The deterioration in Azerbaijan’s relations with Russia has led to a deep crisis in relations between the two countries that is unprecedented since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. This article explores the multifaceted and deep roots of a crisis that came to the forefront with Russia’s shooting down of Azerbaijan Airline Flight 8243 in December 2024 and recent mass arrests and killings of Azerbaijanis in Russia.
The Azerbaijani-Russian crisis needs to be understood within five interrelated contexts.
Why Is Azerbaijan Angry with Russia?
The first is that we should not be surprised at Russia’s dismal treatment of its neighbors. Democratic and imperialistic Russians have both viewed the former Soviet space, Eurasia, as Russia’s exclusive sphere of influence, where the Kremlin does not tolerate UN peacekeepers, outside powers, NATO membership, or EU membership. As Putin recently said, ’There’s an old rule that wherever a Russian soldier sets foot, that’s ours.’
The second is that Russian leaders do not view their neighbors, who, together with Russia, constituted the USSR, as fully sovereign states. The roots of the Azerbaijani-Russian crisis lie in Baku’s insistence that Moscow treat it as an equal and not as a subordinate. Vasif Huseynov wrote that Azerbaijan was ’no longer willing to tolerate Russia’s perceived arrogance and imperial tone.’
The third is that, as I have written in The National Interest, only Russia and Armenia refused to abide by the December 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration, where post-Soviet era republican boundaries became international borders. Armenia’s irredentism towards Azerbaijan came to an end in 2020, when it was defeated in the Second Karabakh War, and in 2023, when it lost Karabakh.
The fourth is that Moscow has lost its main budgetary revenue after Europe ended the purchase of Russian energy following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Azerbaijan is one of several countries, including Norway and the US, that have stepped in to supply Europe with energy.
Further, Kyiv and Baku signed a vast number of agreements, including Ukraine offering its ample gas storage, ironically built during the Soviet era, in Western Ukraine for the storage of Azerbaijani gas to be supplied to Europe. Ukraine’s infrastructure could be used for Azerbaijani gas transported to Europe through the South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) and the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP).
The last is that Russia’s decline as a great power is being exacerbated by its war against Ukraine. Russia did not have the resources to come to the rescue of Armenia during its war with Azerbaijan in 2020 and 2023, to prevent the overthrow of the Bashar al-Assad regime last year, or Iran during Israeli attacks. Russia was once viewed as Armenia’s primary defence against Turkey, but is now seen as a threat. Pro-Russian leaders, led by Armenian-Russian oligarch Samvel Karapetian, have been arrested for planning a coup d’état in September. Karapetian and previously Armenian-Russian oligarch Ruben Vardanyan failed in the tasks allocated to them by the Kremlin; Vardanyan is on trial in Azerbaijan for separatist and terrorist charges.
Why Is Russia Losing Influence in the Caucasus Region?
Armenia’s normalization of relations and reopening of borders with Turkey, as well as a peace treaty with Azerbaijan, will cement the increase in Turkish influence and reduction in Russian influence in the South Caucasus. Armenia has suspended its membership of the CSTO, and in seeking EU membership, Yerevan is signalling its intention to withdraw from the Eurasian Economic Union (no country can be in two customs unions).
The shooting down of the Azerbaijani plane in December of last year could have been resolved amicably. Putin sent a half-hearted apology but, typically, refused to launch an investigation, let alone offer compensation. The first missile missed, but the second struck the plane, killing 38 passengers.
Three months later, Azerbaijan closed the Russian Information and Cultural Center (Russia House) in Baku, where Rossotrudinchestvo (the Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States Affairs, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation of the Russian Federation) had its headquarters. In that same month, not coincidentally, Azerbaijani media suffered a major cyber-attack that was traced to Russia. The Ministry of Culture has replaced Russian performers with Azerbaijani singers in this month’s four-day Dream Fest 2025 festival.
In February, Russian State Duma deputy Nikolai Valuev was refused entry into Azerbaijan after describing Azerbaijanis living in Russia as tied to organized crime. Four months later, Member of Parliament Azer Badamov was denied entry into Russia to attend the 102nd anniversary of the birth of Heydar Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s second president, after he was accused of making ’anti-Russian’ statements and being “Russophobic.”
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev did not attend the commemoration of the end of the Great Patriotic War on May 9. This was a major affront to Putin, as this year marked the 80th anniversary of the war’s end. Seven of the fourteen non-Russian post-Soviet states (Belarus, Armenia, and five Central Asian countries) attended.
