Assad's Fall Prompted Azerbaijan's Leader To Break With Putin
- 25.07.2025, 17:36
- 4,244
Russia has shown weakness.
The fact that Vladimir Putin gave up on his ally, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and did not help him confront armed rebels has backfired on the Kremlin leader. The sharp deterioration in relations with Azerbaijan is due in part to the fact that its president Ilham Aliyev considered Russia weakened since it failed to protect its partner, writes Newsweek.
Baku has already pursued a tougher policy in recent years, having established strong ties with Turkey and carried out the seizure of Nagorno-Karabakh, which Russia did nothing to counter, although it was supposed to provide military assistance to Armenia within the Collective Security Treaty Organization.
On Monday, Aliyev, unhappy with Putin's lack of apology for the Azerbaijan Airlines plane shot down by mistake in December, demanded that Russia publicly acknowledge responsibility, punish those responsible, compensate the families of the victims and the airline, and threatened to sue it in an international court.
But Baku's conflict with Moscow is explained not only by this and the raids on representatives of the Azerbaijani diaspora in Yekaterinburg, during which many detainees were beaten, two of them to death. Aliyev has become more active in distancing himself from Putin since Assad's fall in December 2024, Ali Kerimli, chairman of Azerbaijan's opposition Popular Front Party and a former state secretary, told Newsweek. "He began to realize that Russia was no longer as strong as once thought" since it had failed to protect one of its main allies, Kerimli explained.
What's more, he said, Aliyev saw how quickly Turkey and Western countries began to fill the vacuum - and not just in Russia's abandoned Syria, but in the region as a whole.
Bank's name: Bank Millennium S.A.
Address: ul. Stanislawa Zaryna, 2A, 02-593, Warszawa
IBAN: PL97116022020000000216711123
SWIFT: BIGBPLPW
Name of the account holder: Fundacja “KARTA ‘97”
Purpose/title of payment: Donation for statuary aims
You can contact us by the e-mail charter97@gmail.com
