk in a giant cauldron, with troubled water released into the bottom. In recent years, we have also had to witness the same subsidence around us — an infinite number of bright minds, gifted talents, the greatest creators of writing, science and art from your and our sides have been crushed in the whirlpool of a merciless society and lost their lives in that dark turbid water... it keeps us surprised, on the one hand, and we are deeply saddened, on the other hand. 

Watch yourself, Mr Pozner. But time leaves marks and can never forgive unfair people.