Azerbaijan has been pushing back against Russian dominance in the Caucasus region, seeking closer ties with Turkey and Israel.
By Mary Ilyushina
July 3, 2025
The Washington Post
Relations between Russia and Azerbaijan, an oil-rich former Soviet republic, have dramatically deteriorated after a campaign of arrests against each other’s citizens that could herald a major realignment in a region once seen by Moscow as its backyard. The two countries long enjoyed a close partnership in the politically sensitive South Caucasus region on the Caspian Sea, but with Russia distracted by the war in Ukraine, Azerbaijan has grown bolder in challenging Moscow’s dominance. It is also seeking closer alliances with Turkey and Israel.
The latest crisis began after an arrest operation against ethnic Azerbaijanis conducted by Russian law enforcement last week netted 50 people in Yekaterinburg, a city in Russia’s Ural Mountains. Police said it was a part of a decades-old investigation into contract killings in the city.
Two Azerbaijanis — brothers Ziyaddin Safarov, 55, and Huseyn Safarov, 60 — died in custody. When the bodies were transferred to the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, autopsies revealed that the men had been beaten to death, local authorities said. The bodies had broken ribs, internal injuries and severe blood loss. “A criminal investigation has been launched concerning the torture and brutal killing of Azerbaijani citizens and individuals of Azerbaijani origin in the Russian Federation,” the prosecutor general’s office of Azerbaijan said in a statement Tuesday.
Russian investigators said six ethnic Azerbaijani men with Russian citizenship — four of them with the last name “Safarov” — were arrested as part of murder investigations. They maintained that one of the brothers died of a heart failure during the raid, while the cause of the second death remained under investigation.
Baku, in turn, lashed out with retaliatory actions. The Culture Ministry canceled all events tied to Russian institutions, condemning what it called “demonstrative targeted and extrajudicial killings” motivated by ethnic bias. Azerbaijan’s parliament withdrew from a planned bilateral meeting in Moscow, and the government scrapped a scheduled visit by a Russian parliamentary official.
On Monday, Azerbaijani police raided the Baku office of Sputnik Azerbaijan, the local arm of Russia’s state-run news agency. Although Sputnik officially ceased operations earlier this year after restrictions on foreign media ownership, it continued to publish content online.
Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry accused the outlet of operating with “illegal financing” and confirmed that several arrests were made during the raid.
Among the arrested were director Igor Kartavykh and editor in chief Yevgeny Belousov, who were charged with conspiracy to commit fraud and could face up to 12 years in prison. Russia’s
Foreign Ministry summoned Azerbaijan’s ambassador to protest what it called Baku’s “unfriendly actions” and the “illegal detention of Russian journalists.” Then on Tuesday, a court in Baku ordered the detention of eight Russians, mostly IT specialists, and accused them of cybercrimes and smuggling drugs from Iran. In courtroom footage, the defendants appeared to have been severely beaten, with one showing dried blood on his face and several others displaying visible bruises and contusions.
Relations began to nose-dive in December, after the crash of an Azerbaijani plane probably due to Russian actions. Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 departed from Baku with 67 people on board bound for Grozny, capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya. After being diverted, the plane crashed in Kazakhstan, killing 38 people. Despite initial Russian denials, evidence mounted that it had been hit by a Russian surface-to-air missile.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev demanded that Russia admit responsibility and pay compensation to the state and families of the crash victims. Russian leader Vladimir Putin apologized for the “tragic incident” in Russian airspace, but neither he nor his government would take responsibility for downing the plane, further aggravating Baku. A few months before the crash, relations had seemed fine, with Putin exchanging hugs with Aliyev on a state visit to Azerbaijan before sitting down for an informal dinner.
This year, Aliyev snubbed Putin by skipping Russia’s Victory Day parade in May, an event that normally sees the leaders of the former Soviet republics flock to Moscow to mark the end of World War II. Later that month, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha visited Azerbaijan, signaling closer ties between Baku and Kyiv. “The conflict with Azerbaijan has sharply aggravated the matter of Russia’s loss of influence in the post-Soviet space,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, Russia analyst with the Carnegie Russian Eurasia Center. “The geopolitical shallowing of the importance of the post-Soviet space is a direct consequence of the war with Ukraine, which of course will have serious long-term consequences, obviously not in Russia’s favor,” she said. “But today the Kremlin does not really want to think about it, and it does not have enough resources to fight on several fronts.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called Aliyev to express his condolences on the two deaths in Yekaterinburg. The Kremlin slammed the call as an “attempt to unbalance relations between Russia and Azerbaijan and provoke tension.” “Kyiv will do everything to add fuel to the fire, to provoke Baku into emotional actions,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday. The diplomatic fallout has accelerated a broader realignment of alliances and underscored Moscow’s diminishing influence in a region it once undisputedly dominated.
Azerbaijan, emboldened by its crushing victory over archrival Armenia in 2023, has drifted closer to Turkey, a key backer that supplied advanced military hardware, including the drones that were crucial in its success.
Armenia had appealed to Russia for help in the conflict, but Moscow, preoccupied by the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, offered little assistance. Officials in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, accused Russia of abandoning its security commitments and suspended their country’s participation in the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization.
Azerbaijan also has strengthened its ties with Israel, leveraging its position as a secular Muslim-majority country bordering Russia and Israel’s nemesis Iran. Azerbaijan exports a significant portion of its crude oil to Israel, while importing its advanced military weaponry. This partnership deepened while the Kremlin’s own relations with Israel frayed. “It is clear that before the victory [against Armenia] and without [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan behind his back, Aliyev would not dare to do anything like this. But it looks like a weighty slap in the face to the ‘Russian world,’” said independent Russian political expert Vladimir Pastukhov. He added that the war in Ukraine has forced Russia “to bare its eastern and southern rears, exposing them to painful slaps, which will become even more numerous in the future.”
The comments reflect a range of opinions on Azerbaijan’s alliances with Turkey and Israel and their potential impact on its relationship with Russia. Some commenters suggest that Azerbaijan’s alliances could weaken Russia, which they view positively.
Mary Ilyushina, a reporter on the Foreign Desk of The Washington Post, covers Russia and the region. She began her career in independent Russian media before joining CNN’s Moscow bureau as a field producer in 2017. She has been with The Post since 2021. She speaks Russian, English, Ukrainian and Arabic.follow on X@maryilyushina