Earlier this month Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that Ukraine will secure alternative gas imports with some of these supplies coming from Azerbaijan. ‘During this difficult situation, Ukraine should be ready to find gas worth $2 billion. We understand how to purchase it and have defined certain tranches. Norway provides a grant of $100 million and will allocate another tranche in January. Several other countries are providing corresponding grants, and agreements with our banks have been reached on funding sources,’ Zelenskyy said.
In addition to Azerbaijan and Norway, two major energy suppliers who have taken over supplying energy to Europe after Russia lost the market following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Energy Minister Svitlana Grynchuk finalised arrangements with U.S. energy companies. The US will supply LNG to Ukraine through the Polish terminal. US President Donald Trump seeks to replace Russian LNG supplies to Europe with US LNG.
The flow of Azerbaijani energy to Ukraine began earlier following the ending in December 2024 of the five-year Russian-Ukrainian gas transit agreement. Kyiv refused to renew the transit of Russian gas across its territory to Europe which had taken place since the 1970s.
On July 13, 2025, Azerbaijan and Ukraine signed a sweeping cooperation agreement spanning energy, trade, culture, transport, education, and science. Then, Ukraine offered Azerbaijan its gas storage facilities in western Ukraine and gas pipelines to increase its supplies to Europe. SOCAR Energy Ukraine and Naftohaz Ukrayiny, the two countries state energy companies, signed an agreement whereby Azerbaijan would become an important gas supplier via the Trans-Balkan pipeline through Bulgaria and Romania.
Ukraine began importing Azerbaijani gas on July 28. Since then, Russia has twice attacked the Orlivka interconnector and gas monitoring stations and SOCAR facilities near Odesa on August 7 and 17 with Iranian Shahed drones.
Since defeating Armenia in the 2020 Second Karabakh War and Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion Azerbaijan signed a strategic partnership with Türkiye, expanded its cooperation with the Organisation of Turkic States (OTS) and trod a difficult balancing act with Russia, Iran and the West.
In December 2024, when Russia shot down an Azerbaijani civilian airliner, Baku’s relations with Russia dramatically deteriorated. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan’s relations with Ukraine, the OTC and the US developed culminating in the US facilitating the signing of a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the White House in August.
Azerbaijan has provided substantial humanitarian aid, including multiple shipments of electrical equipment, generators, transformers, and cables, to help Ukraine repair its energy system following Russian attacks on utilities. As of late 2025, this aid to the energy sector alone had reached approximately $12 million, or about a quarter of total humanitarian support.
Besides the supply of gas, Azerbaijan and Armenia have also discussed the potential for Azerbaijani oil supplies to Ukrainian refineries and its transit to other European countries through Ukrainian territory using Ukrainian underground gas storage facilities for Azerbaijani gas.
In addition, both countries are exploring deeper cooperation, particularly in green energy, including opportunities in pumped storage power plants, renewable energy, and hydrogen development.
While the initial volumes of gas are described as small (around 2-3 million cubic meters per day), the deal is a major symbolic and strategic achievement, opening the door for long-term cooperation and providing access to Greek and Turkish LNG terminals for future imports. Negotiations are underway to continue and potentially expand these supplies throughout 2025 and beyond.
SOCAR Energy Ukraine has maintained a significant presence in Ukraine since 2008, focusing on the wholesale and retail sale of petroleum products, natural gas, and aviation fuel. As of December 2023, SOCAR Energy Ukraine had a nationwide network of 56 fuel stations.
A major factor bringing Ukraine and Azerbaijan together is their similar histories since the disintegration of the USSR. Azerbaijan was attacked and defeated in the First Karabakh War and a fifth of its territory was occupied by Armenia from 1992-2020. Although both sides committed war crimes, the greatest number were committed by Armenia which expelled three quarters of a million Azerbaijan’s from Armenia itself and occupied territories.
Russia assisted Armenia militarily in the late Soviet Union and Russia in the early 1990s. This brought Azerbaijan and Ukraine together with Georgia and Moldova in the 1990s in the pro-Western GUAM regional grouping.
Not surprisingly, Azerbaijan has always remained a staunch supporter of the sanctity of the territorial integrity of states and state sovereignty. It took two military defeats in 2020 and 2023 and years of diplomacy before Armenia finally accepted that its border with Azerbaijan should be based not on ‘historic Armenia’ but on the former Soviet republican boundaries.
Ukraine’s territorial integrity has been threatened by Russia since the first day of the post-Soviet era, with Russians of all political persuasions demanding the ‘return’ of Crimea and the port of Sevastopol. Russan nationalist dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vladimir Putin from the early 1990s and other Russian imperial nationalists have also been laying claim to allegedly ‘Russian historical lands’ in Ukraine (i.e., the so-called ‘New Russia’ in its southeast).
Of the former Soviet republics only Armenia and Belarus backed Russia’s annexation of Crimea during votes at the United Nations. Azerbaijan, like other members of the Organisation of Turkic States (Türkiye, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan) refused to do so.
What Azerbaijan went through in the late 1980s-early 1990s, Ukraine has experienced since 2014 in two Russian invasions. Armenia and Iran ridiculed the idea of a separate Azerbaijani nation by describing them as either ‘Turks’ or historically part of Iran. Russia had difficulty accepting Ukraine as an independent state from the moment the USSR disintegrated, and its full-scale war is seeking to destroy Ukrainian identity.
Azerbaijan’s post-Soviet transition is a success story: recovery of its territorial integrity, leading driver of Turkic unity in the OTS, playing a leading role in the Non-Aligned Movement, rise as a major energy power and alternative to Russia oil and gas supplier to Europe. The Armenian-Azerbaijan conflict is history, and Russia and Iran can no longer treat Azerbaijan with the contempt they once both did.
Ukraine is experiencing the existential struggle that Azerbaijan felt two decades ago. During this struggle, Ukraine is finding out who are its allies are (EU, UK, Norway, Canada, Azerbaijan and other OTS members) and which states are seeking to destroy it (Russia, China, Iran, North Korea).
Strategic partnerships are built on common interests which grounded in history and current realities for Azerbaijan and Ukraine.
Taras Kuzio is a professor of political science at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy.
