- EURASIAREVIEW.COM - A la une - 08/Jul 22:50

Russia Trying To Find Way Out Of Azerbaijan Deadlock

(Eurasianet) -- Russia is trying to pull the emergency break on what is threatening to become a runaway train of deteriorating relations with Azerbaijan. Alexander Kurenkov, Russia’s minister for emergency situations and a trusted lieutenant of Kremlin kingpin Vladimir Putin, arrived in Baku on July 8, ostensibly to participate in a gathering of civil defense officials. But the chief objective of his trip, many observers in Baku and Moscow believe, is to try to mend fences with Azerbaijan. Bilateral relations have been flash frozen over the past week after Baku retaliated for a late June incident during which two Azerbaijani citizens died in custody amid a police security sweep in the Siberian city of Ekaterinburg. The late June incident compounded already hard feelings within Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev’s administration, due to Russia’s continuing refusal to take responsibility for the accidental shoot-down of an Azerbaijani civilian jetliner in December. Despite being the instigator of multiple diplomatic confrontations, Moscow is now calling on Baku to back down, hinting that it is in the economic interests of both countries to set aside their current differences. “We believe that logic speaks of only one thing: that Russia and Azerbaijan recognize and should remain the closest partners, allies and countries that share a common history, a common present and a common future," the Interfax news agency quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying July 7. “All problems that arise must be resolved in a constructive way.” It does not appear that Azerbaijan will be easily assuaged. For Aliyev, the current crisis revolves around the matter of mutual respect, or the lack thereof, political observers in Baku say. Azerbaijani officials, it seems, have reached a breaking point where they are no longer willing to tolerate the Kremlin’s high-handed behavior towards former constituent entities of the former Soviet Union, practices rooted in Russia’s imperialist past. Some Azerbaijani analysts say Russia expects all former Soviet republics to be subservient like Belarus. The growing belief in Baku is that Russian behavior will not change until its leaders undergo a fundamental shift in their approach, recognizing the limitations and realities imposed by the ongoing war in Ukraine, and embracing collaborative and respectful tactics rather than relying on bullying to get their way. In punching back at Moscow amid the current diplomatic spat, via the arrest of a bevy of Russian citizens, including two key employees of the Baku bureau of the Russia Today media outlet, Azerbaijan is exposing Russia’s underlying economic and diplomatic weakness amid the Kremlin’s grinding, inconclusive campaign in Ukraine. The idea is dawning on Baku that Russia now needs Azerbaijan economically more than vice versa. A commentary published July 6 by the state-connected Azerbaijani media outlet Caliber sheds light on the official thinking in Baku. The piece begins with an apocryphal quote attributed to Tsar Alexander III, who allegedly stated that Russia’s only trusted, reliable allies were its army and fleet. It then proceeds to highlight the failures of Russia’s go-it-alone reliance on brute force to achieve its geopolitical goals. “All successful world powers were established precisely thanks to unions and coalitions - the entire history of the United States after the Second World War is an example of that,” the analysis states. “Modern Russia has not learned this lesson.” It goes on to note that all Moscow-led economic, security or political groupings of states, including the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Eurasian Economic Union and the Collective Security Treaty Organization are all dysfunctional or, at best, underperforming. Fear of Russian retaliation is what keeps these organizations from disintegration. “Who is a close ally of Russia? Probably, Belarus?” “The following point testifies to the systemic problems of Russian politics: we repeatedly observe how Russian officials manage to quarrel with countries that oppose each other,” the commentary notes. “The current simultaneous worsening of relations with Azerbaijan and Armenia is one of those examples.” “Russian politics is not even ‘divide and rule.’ It is a disregard for non-Western countries, supplemented by a bet on brute force and threats,” the commentary continues. “Does it work? Ukraine, about which the Russians have said for years that ‘it does not exist,’ that it was ‘invented by the Bolsheviks,’ can provide [an answer]: this stupidity led Russia to a strategic impasse.”