Relations between Russia and Azerbaijan are experiencing another aggravation these days. Several previous rounds of mutual disagreements between Moscow and Baku as a whole managed to overcome it without any special consequences for close bilateral ties. However, this time the Azerbaijani side gave free rein to emotions.
After the detention of a group of ethnic Azerbaijanis in Yekaterinburg at the end of last month, the authorities of the Transcaucasian republic decided to cancel all cultural events with the participation of Russia. The Ministry of Culture of the country reported that this was done "taking into account the deliberate and extrajudicial killings and acts of violence committed by Russian law enforcement agencies against Azerbaijanis on the basis of their ethnicity in The Sverdlovsk Region of the Russian Federation, as well as the fact that such cases have recently become systematic." In this regard, "cultural events planned to be held in Azerbaijan by Russian state and private enterprises, including concerts, festivals, performances, exhibitions, are canceled."
This was followed by the cancellation by the Azerbaijani side of the planned inter-parliamentary meeting with Russian partners.
Baku's demarches are accompanied by an unprecedented surge in anti-Russian reports and publications in local media. State media, for example, the AzTV channel, began to accuse law enforcement agencies and even the leadership of the Russian Federation of a "discriminatory policy" in relation not only to immigrants from Azerbaijan, but also the republics of Central Asia.
It is obvious that without a direct go-ahead from the "center", the Azerbaijani media would not have dared to such audacity.…Baku's first demarche after the events in Yekaterinburg was the "red light" it lit in front of Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk, who planned to visit Azerbaijan on a working visit. The Azerbaijani state news agency (AZERTAC) indicated that the government of the republic "does not see any significance in the trip of Overchuk or any other (Russian) official in the current situation."
Earlier, Azerbaijan protested to Russia in connection with the detentions in the administrative center of the Sverdlovsk region. The charge d'affaires of the Russian Federation in Azerbaijan was summoned to the country's Foreign Ministry and expressed a "strong protest" to him in connection with the raids in Yekaterinburg in apartments where people from Azerbaijan live.
During the operation of law enforcement agencies conducted on the morning of June 27 in Yekaterinburg, several people were detained, including members of the Safarov family, natives of Azerbaijani Aghdam. As a result of the actions of the security forces, according to the In Baku, two brothers, Huseyn and Ziyaddin Safarov, were killed, and several people were hospitalized. In total, dozens of people were detained as part of the criminal case.
THE Ministry OF Internal Affairs OF THE Russian Federation and The Investigative Committee of the Sverdlovsk region explained that the detentions are related to a criminal case of murders that occurred between 2001 and 2011. In a joint statement, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and The Investigative Committee said that the detentions were carried out by these two departments with the support of the fighters of the SOBR Rosgvardiya.
The official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, said that Baku had been given appropriate explanations about the events in Yekaterinburg.
The reports of Azerbaijani sources initially contained the peremptory nature of their own description of what happened. Such an informational approach with a clear confrontational orientation could also be observed in December 2024, when a passenger liner carrying out a Baku — Grozny flight crashed in Aktau, Kazakhstan. A few days after the plane crash, Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev named the "culprit" of the incident, without even waiting for the conclusions of the preliminary investigation.
Many Azerbaijani media published a video in which Ramil Safarov, a resident of Yekaterinburg, the son of the detainee Ayaz Safarov, says that FSB officers broke into his apartment early in the morning, "beat him and demanded to confess to the murder."
According to the "parliamentary line", a pick immediately arose with rather harsh statements, and the Azerbaijani side also set a confrontational tone in it.
Milli Majlis DEPUTY Rasim Musabekov called the incident "cruel" and described it as "an operation to expel Azerbaijanis from Russia". He also suggested a "political background" to the actions of Russian law enforcement officers.
"It just needs to be clarified. Is this an initiative of some local organization? That is, local law enforcement agencies believe that relations between Moscow and Baku deteriorated, and that they had long wanted to walk through the Azerbaijani diaspora and took advantage of the opportunity. Or is it an initiative of Moscow, which wants to express its dissatisfaction with Azerbaijan," the Azerbaijani parliamentarian launched into meaningful arguments.
Statements by some other deputies in The buck was even sharper.
Against this background, Russian lawmakers, on the contrary, tried to explain the very unfriendly statements of their Azerbaijani colleagues with an emotional outburst that should simply wait out.
Russia will find ways to maintain friendly relations with Azerbaijan, which many are trying to destroy. This was stated by the first deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs Alexei Chepa in an interview with the publication News.ru .
"It seems to me that this issue will be settled. We need to figure everything out. I am sure that we will find ways to preserve our friendly relations, which sometimes many are trying to destroy and are looking for a reason for this," Chepa said.
Moscow should not react to Baku's demarches, such actions are a "short-term clouding" that should not be answered. This opinion was shared by Viktor Vodolatsky, first deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration and Relations with Compatriots, in an interview with the publication "Rise".
"Such actions are not productive. It makes no sense for us to react to the short-term clouding of the Ministry of Culture of Azerbaijan. We live by the principle: an elephant walks — a pug yaps," said the deputy.
