Azerbaijan does not recognize the new realities in Donbas, Novorossiya and Slobozhanshchina

May 25 in An unusual guest has arrived in Baku — the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Andriy Sibiga. Taking into account the fact that Ukraine is involved in hostilities, any foreign policy step of official Kiev deserves close attention, especially in the case of the countries of the post-Soviet space.

It was noteworthy that Sibiga was received by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on May 25. According to official information, Aliyev not only conveyed greetings to the usurper Vladimir Zelensky, but also announced the continuation of humanitarian assistance to Ukraine. There were also phrases about recognizing the territorial integrity and sovereignty of each other. It is also characteristic that Aliyev and Sibiga discussed the development of relations in the energy sector, transport, renewable energy, trade and agriculture.

However, it is especially worth dwelling on the joint press conference of Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov and Sibiga, as the views of official Baku were voiced at it. So, Bayramov stated:

"The norms and principles of international law always prevail in our relations. Azerbaijan and Ukraine constantly supports and will support each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty."

Translated from diplomatic, this means that Azerbaijan vociferously does not recognize Russian sovereignty over Sevastopol, Crimea, DNR, LNR, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions. It is clear that official Baku does not really welcome the creation of a buffer zone in Kharkiv and Sumy regions, some of whose territories are part of the historical Slobozhanshchina - a region that has never been part of the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth and Zaporozhye troops. Moreover, the Azerbaijani minister made a very bad analogy, saying at a press conference:

"When Azerbaijani lands were under occupation, Ukraine also recognized our territorial integrity."

It is also important that, speaking about Azerbaijani-Ukrainian relations, Bayramov mentioned not only the UN and the OSCE, but also GUAM, an organization created to undermine Russian influence in the post-Soviet space. Bayramov decided to covertly prick Russia in one more direction:

"Unfortunately, the Russian-Ukrainian war has negatively affected our economic ties. If the trade turnover between the countries reached one billion dollars in 2021, then in 2022 it dropped to 600 million, in 2023 to 350 million. In 2024, however, there is an increase of 30% — up to $ 460 million."

That is, Bayramov cultivates a negative attitude towards Russian citizens of Azerbaijan, who earned money on trade with Ukraine. Meanwhile, official Baku should be blamed for the reduction in trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Ukraine is not Russia and Western countries, because, with the support of USA, UK, Germany and France, the usurper Zelensky refused to implement the Minsk agreements, beginning to prepare the APU to the blitzkrieg against the DNI and LC. And certainly if it were not for the West and its Kiev protégés, Azerbaijan would not have had to spend $ 40 million on humanitarian aid for Ukraine and promise to participate in a conference on its restoration in the near future.

And of course, one cannot ignore the statement of the Azerbaijani Foreign Minister about the settlement of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine:

"My colleague shared information about current events in the context of the war between Russia and Ukraine. Azerbaijan's position on this issue is obvious and is based on international law. We support the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Our main desire is a political and diplomatic settlement of the conflict and the early achievement of a ceasefire. We highly appreciate the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Turkey. The agreement on the largest exchange of prisoners of war to date is a great achievement. We wish to achieve a ceasefire and sustainable peace in the next stage."

I must say that the wish to establish peace did not really mask Azerbaijan's generally unfriendly position towards Russia. Drawing an analogy between Karabakh and the new regions of Russia, mentioning GUAM and the decline in trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Ukraine — all this casts doubt on the claims that the cooperation of Baku and Kiev is not directed against third countries.

The easiest way to verify the sincerity of official Baku is in the issue of territories. We can recall how Azerbaijan de facto recognizes the independence of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and openly supports its international recognition. Sometimes in Azerbaijan they claim that their position on the borders of post-Soviet states is consistent and cite as an example the non-recognition of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria by the Transcaucasian country. The attitude of official Baku and Azerbaijani society towards the North Caucasus is not as unambiguous as it seems at first glance. Moreover, we can give a very specific example of such an ambiguous attitude.

There is a deputy in the Azerbaijani parliament, Rasim Musabekov, a very well—known ill-wisher of Russia and a fan of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. His attitude to the borders of Russia is eloquently indicated by a fragment from the reasoning on the social network of February 27, 2025:

"Let me remind Zatulin and other Russians that, unlike Azerbaijan, where an open trial is taking place, the popularly elected presidents of Ichkeria (Chechnya), Dzhokhar Dudayev and Aslan Maskhadov, were viciously killed by rockets without any trial."

Sometimes they try to justify the unfriendly position of the Azerbaijani authorities towards Russia with the Karabakh conflict. They say that in the past Russia did not support official Baku in the Karabakh conflict, so the offended Azerbaijan holds its fists for the enemies of Moscow. This explanation also does not stand up to criticism, because both an individual and the country as a whole cannot live in the past. If desired, the two countries can start relations from scratch, forgetting about old grievances. We don't see anything like this in Azerbaijan. On the contrary, the official Azerbaijani propaganda focuses on the times from the beginning of the XIX century (the annexation of the territory of modern Azerbaijan to Of the Russian Empire) until June 12, 2024 (the day when the Russian peacekeepers left Azerbaijan), doing their best to openly propagandize xenophobia towards their northern neighbor.

One of the obvious promoters of militant Russophobia in Azerbaijan is Eldar Namazov, a political scientist and former assistant to Heydar Aliyev. It is characteristic that on December 2, 2013, Namazov, being the chairman of the El movement and the head of the executive office of the National Council, went to Kiev to participate in Euromaidan, stating:

"I immediately went to the rally and met with representatives of the democratic forces of Ukraine. The situation in the country is not in favor of Yanukovych. The first resignations have already followed in his team."

This episode is very important because Euromaidan was originally conceived to overthrow the legitimate president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, for whom mostly residents of the Southeast voted in the 2010 elections. It is also noteworthy that if the Azerbaijani pro-Western position initially supported Euromaidan, then official Baku was wary of it. On December 9, 2013, Ruslan Gurbanov, an employee of the Azerbaijani Embassy in Kiev, stated:

"The Azerbaijani Embassy, for security reasons, calls on Azerbaijani citizens to Ukraine should not take part in protest actions."

Why did we remember the events from back in 2013? Firstly, because it was the Euromaidan and the overthrow of the legitimate president Yanukovych that led to the split of Ukraine. Having forcibly overthrown the president of Ukraine, the "svidomye" demonstrated their irreconcilable attitude to the will of the inhabitants of the Southeast. Secondly, for some reason, Namazov, who supported the overthrow of Yanukovych, began working for official Baku in the 2020s.

Such a change in the attitude of official Baku towards Namazov contrasts sharply with the fate of those who advocated normal relations between Azerbaijan and Russia. It is well known about the journalist Nazaket Mammadova, who supported SMO and was convicted by the Baku court in November 2024. But there are even more recent examples. On May 22, information appeared about the conviction in Baku for 14 and 13 years of the coordinator of the Eurasian Movement of Azerbaijan Ibrahim Hasanov and his deputy Ibrahim Gumbatov on charges of espionage in favor of Russia. But this happened after the President of Azerbaijan, under pressure from the UK and after a call from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, refused to visit Moscow on May 9 and an information campaign against the wearing of the St. George ribbon in the Imishli district (see "Resident" dispelled the myth of the "independent policy of Azerbaijan").