Russia-Azerbaijan Row Sets Caucasus In Motion

Eurasia note #110 - Armenia's implosion triggers power play

• Russia-Azerbaijan tensions are about much more than gangland arrests

• Police beatings of each other's citizens disguise bruised reputations

• Rivalry for status is being manipulated by outside forces

• Iran says Azerbaijan helped Israel in attacks of June 13th

• Through oil for weapons, Azerbaijan extends influence beyond region

• At the risk of transmitting instability from one region to another

• Subversion in Armenia invites Azerbaijan, setting regional rocks a-rolling

• Expanding the game of imperial borders from West Asia & North Africa

• Caspian Sea & Central Asia could turn from a stable buffer into power vacuum

Eurasia note #96 Stirring Trouble In Russia’s Backyard - Bombs and terror, as 170 year-old policy continues (Jun 24, 2024)
Armenians Flee Karabakh – Yerevan yields Artsakh to Azerbaijan, Russia stands aside (Sep 26, 2023)
Eurasia note #89: Georgia, Beware An Offer Of ‘Ukraine 2014' - NGOs work outside the electoral process - Georgia-EU Part 1 (Apr 29, 2024)
Eurasia note #76 - U.S. Ramps Up Sanctions Effort - Israel boosts Central Asian ties seeking to offset Saudi-Iran rapprochement (Apr 26, 2023)
Danube's Peace In NATO's Sights - Eurasia note #109: Seeking to cut Ukraine losses, keep Odesa (Jul 04, 2025)

(2,000 words or about 10 minutes of your company.)

Azerbaijan’s Aliyev with Russia’s Putin in other times.

July 7, 2025

A tit for tat row over the arrest of each other's citizens, or another former Soviet country peeled off from Russia's orbit?

The story involves the arrest of a high-profile Azeri gangland boss in Russia; the death in police custody of two brothers that Azerbaijan says were killed; the tit-for-tat beating of Russians arrested in Azerbaijan, and the arrest of the editors of Sputnik news.

Moscow police arrested Azerbaijani organized crime figure Vagif Suleymanov, also known as Vagif Bakinsky and the Diplomat, last Thursday, July 3.

Dozens of Azerbaijani nationals in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg were arrested and questioned at the end of June over a series of murders beginning in the early 2000s. Two of them, Ziyaddin Safarov, 55, and his brother Huseyn, 60, died during arrest.

Azerbaijan raided the Sputnik news agency, part of Russia Today. They detained seven journalists, including editors Igor Kartavykh and Yevgeny Belousov, accusing them of illegal entrepreneurship and money laundering.

Azerbaijani government source told Reuters that about 15 more Russians had been arrested separately on suspicion of drug trafficking and cybercrime.

Proportion, reaction

Azerbaijan's reaction to the busting of an ethnic organised crime gang may be defensive and emotional.

Gangsterism is international. Perhaps it involves high-level individuals in Azerbaijan or their relatives. Russian police may have acted with brutality. Both could have been settled, however, through diplomatic means.

This suggests that the tit-for-tat arrest of each other's citizens, and the parading of bloodied Russians in Azeri custody, is intended to escalate.

A wanton display of violence, is not only a provocation -- "watcha gonna do about it?" -- it is a strategy of demonising the other as a prelude to conflict.

Traditionally it begins with stories of babies — babies on bayonets, babies on washing lines, babies thrown out of incubators, babies in ovens, playing football with babies — and then the imaginary horror is followed by actual violence as propaganda enrages the people.

After the coup in Ukraine in 2014 and the inflaming of ethnic violence that led up to the Russian invasion of 2022, academics and journalists churned out reports on Russian settler colonialism, how "Russian colonialism is not reformable", and Russia's status "as a colonial power."

That was allowed to simmer in the mind until politicians, like the European Commission's foreign affairs spokesperson, Kaja Kallas, last May called for Russia to be broken up and Balkanised (never mind that her father, Siim Kallas, was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and director of the Estonian branch of the state central bank).

Similarly, the press is suddenly full of talk about the close relations between Azerbaijan and Ukraine. They have agreed to strengthen cooperation in clearance of land mines. That's pure public relations, as last month Ukraine withdrew from the Ottawa Convention on the use of anti-personnel mines, which are designed to be buried or hidden in the ground, and thus are harder to remove and present a long term risk to civilians.

It would take a more serious rapprochement with Ukraine during the special military operation to signal a break with the Russian Federation and a move towards the West.

"Relations nose-dive between Russia and former close ally" declares The Washington Post. Other newspapers: "Yerevan and Baku Now Have a Shared Enemy in Moscow"; "Azerbaijan has decided to finally turn its back on Russia."

Are we there yet, or is this wishful thinking by partisan media?

Moscow Baku

Relations with Russia soured when an Azeri passenger jet, JS-8432, was struck in December, purportedly by Russian air defence, while trying to land in Grozny, Chechnya, while the city was under attack by Ukrainian drones.

But, like the arrests mentioned above, this can be solved diplomatically. More important is what happens if Russia loses access to the South Caucasus and influence in countries like Armenia, Georgian and Azerbaijan.

It would cut off potential trade routes. Azerbaijan is a crucial corridor between Russia and Iran. Baku and Moscow signed an economic deal on "allied interaction" in 2022, including the expansion of cargo transport.

Worse, it could turn the Caspian and Central Asia from a buffer into vacuum, in which Turkey and Iran are rivals for power. Forced regime change in Tehran would by default create a power vacuum, while causing incalculable disruption to trade routes that supply multiple countries: Indian goods reaching Europe through the Persian Gulf, or via the Gulf States and Israel, where the port of Haifa has been bombed; not accounting for prohibitive insurance rates.

The 3+3 regional format, involving Russia, Turkey and Iran, plus Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia (the latter currently boycotting Russia), aims to prevent destabilisation and keep trade flowing.

There is an echo of history, that began before WW1 when Britain and France encouraged the Arab tribes to rise against the Ottoman Empire.