Russian drones attacked an oil depot in Odesa in Ukraine on August 17. That’s not unusual, but that night’s target was notable in one important sense — the Kremlin struck high-profile infrastructure owned by SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state oil company.
This was no accident. Russia had attacked the same SOCAR facility in Ukraine on August 8. Taken together with a series of other events, it has become clear that Putin’s men are sending a message. That comes at some risk to themselves and potential benefits for Ukraine.
These weren’t the first or even the most serious Russian acts of hostility against the energy-rich South Caucasian nation. On Christmas Day, Russian missile batteries shot down a scheduled Azerbaijan Airways plane, killing 38 people. The incident caused uproar, not least because while the missile firing may have resulted from mistaken identity, Russian air controllers refused the badly damaged aircraft permission to land.
Relations only worsened when, in June, dozens of Azerbaijanis were rounded up by Russia’s state security service, the FSB, which claimed they were involved in crime. Two men were killed, and others were seriously injured. Azerbaijan issued angry statements and subsequently closed Russian propaganda outlets in its capital, Baku.
A muscular and expansionist Russia is not inclined to make full-throated apologies, even if it signaled in both cases that overzealous local troops and officials may have been to blame. Vladimir Putin termed the air crash a “tragic incident” but did not publicly accept Russian responsibility.
Azerbaijan clearly drew its own conclusions. In August, it signed a US-backed outline agreement with its longtime enemy, Armenia, that will see American firms aiding investment in a key transport corridor. Russian state media have described the deal as hostile.
These events reflect a deepening and increasingly bad-tempered divide between the two capitals. The attacks might once have been chalked up as unfortunate incidents and soon forgotten, but there is little sign of that, for now at least. The transactional pragmatism that once characterized ties has devolved into threats and open hostility.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev described Russia’s drone attack on the SOCAR depot in Odesa as a deliberate operation. He has previously dispatched humanitarian aid to Ukraine and, in June, sent a message to the Ukrainian people: “Never accept occupation,” he said.
The direction of Azeri policy has caught the attention of Moscow’s state-funded and Kremlin-directed propagandists. The prominent pro-government mouthpiece Vladimir Solovyov said a new “special military operation” might be required to prevent a NATO base on the Caspian Sea (there is no such proposal), and Andrei Gurulyov, a Duma member and retired general, called for a ban on Azeri goods and further harassment of Azerbaijanis in Russia.
Such statements from Kremlin-associated figures indicate the growing risk of more direct conflict between the two countries after years of deteriorating relations.
Emboldened by alliances with Turkey and Israel, and the victorious conclusion of its war with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, Baku has adopted a more assertive position toward Moscow. The Russian escalation might also have been a response to July’s energy agreement between Ukraine’s Naftogaz and SOCAR, under which Azeri gas would be exported to Ukraine via the Trans-Balkan pipeline.
More broadly, the US-backed deal between Azerbaijan and Armenia facilitates Washington’s long-term footprint in the region and highlights Russia’s shrinking capacity to maintain dominance in the South Caucasus, due to the war in Ukraine and Moscow’s international isolation.
But Russian strikes on Azerbaijani assets abroad, especially in Ukraine, risk pushing Baku even further away from neutrality. Reports in pro-government media on August 11 suggested Baku may now consider supplying Kyiv with weapons, prompting an immediate reaction from Russian authorities, who urged Azerbaijan not to escalate the situation.
The reports may have been intended as a strategic signal to deter further attacks on SOCAR infrastructure in Ukraine (reports suggested the Odesa terminal had been very seriously damaged, and it is unclear if the company plans to rebuild).
Azerbaijan already leads post-Soviet states by sending more than $40m in non-military aid to Ukraine since 2022, and Russia’s coercive diplomacy has achieved little, resulting only in rhetorical clashes rather than compliance. Moscow’s diminishing power to pressure Baku could further accelerate Azerbaijan’s pivot toward closer ties with the EU and the US, giving the West an opportunity to extend its influence in the region and further loosen Russia’s grip.
The piece was originally published by the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA)