The handshake between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan earlier this month sealed their intention to end decades of conflict with a peace treaty. For years, their two countries had fought bitterly for control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a historically Armenian-populated region within Azerbaijan.
The war ended in 2023, with Azerbaijan’s victory and the mass exodus of almost all of the more than 100,000-strong Armenian population.
Another pair of hands joined the bilateral handshake: those of US President Donald Trump, who has been acting as a mediator. He promised that US companies would guarantee the infrastructure and security of a corridor to connect the main part of Azerbaijan with another part of its territory — the autonomous exclave of Nakhichevan — by crossing Armenian territory, for 99 years.
Is Russia’s influence in the former Soviet Union waning?
The US involvement in the peace deal is possibly the most visible sign yet of Russia’s waning influence in parts of the former Soviet Union.
Officially, Russia welcomed the news. “We have consistently supported all the efforts to help achieve this goal that is key to regional security. In this context the US-brokered meeting in Washington of the leaders of the South Caucasus republics deserves a positive assessment,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova. “We hope this step will help advance the peace agenda.”
But other, less official, figures have voiced opinions that might be more realistic reflections of what Moscow really thinks. “This is a terrible humiliation for Russia,” wrote far-right political philosopher Aleksandr Dugin on the Telegram messaging app. “It is a complete defeat, a total disaster for our policy in the South Caucasus.”
For Fariz Ismailzade, an independent Azerbaijani lawmaker, it makes sense to close ranks with the US. “The primary objective of Azerbaijan is to be independent,” he told DW. “That doesn’t mean we want to be cut loose from Russia and be somehow a puppet of the West. Azerbaijan is trying to build new alliances, leveraging the power in the region, for example with countries of Central Asia and Turkey.”
Azerbaijan has had a cooperation agreement with Turkey since 2010. This year, the two countries signed a memorandum to boost mutual military security.
Tense relations since December plane crash
Relations between Russia and Azerbaijan, on the other hand, have been tense since the crash of an Azerbaijani passenger plane that was hit by a Russian anti-aircraft missile as it headed for the Chechen capital Grozny on December 25, 2024. At least 38 people lost their lives.
After some delay, Russian President Vladimir Putin finally contacted President Aliyev, but only to apologize for the fact that the plane was downed in Russian airspace. “Russia has not shown us the necessary respect,” Nariman Aliyev, an independent Azerbaijani political scientist, told DW.
Rusif Huseynov, the founder of the Topchubashov Center think tank in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, said the incident had led to the collapse of an important pillar of the bilateral relationship. Until now, the leaders of the two countries “managed to communicate directly. The personal communication enabled both countries to overcome even the most serious institutional problems,” he said.
“Azerbaijan has always been equidistant with Russia and the Western bloc. As we were financially independent due to our petrodollars, and last but not least due to our security umbrella with Turkey,” he added.
But this year, there has been a series of diplomatic incidents between the two countries. Russian police have arrested people suspected of being Azerbaijani terrorists, while the Azerbaijani security forces have arrested suspected Russian drug traffickers. Recently, Russia reportedly attacked an oil depot belonging to the Azerbaijani state oil company SOCAR in Odesa, Ukraine.
Ukraine war offers ‘window of opportunity’
Lawmaker Ismailzade said the Azerbaijani government had threatened to lift its embargo on arms supplies to Ukraine if Russia continued its attacks on Azerbaijani infrastructure in Ukrainian territory. “We have only supplied $30 million [€26 million] in humanitarian assistance and power generators,” he said.
For Azerbaijan and other countries, he said the war in Ukraine had provided a “window of opportunity” as Russia was “busy.” Thus, there was more scope to boost diplomatic relations with other countries, also “related to the fact that Azerbaijan achieved a victory in Karabakh.” He added that this had “created a lot of diplomatic respect.”
Huseynov of the Topchubashov Center said Azerbaijan had probably been able to persuade Russian troops to leave Nagorno-Karabakh because of the war in Ukraine. Many would not have thought that possible “because of the Western myth, which claims that Russians never leave. But the Azerbaijani side managed to kick them out and it was an important precedent for other countries,” he said, adding that Russian troops were originally supposed to remain stationed in Nagorno-Karabakh until at least the end of 2025.
Dilnoza Ubaydullaeva, a lecturer at the National Security College at Australian National University in Canberra, told DW that since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, other former Soviet states had also changed their tone toward Moscow.
She gave the example of Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, who in October 2022 publicly complained about Putin’s lack of “respect” for Tajikistan and other Central Asian countries that were once part of the Soviet Union. The video of the rant has garnered over 13 million clicks on YouTube.
“Russia was seen as a superpower” which would easily be able to take over Ukraine, said Ubaydullaeva. But this did not happen. “Obviously, the states around the region were able to observe that Russia was not as great as it was pictured in terms of its great power.”
Ubaydullaeva added that international sanctions had isolated Russia and weakened the government’s reputation. As a result of the sanctions, some states, including Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, had become transit countries, exporting goods to Russia that are actually on the sanctions list. But at the same time, many former Soviet states were developing “multi-vector foreign policy,” maintaining contacts with various countries.
“China has quietly advanced in the region. Russia has become, in fact, junior in this relationship,” said Ubaydullaeva. “Though China is normally known for its economic projects, we also see China making statements such as: ‘We will guarantee the sovereignty and security of the states in the region.”
The first China-Central Asia summit was held in Xi’an, China in 2023 and was attended by the leaders of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, as well as China.
Azerbaijani President Aliyev said it was important to keep these developments in perspective. “We were colonized by Russia for a long time. And so, we have post-colonial syndrome,” he said. “Leaders of the post-Soviet countries have this Soviet background. They grew up in the Soviet Union when their capital was Moscow. They have these sentiments for Moscow. For the next generation, that’s not the case. They are waiting in line. Maybe in 10 or 20 years, with the next political generation, this will change.”
This article was originally written in German.
