Russia-Azerbaijan Relations

Writing on Steve LeVine’s The Oil and the Glory, Tom de Waal argues that relations between Russia and Azerbaijan have been steadily improving over the years. Indeed, de Waal argues, Azerbaijan is instead pursuing a complementarity foreign policy and relations with Russia are actually quite strong.

Once Vladimir Putin came to power, Aliyev made it a strategic priority to rebuild relations with Russia. Aliyev was very successfully at charming the Putin Kremlin, and his daughter, Sevil, made a useful marriage with a well-connected Moscow Azerbaijani, Mahmud Mammadquliyev. The elite-level relationship has deepened under his son, Ilham Aliyev.

Medvedev, with his background as former chairman of Gazprom, the Russian natural gas giant, now speaks the same language of money and energy as the Azerbaijani elite. They must find it a relief not to have to bother with all that talk of democratization and human rights that enters conversations with Western politicians.

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Asked to name the three nations friendliest to Azerbaijan, 89% of Musabekov’s respondents unsurprisingly named Turkey. But Russia came in second place with a 20% vote of approval, well ahead of the United States, which was named by 5.7%, just behind Iran and on the same level as Ukraine.

This suggests that, on the street level, Russia and Russians remain popular with ordinary Azeris. They are still on the same wavelength in a way that Americans or Europeans will never be.