Relations once described as friendly between Russia and Azerbaijan have soured sharply. A series of flashpoints — fatal police raids on ethnic Azerbaijanis in Russia, the downing of an Azerbaijan Airlines jet that Baku blames on Russian air defenses, and ever-closer Azerbaijani ties with Turkey — have eroded Moscow’s grip in the South Caucasus.
When Heydar Aliyev became president in 1993, Moscow and Baku wove tight economic ties. Azerbaijan imported Russian oil and gas for domestic needs while shipping its own hydrocarbons to Western buyers. Russia was the main destination for Azerbaijani fruit and vegetable exports and a key transit route to Iran. A large Azerbaijani diaspora — officially about half a million people, though some estimates reach two million — built sizable stakes in Russian construction, real estate, and trade.
After the Soviet breakup, Armenia and Azerbaijan fought over Nagorno-Karabakh. Moscow professed neutrality but armed and funded Yerevan. In 2020, with Turkish military support, Azerbaijan recaptured much of the territory lost in the 1990s, prompting Russia to deploy roughly 2 000 peacekeepers. In September 2023 Baku retook Karabakh outright, and Russia — preoccupied with its war in Ukraine — stayed on the sidelines, unsettling Armenia and emboldening Azerbaijan.
On 25 December 2024 an Azerbaijan Airlines flight from Baku to Grozny was, according to Azerbaijani investigators, mistakenly hit by Russian air-defense fire and crashed while attempting an emergency landing in western Kazakhstan. Thirty-eight of the 67 people on board were killed. President Vladimir Putin expressed condolences but no admission of guilt, while President Ilham Aliyev accused Moscow of trying to bury the truth.
Russian police in Yekaterinburg raided several Azerbaijani households in a decades-old murder probe. Brothers Huseyn and Ziyaddin Safarov died, and others were seriously injured. Azerbaijani officials alleged torture and demanded an investigation and compensation. Baku then canceled planned Russian visits and, in a tit-for-tat move, detained staff at the Kremlin-funded outlet Sputnik Azerbaijan along with eight Russian IT specialists.
Moscow summoned Azerbaijan’s ambassador over what it called “unfriendly actions,” while Baku summoned Russia’s envoy to demand justice for the Safarov brothers. Aliyev’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — who voiced support for Azerbaijan — further irritated the Kremlin. Russian security forces, in turn, briefly detained prominent Azerbaijani community figures inside Russia.
Diminished Russian influence and a robust Turkey-Azerbaijan partnership are reshaping power dynamics in the Caucasus. Whether Moscow and Baku can shift from heated exchanges to substantive dialogue — and investigate the incidents that shattered trust — will determine how far this rift deepens.
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