Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Tajikistan on October 9. Their meeting, after many months of outright hostility, was interpreted by many as a signal of rapprochement, and with some reason.
Distrust will nevertheless persist — Azerbaijan considers itself a significant regional power better off when it is free of the Kremlin’s policy shackles. And there’s not much Russia can do about it.
The talks centered on what Putin described as the “most sensitive issue” — the December 2024 shooting down by a Russian missile battery of an Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer 190, with the deaths of 38 people. Putin expressed condolences and, in effect, issued an apology by belatedly accepting that the cause of the crash was indeed the Russian military.
The Russian president has argued that the investigation into the tragedy had concluded, that the incident was triggered by the presence of three Ukrainian drones over Russian territory at the time, and that the missiles did not directly hit the aircraft, but detonated roughly 10 meters (about 30ft) away. He did not mention that this is precisely the aim of many anti-aircraft missiles, and more than enough to inflict catastrophic damage.
Read the full article on the Center for European Policy Analysis.
Emil Avdaliani is a Research Fellow at the Turan Research Center.