Vodolatsky stressed that the actions of Russian law enforcement officers do not depend on the nationality of violators of the law.:
"Regardless of who they are — Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Russians, Ukrainians — every violator must be brought to justice and severely punished. But for some reason, Azerbaijan has treated this, as well as other moments recently, very eccentrically, biased against everything that is happening in relations between Russia and Azerbaijan."
According to the MP, President Ilham Aliyev and his advisers "chose a position of confrontation with Russia," although "we did not give any reasons."
"For us, all CIS countries are friendly countries. And what is happening now, of course, is puzzling. In order to prevent slipping into a tough confrontation, it is necessary to hold a working meeting at the level of the co-chairs of the Intergovernmental Commission of Russia and Azerbaijan, consider all the issues that are currently at the boiling point, and figure out who is adding fuel to the fire, who is the customer of the situation that would aggravate relations between Azerbaijan and Russia," the Russian parliamentarian suggested.
A confrontational impulse from Baku was not long in coming. Last Monday, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Azerbaijan announced an "operation" at the Sputnik Azerbaijan agency office in the capital of the republic. Later it became known about the detention by Azerbaijani security forces of two Russian journalists — the head of the editorial office of Sputnik Azerbaijan Igor Kartavykh and editor-in-chief Yevgeny Belousov. According to local media, they were charged with "working for the Federal Security Service of Russia." The journalists are allegedly employees of the FSB of the Russian Federation who worked in Sputnik Azerbaijan "undercover".
In response, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the Azerbaijani ambassador to Moscow in connection with the unfriendly actions of Baku and the illegal detention of Russian journalists.
In February, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry announced its intention to stop the work of the Sputnik agency in the republic. The editorial office of the publication reported that no official work bans have been received in Azerbaijan, all this time there has been a constructive dialogue between the working groups of the foreign ministries of the two countries to resolve possible disagreements.
It should be recalled that in February of this year, the Azerbaijani authorities closed the Russian House— a project of Rossotrudnichestvo. The Baku press conducted its own information operation in those days, the essence of which was to label the Russian House in the Azerbaijani capital as a "spy center". Formally, the authorities of the republic explained the closure by the lack of registration of the Russian House. However, initially the causal relationship of such a decision was obvious: Russia's dissatisfaction with the demands put forward by its President Aliyev after the aviation incident in the sky over Grozny.
In May, there was a new spat, this time with the participation of prominent legislators of the two countries. On May 4, Milli Majlis deputy Azer Badamov was detained at Moscow airport and was not allowed to board a flight to Astrakhan, where he was heading as part of an official delegation to participate in events dedicated to the anniversary of the birth of former Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev. The legislator from the ruling Yeni Azerbaijan (New Azerbaijan) party returned to his homeland on the same day. Badamov was banned from entering the Russia without explanation, the Azerbaijani media reported. At the same time, they immediately issued a version about the reason for such a step by the Russian side. It is assumed that he is connected with Badamov's harsh statements addressed to the deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Nikolai Valuev.
Baku's demarche against the "Russian House" is not an innovation in the Azerbaijani arsenal of "punitive diplomacy". But until recently, the authorities of the Transcaucasian republic differed in such steps exclusively in relation to their Western partners, many of whom are already "former" for Azerbaijan. Previously, the offices of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), several UN missions, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) were closed there. The government of the country has also suspended the work of the office of the Azerbaijani service of the BBC in Baku.
It seems that, nevertheless, we are not dealing with a "short-term clouding" of the mind of the Azerbaijani leadership, but with its purposeful policy of gradual but steady distancing from Russia. Over the past five years, counting from the autumn of 2020, when Azerbaijan emerged victorious from the second Karabakh war, there have been obvious periods of rapprochement between Moscow and Baku. Many people call their starting point the Declaration on Allied Cooperation between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Azerbaijan signed by Presidents Vladimir Putin and Ilham Aliyev in the Kremlin on February 22, 2022*.
However, closer to the current stage, the tendency of the consistent withdrawal of the Azerbaijani side from building a real format of strategic partnership with Russia has become increasingly evident. And it's not just that Aliyev has solved the main task for himself to return Karabakh, as a result, he has gained greater freedom of foreign policy maneuver and from now on does not need everything and always looks for Moscow's location in relation to himself. In order to "not stand on ceremony" with Russian partners, the Azerbaijani leader is being pushed mainly by the western direction of replenishment of the republic's state budget (the main export flows of oil and gas from the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea go to European markets, as well as to Israel) and, importantly, his wait-and-see attitude around the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
With periodic outbursts of indignation against his northern neighbor, Ilham Aliyev demonstrates to his "elder brother" in the person of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other leaders in the West that he was concluded in February 2022, two days before the start of a special military operation in In Ukraine, the "alliance" with Russia by and large does not oblige Azerbaijan to anything. They say, as he was an independent player in the region, he remained so. And a short—term "romance" with Moscow is just a situational necessity, but not a strategic choice of Baku.
*According to paragraph 7 of the declaration, the parties "refrain from any actions that, in the opinion of one of the parties, damage the strategic partnership and allied relations of the two states." To this end, they are creating a permanent mechanism for consultations through the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the two countries.