Russian Foreign Ministry official Aleksei Fadeev has warned Baku over rumours Azerbaijan might deliver military aid to Ukraine, saying that ‘if Baku will lift the arms embargo for selling to Ukraine it will only worsen the situation’.
The Russian state-run media outlet TASS reported that Aleksei Fadeev, Deputy Director of the Information and Press Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry stated in a briefing with the journalists that ‘Russia’s position on supplying weapons to [Ukraine] is well known to Azerbaijan’, emphasising that ‘such actions will only worsen the situation on the ground’.
During the briefing, Fadeev also commented on information that was published in domestic Azerbaijani media on Monday.
In particular, the Azerbaijani pro-government media outlet Caliber cited anonymous sources as saying that Baku will ‘begin considering’ lifting an arms embargo on Ukraine following a Russian attack on an Azerbaijani petrol depot in Odesa Oblast.
Caliber cited ‘reliable sources’ as saying that Baku might come to this decision ‘if Russia continues its aggressive policy against Azerbaijan’s interests’.
Fadeev stressed that the Foreign Ministry ‘has paid attention’ to these reports.
‘I can say that our Azerbaijani partners are well aware of our position on supplying weapons or dual-use humanitarian aid to the “neo-Nazi regime” in Kyiv. We believe that such actions do not contribute to a peaceful settlement of the conflict and will only worsen the situation on the ground’, Fadeev said, referencing repeated unsubstantiated claims that the government in Kyiv is overrun with neo-Nazis.
On Monday, Aliyev issued a decree providing $2 million in aid to the Ukrainian energy sector, which is intended to be used to purchase and ship electrical equipment produced in Azerbaijan. The funds will be provided from the President’s Reserve Fund, provided for in the state budget of Azerbaijan for 2025.
Aliyev’s decision sparked another wave of anger from the Russian side. In response, Russian MP Andrei Gurulyov stated on his Telegram channel that ‘Russia may impose a ban on imports of Azerbaijani goods in response to Baku's decision to send humanitarian aid to Ukraine’.
‘If there are no goods from Azerbaijan on the shelves in Russia, then nothing will change for us, but for them it will change a lot’, he said in a video.
Gurulyov noted that it is also possible to ‘pinch’ Azerbaijani entrepreneurs in Russia, hinting that Russia could detain Azerbaijani businesspersons. To conclude his speech, he emphasised that ‘the SVO [special military operation] is a flexible concept, including along the entire [Russian] border’. Russia has been using the term special military operation to describe its bloody, now almost four-year-long full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The comment was viewed by Azerbaijani media as an open Russian military threat.
On Wednesday, Gurulyov told the Russian media outlet RTVI that he did not ‘threaten’ Azerbaijan.
Nonetheless, Azerbaijani MP Rasim Musabayov responded to Gurulyov by saying that the geographic conditions in the Caucasus ‘make military actions against Azerbaijan practically impossible’.
‘The border between Russia and Azerbaijan is the Great Caucasus Mountains. How are you going to climb through them?’, Musabayov asked.
In response, Gurulyov stated that ‘I remind everyone, my friends, about Chechnya. There are no fewer mountains there’.
Gurulyov was just the latest Russian official or propagandist to threaten Azerbaijan following the news it would send increased aid to Ukraine.
Top Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov separately claimed that a new ‘special military operation’ may be necessary to prevent a NATO base from being created on the Caspian Sea.
‘It is necessary to understand that what is happening in the South Caucasus is a very big problem. And soon, the Caspian Sea could end up in a situation where NATO bases might appear there. This is so dangerous that, from a geopolitical perspective, it could lead to consequences where this might not be the last special military operation of our generation’, Solovyov said on his television show on Sunday.
Nate Ostiller
