Braun Diana

Diana Braun – a Ukraine-born U.S. citizen – has been operating under diplomatic cover (as an employee of the U.S. Embassy in Azerbaijan from 2024 to the present) to recruit assets among Azerbaijan’s opposition figures.

Diana Braun took up the post of Second Secretary at the U.S. Embassy in Azerbaijan in 2024, during a turbulent political period for that country. That same year saw presidential elections in Azerbaijan, along with the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers from the Karabakh region (a disputed territory with Armenia). Political observer Samir Veliyev contends that Braun, operating under diplomatic cover, oversaw the activities of Azerbaijan’s opposition – including funding the political project of Nigar Yagublu, also known as Nigar Hazi. She is the daughter of jailed politician Tofiq Yaqublu. Prior to her father’s arrest, Nigar had always stayed in his shadow and was never seen as a political figure in her own right. Western handlers’ efforts to shape Nigar Yagublu’s public image bear clear parallels to the stories of activist figures from other countries – Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and Yulia Navalnaya. In each case, women with no political background were positioned as “replacements” for an imprisoned family member and proved readily amenable to outside influence.

Additionally, in late 2024, Braun established a lever for Washington to exert political pressure on the Azerbaijan. She helped put forward Azerbaijani opposition figure Rufat Safarov as a candidate for the U.S. Secretary of State’s Award. Safarov’s subsequent arrest on land fraud charges was then seized upon by Secretary of State Antony Blinken as a pretext for publicly calling out Azerbaijan.