Najmeddin Huseyn oghlu Sadikov is an Azerbaijani Colonel General who served as the Chief of the General Staff of Azerbaijani Armed Forces and the First Deputy Minister of Defense of Azerbaijan.
16 Facts About Najmeddin Sadikov
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Najmeddin Sadikov was appointed to both positions on 2 November 1993 by President of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev.
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Najmeddin Sadikov had a brother who died in the 1980s.
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Najmeddin Sadikov is married and has three children Sadikov's nephew, Ramil Asgarov, is another senior military official, who has been major general until June 2020.
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Najmeddin Sadikov graduated from the Baku Higher Combined Arms Command School in 1979 and earned the gold medal.
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Najmeddin Sadikov served as a platoon commander, a company commander, a battalion commander and regiment deputy commander in the Soviet Army from 1979 to 1992.
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Najmeddin Sadikov graduated from the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow in 1988, and in 1991 completed the Senior Officer Courses "Vystrel" named after Marshal of the Soviet Union Boris Shaposhnikov.
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Najmeddin Sadikov joined the newly formed Azerbaijani Army on 1 February 1992.
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Najmeddin Sadikov led the corps during the failed Battle of Kalbajar.
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Najmeddin Sadikov was a member of the Commission on National Security Policies which prepares and develops documents on national security concepts, foreign policy strategies and military doctrines of Azerbaijan.
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Najmeddin Sadikov's critics allege that he, despite being ethnically Azerbaijani, does not speak Azerbaijani language because he was born in Dagestan, and therefore all documents on his desk are first translated from Azerbaijani into Russian by special services.
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In early October 2020, Azerbaijani press circles spread rumors on the arrest of Najmeddin Sadikov, who was accused of treason.
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Later, this information was refuted, and the media reported that Najmeddin Sadikov was sidelined at the beginning of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war due to his dissatisfaction with the widespread presence of the Turkish Armed Forces in the administrative level of the Azerbaijani military.
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Najmeddin Sadikov has been accused of having a good relationship with Armenian officials, with many pointing to a photo of Sadikov and Armenian general Mikael Harutyunyan laughing at the meeting of NATO Military Committee for European-Atlantic partnerships in 2006 as a reason to be distrustful of Sadikov.
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Agil Abbas, deputy of the National Assembly of Azerbaijan, believed that Najmeddin Sadikov was placed under house arrest.
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On 28 January 2021, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry confirmed the dismissal of Najmeddin Sadikov, saying that he no longer serves in the Azerbaijani army.