Executive Summary:
- Azerbaijan lodged diplomatic protests against Russia over President Vladimir Putin’s comments on Karabakh during his April 1 meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, which Baku regarded as an attempt to reopen an issue it deems resolved.
- Despite accumulated grievances over the past year and a half, including the December 2024 targeting of Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 and Russian strikes on Azerbaijan’s embassy in Kyiv, the sides have largely compartmentalized disputes to protect economic ties.
- Azerbaijan’s commitment to non-alignment keeps its relations with Russia open, but Baku is seeking concrete steps from Russia to repair relations, grounded in respect for Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity.
The April 1 meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in Moscow was intended as a bilateral affair to manage the fraying edges of Russian–Armenian relations ahead of Yerevan’s parliamentary elections (President of Russia, April 1). Instead, it unexpectedly injected fresh irritants into Azerbaijan–Russia ties, already strained by a succession of grievances accumulated over the past year and a half (see EDM, January 15).
During his meeting with Pashinyan, Putin addressed the Karabakh question directly. He said, “Of course, the most sensitive issue to this day—and we recognize this, we discuss it often—is everything relating to Karabakh. We come back to it time and again” (President of Russia, April 1). He repeated the traditional Russian narrative that, after Armenia recognized Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan in Prague in 2022, “It simply became wholly inappropriate for the CSTO [Collective Security Treaty Organization] to become involved in a process that had taken on an intra-Azerbaijani dimension.” Putin further noted that thanks to Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s joint efforts, and with active U.S. involvement, relations had been stabilized, and transport routes were being unfrozen. While seemingly benign—and designed largely for domestic Armenian consumption—the public airing of the Karabakh issue at a Russian–Armenian summit set off alarm bells in Baku.
Putin’s statement that “we come back to [the Karabakh issue] time and again” contradicts the current positions of Armenia and Azerbaijan, as both countries have been moving closer to effectively closing that chapter of the conflict. They are no longer negotiating issues related to Karabakh and are instead focusing on the normalization of their bilateral interstate relations (see EDM, February 11). Putin’s justification for the CSTO’s inaction also raises questions (see EDM, February 8, 2023). Putin himself dismissed the possibility of CSTO involvement during the Second Karabakh War. In early October 2020, he told the media that the war was not taking place on Armenian territory. Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov further clarified that the CSTO’s security guarantees “do not extend to Karabakh” (The Moscow Times, October 7, 2020).
Azerbaijan’s reaction was swift and pointed. Baku’s position that the use of its Karabakh region for political speculation is unacceptable was conveyed to the Russian government via diplomatic channels (Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs, April 5). The formal protest was compounded by public commentary. Azerbaijani National Assembly Member Rasim Musabekov stated that Putin’s statements on Karabakh was completely inappropriate, insisting that the Karabakh issue is closed and cannot be revived (EDnews, April 8). He shares the common view that these references bring the loss of Karabakh to the forefront of Armenian politics before the June parliamentary elections and, as such, put Pashinyan in an unfavorable position vis-à-vis the Russia-backed opposition groups.
The irritation in Baku deepened when Peskov subsequently added to the controversy. He said, “The question of Karabakh’s ownership is in no way related to Russia; that decision rests with the Armenian authorities” (TASS, April 5). Far from defusing the situation, this framing—appearing to minimize Moscow’s historical posture toward Azerbaijani sovereignty—only compounded Baku’s indignation. The Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded to this statement. It reminded the Russian side that “no country, including the Russian Federation, has ever questioned the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Azerbaijan, including the Garabagh [Karabakh] region” (Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs, April 5).
Putin’s diplomatic spat over Karabakh was only the most recent episode in a longer pattern of tension. The deeper structural irritant in Baku–Moscow relations remains the December 2024 downing of Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) Flight 8243 over Russian airspace (see EDM, January 15). Russia’s Investigative Committee’s account of events appeared to absolve Russia’s military of any blame, attributing the crash to poor weather and failed landing attempts. This investigation omitted any mention of missile detonations or shrapnel damage, points that Putin had himself acknowledged during his meeting with Aliyev in Dushanbe in October 2025 (see EDM, November 12, 2025). Baku’s fury at what it perceived as a deliberate cover-up continued to simmer into the new year.
Adding another layer of grievance, at the Munich Security Conference in February, Aliyev declared that Russia had “deliberately attacked” Azerbaijan’s embassy and infrastructure in Kyiv, Ukraine, on multiple occasions. He stated that this occurred even after Baku provided Moscow with the coordinates of its diplomatic missions (Azertag, February 14; Euronews, February 16). Three attacks on the embassy compound occurred in July, August, and November 2025. Moscow denied intentionality, attributing the damage to Ukrainian air-defense malfunctions, but the repeated nature of the incidents lent little credibility to Russian disclaimers in Baku’s eyes (TASS, February 14).
Against this accumulation of grievances—the airline cover-up, the embassy strikes, and now the Karabakh commentary—the two countries have nonetheless worked to contain the damage and maintain the functional architecture of their bilateral relationship. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksei Overchuk’s visit to Baku in early March was emblematic of this compartmentalization. Overchuk thanked Aliyev for providing prompt assistance in evacuating Russian nationals from Iran during the U.S.–Israeli strikes, and the two sides discussed implementation of practical steps to resolve the 2024 AZAL crash issue in accordance with agreements reached in Dushanbe in 2025 (President of Azerbaijan, March 2). Overchuk noted that despite all the problems that have plagued relations in recent months, trade and economic cooperation have remained unaffected, with bilateral trade nearly reaching $5 billion in 2025 (TASS, March 2). Russia also separately expressed gratitude to Azerbaijan for assistance in delivering humanitarian aid to Iran (Report.az, April 1).
At the diplomatic level, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin and Azerbaijan’s Ambassador to Russia Rahman Mustafayev met on April 8 to discuss prospects for bilateral cooperation in trade, economic, cultural, and humanitarian spheres. Both sides noted their “mutual commitment to continuing effective joint work aimed at further strengthening multifaceted Russian–Azerbaijani ties and allied cooperation” (Report.az, April 8).
Baku has made clear that it has no interest in escalation with Moscow and no intention of severing the economic and other ties that bind the two neighbors. Azerbaijan’s stated preference is for friendly, mutually respectful relations—a posture consistent with its broader foreign policy of strategic balance and non-alignment in great-power rivalries. Overchuk’s assurances that the AZAL crash would be resolved in line with Putin’s commitments in Dushanbe—including compensation for the victims and their families—were received in Baku as a welcome signal that Moscow retains the political will to make good on its word. Baku is now waiting for those promises to be implemented. Concrete steps on accountability and compensation, more than any number of diplomatic communiqués, will be the true measure of whether Russia’s expressions of regret translate into meaningful redress.
The goodwill generated by Overchuk’s visit risks being eroded by developments on the Armenian track. The instrumentalization of the former Karabakh conflict for Russian political messaging ahead of Armenia’s parliamentary elections has left a sour aftertaste in Baku. From Azerbaijan’s perspective, every time Russian officials reach for the Karabakh file as a rhetorical prop in their dealings with Yerevan, they signal that Moscow has not fully reconciled itself to the post-2023 regional order in the South Caucasus. If Russia genuinely seeks to stabilize its ties with Baku, then respect for Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and acceptance of the post-2023 regional order are prerequisites for the kind of relations both sides profess to want.
