The Kremlin is deliberately trying to escalate tensions with official Baku by creating new mechanisms of threats. However, Russia no longer has any leverage over Azerbaijan… Azerbaijan has unequivocally succeeded in distancing itself from both Russia’s control and sphere of influence to an unreachable extent for the Kremlin, making it impossible to use threatening rhetoric towards official Baku.
Azerbaijani-Russian relations are complex in nature. There are even signs of a serious deterioration in relations between the two countries in recent times. Yet, until the incident involving an AZAL passenger plane being shot down by a Pantsir missile system in Russian airspace, relations between the two countries were considered to be in a phase of dynamic development. Moreover, in 2022, Azerbaijan and Russia signed a document on allied cooperation. This created the impression that no serious issues would arise between Azerbaijan and Russia in the near future.
However, recent events have shown that for the Kremlin, such agreements hold little significance. Even if they do exist, the Kremlin views such treaties solely through the lens of its imperial ambitions. In particular, Russia prefers to align its partners with its own geopolitical interests. As a result, Russia has virtually no real allies or partners. The Kremlin is remarkably effective at alienating all the countries it maintains relations with.
It is interesting to note that developments related to Azerbaijan are unfolding according to this very pattern. The Kremlin cannot accept the fact that official Baku is demanding an apology and compensation for the downing of its passenger plane in Russian airspace. However, this is a well-established international legal norm in the civilized world. Yet, since the Kremlin remains distant from civilized norms, it refuses to acknowledge this principle and seeks to evade political responsibility for its military crime by coming up with numerous, often absurd, justifications. Consequently, it finds itself facing both the principled stance of official Baku and its legitimate accusations.
In response, rather than engaging in political and diplomatic dialogue with official Baku, the Kremlin prefers to launch a pressure campaign against Azerbaijan. Russian media, as well as Kremlin-affiliated political circles, including certain State Duma deputies, openly accuse Azerbaijan of completely absurd and illogical claims. Additionally, in recent times, it has become undeniable that Kremlin-aligned political circles have begun to adopt a rhetoric of threats against Azerbaijan. This suggests that the Kremlin has effectively disregarded the previously signed agreement on allied cooperation, making further deterioration of Azerbaijani-Russian relations a very real possibility.
The issue is that Russian Telegram channels directly controlled by the Kremlin, including “Nezygar,” claim that a special plan to implement pressure mechanisms against Azerbaijan is being discussed in Russia’s Security Council. According to these claims, the Kremlin is preparing to exert pressure on Azerbaijan through several key factors. Among the potential measures against official Baku, economic pressure on Azerbaijan is being highlighted. As strange as it may seem, the Kremlin believes that remittances from Azerbaijani migrants account for approximately seven percent of Azerbaijan’s state budget. It is suggested that if these financial transfers are prohibited, it would serve as an effective tool of pressure against Baku.
Furthermore, the Kremlin hints at the possibility of revisiting trade agreements with Azerbaijan concerning the supply of food and industrial goods. At the same time, Russia has begun raising the issue of potentially excluding Azerbaijan from the North-South Transport Corridor. Moreover, Kremlin officials believe that if Azerbaijan’s oil transit through the Novorossiysk pipeline is blocked, it could deal a severe blow to the country’s foreign currency revenues.
Finally, the Kremlin is also considering ethno-political pressure on Azerbaijan. In other words, Russian political circles intend to attempt to create new problems in Azerbaijan based on ethnic and national grounds. However, the Kremlin seems to forget that the era when separatist projects could be used as a tool of pressure against Azerbaijan is long gone. Even if the Kremlin attempts this, it will not succeed. Official Baku is fully prepared to counteract such maneuvers.
The plan to block financial remittances from Azerbaijani migrants in Russia as a means to put pressure on official Baku is also an ineffective strategy. The reason is that the annual volume of financial transfers from Russia to Azerbaijan is approximately $500 million. Moreover, these funds are in no way directly linked to Azerbaijan’s state budget, as Azerbaijani migrants send this money to their relatives rather than to the state treasury. This means that the Kremlin has significant difficulties in making accurate economic calculations.
A clear example of this is the Kremlin’s intention to exert trade pressure on Azerbaijan. Such trade restrictions could actually inflict more damage on Russia itself than on Azerbaijan. Russia currently has a limited number of trade partners, and losing the Azerbaijani market could have a boomerang effect on the Kremlin. The Kremlin must understand that Azerbaijan has the capacity to find alternative markets. At the same time, the North-South Transport Corridor is of strategic importance for Russia, and excluding Azerbaijan from this route would force Moscow to spend years searching for alternative logistics solutions.
As for the idea of blocking Azerbaijan’s oil transit through the Novorossiysk pipeline, it is difficult to understand where the Kremlin came up with such an absurd and meaningless notion. The fact is that the Novorossiysk pipeline has not been operational for a long time. Currently, Azerbaijani oil is exported via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. On the contrary, the Novorossiysk pipeline could actually be useful for Russia in facilitating the export of its own oil to global markets through Azerbaijan. However, given the current situation, where Western economic sanctions against the Kremlin are still in force, it is highly unlikely that official Baku would take the risk of opening such an “energy corridor” for Russia.
All this indicates that the Kremlin is deliberately attempting to escalate tensions with official Baku. Moreover, it is trying to create new mechanisms of pressure against Azerbaijan. However, the key issue is that the Kremlin lacks the necessary tools to implement such pressure. In any case, the pressure mechanisms on which Russia relies are either non-functional or have long lost their effectiveness. This means that no matter how hard the Kremlin tries, it will not be able to establish a viable mechanism to exert pressure on official Baku. And this confirms once again that Azerbaijan has definitively moved beyond both Russia’s control and its sphere of influence, reaching a distance that is now entirely out of the Kremlin’s reach.