The closure of the “Russia House” was followed by the closure of Sputnik’s Baku office. Although Sputnik’s registration had been downgraded in February to only one accredited journalist, it had continued to operate in Azerbaijan illegally. Azerbaijani state TV, in an unprecedented manner, condemned Russia’s indifference to the plane’s victims.
Well-known Russian state TV firebrand Vladimir Solovyov responded in his typical fashion by threatening Azerbaijan’s trade with Russia, accusing Azerbaijanis of being ’Nazis’ and threatening to launch an SMO. An Azerbaijani TV reporter stated “This is not 1937. We are independent!”
Russia Attempts to Destabilize Azerbaijan
Russia increased its bellicosity by using rhetoric that it continues to use against Ukraine, and which is reflective of its disrespect for the sovereignty of its post-Soviet neighbors. Sergey Mardan, another Russian State TV firebrand, described, in echoes of Putin’s frequent accusations against Ukraine, Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijani nation as having been artificially created in the USSR.
The closure of Sputnik and the detention of its “journalists” led to their denunciation by Azerbaijan as Russian intelligence agents. Igor Kartavykh and Yevgeny Belousov, the Sputnik Azerbaijani Director and Editor-in-Chief, were accused of ties to the FSB and their predecessor, Vitaly Denisov, who had ties to the GRU (Russian military intelligence). Denisov had been expelled from Azerbaijan and Moldova. Kartavykh and Belousov have been charged with fraud, illegal entrepreneurship, and money laundering.
In an appeal addressed to the international community on July 12, the Press Council of Azerbaijan explained that the Sputnik office in Baku was, in fact, a Russian intelligence operation that collaborated with the FSB. Sputnik, it stated, was part of Russia’s information warfare to shape public opinion and destabilize regimes the Kremlin did not like.
As the Press Council wrote, Sputnik is “part of a larger hybrid strategy aimed at destabilizing the situation in sovereign states.” 32 countries ban Sputnik, while the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, and EuvsDisinfo, a think tank monitoring Russian disinformation, have either condemned in resolutions or critically analyzed Sputnik. Russia’s Union of Journalists defends “suspected spies” whilst at the same time not defending “independent journalists who are at real risk in their own country. Sputnik Azerbaijan was a branch of the Russian FSB.”
Taking their address further, the Press Council pointed out the hypocrisy of Russia’s Union of Journalists complaining about press freedom in Azerbaijan, given that it is based in a country with one of the worst global records on media freedom. The Russian Union of Journalists ignores the widespread persecution, incarceration, censorship, and killing of journalists and the “systemic and deep-rooted trend towards suppressing freedom of speech in the country.”
The crisis again deepened with the arrest this month of fifty Azerbaijanis in Yekaterinburg and the death from torture at the hands of Russia’s police of two brothers, Ziyaddin and Safarov Huseyn. Again, Russia’s response was a lie, with a claim that one of them died from a heart attack while incarcerated, when the bodies showed extensive evidence of them having been beaten to death. The Azerbaijani Prosecutor’s Office described their deaths as the “torture and brutal killing of Azerbaijani citizens.” Azerbaijani officials and the public viewed their murder as ethically driven extrajudicial killings.
Six members of two organized crime gangs from Russia, with links to Sputnik and Russian intelligence, were detained and accused of cybercrimes and the smuggling of narcotics from Iran. They included Anton Drachev, Dmitry Bezugly, Valery Dulov, Alexei Vasilchenko, Sergei Sofronov, and Igor Zabolotskikh.
Typically, Russia again refused to let up and dial back the crisis. The head of the Azerbaijan-Ural diaspora, Shahin Shikhlinski, was arrested last month, followed by Kamal Safarov and Aziz Abasov, on trumped-up charges of links to organized crime. Vasif Suleymanov was also brutally detained and accused of being the head of an organized crime gang.
The crisis is set to deepen. On December 19, Aliyev announced that Azerbaijan would take Russia to international courts over the shooting down of its airliner. Two days later, one of Russia’s nightly mass attacks on Kyiv narrowly missed the Azerbaijani Embassy building.
The Kremlin’s full-scale and global war against Ukraine and the West is leading to the rapid decline of Russia’s influence over Eurasia. The unprecedented and profound crisis in Azerbaijani-Russian relations should be understood as one aspect of Russia’s decline as a great power and its eclipse by China’s rising power.
Taras Kuzio is a professor of political science at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy.
