By Sultan Musayev | 2025-07-14

Ties between Moscow and Baku have plunged to their lowest point in decades, after Russian police recently killed two Azerbaijani citizens during a raid in Yekaterinburg. What followed was a rapid escalation -- arrests, media crackdowns and diplomatic sparring -- as Azerbaijan pushed back forcefully, marking a shift away from Moscow's orbit and the start of a new phase in the regional balance of power.

The June raid, reportedly tied to an old criminal case, led to the detention of six other Azerbaijani nationals. Azerbaijan accused Russian law enforcement of torture and murder, citing forensic evidence of violence. Russia's Investigative Committee claimed one death was caused by a heart attack and said the other remains under investigation.

Azerbaijan's response

Baku responded swiftly. Azerbaijani police at the end of June raided the Baku offices of Sputnik, a Kremlin-backed news outlet, and detained three journalists. Two -- the bureau chief and editor-in-chief -- are being held for four months on preliminary charges of fraud and money laundering. Moscow denounced the arrests as illegal and politically motivated.

Soon after, Azerbaijani state television aired footage of recently arrested Russian nationals accused of drug trafficking and cybercrimes. Some bore signs of beating, an image meant for consumption not just in Azerbaijan. Russia retaliated by deporting the leader of the Azerbaijani diaspora in Moscow and arresting another prominent natives of Azerbaijan in Russia.

The standoff kept escalating. Both sides summoned ambassadors, cancelled cultural events and issued strident public statements. Reports of a potential closure of Russian-language schools in Azerbaijan began circulating online. AzTV, a state-controlled broadcaster, aired a segment on political repression in Russia and compared President Vladimir Putin to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

The conflict has spilled over into social media, where users from the two countries waged rhetorical warfare.

Escaping Russian influence

Relations between Russia and Azerbaijan took a sharp turn in December after an Azerbaijan Airlines flight crashed near Aktau, Kazakhstan, killing 38 of the 67 people on board. The plane, en route to Grozny, Russia, reportedly had entered airspace covered by Russian antiaircraft systems that had repelled a Ukrainian drone attack.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev demanded an apology and accountability from Moscow. Putin expressed regret but stopped short of admitting fault, further straining ties.

The fallout from the Yekaterinburg raid is a direct consequence of that unresolved crisis and reflects Baku's broader effort to shed Moscow's lingering post-Soviet influence, say analysts.

Azerbaijan is a "self-sufficient, stable participant" in relations with Russia, Kirill Krivosheev of Armenia's Lava Media said in a July interview with blogger Ilya Varlamov.

"There is nothing that Russia can deprive [Azerbaijan] of that would cause it to collapse," Krivosheev said. "These countries exist separately."

Any dependence more likely works in the opposite direction: Russia needs Azerbaijan more as a transit country that connects it with its strategic partner Iran, said Krivosheev. So Baku is using the current standoff to force a shift in the relationship.

"Azerbaijan is raising the stakes because it hopes to use this conflict to secure a different relationship with Russia, to gain a foothold on a new frontier in order to be able to impose its will," he explained in another interview.

Russia's weakness

Moscow still holds some leverage over Baku through the large, affluent Azerbaijani diaspora, economist Meruert Makhmutova, director of the Public Policy Research Center in Almathy, said. But Russia is steadily losing influence in the Caucasus, distracted and weakened by the war in Ukraine, she added.

"Taking advantage of Russia's weakness, countries in the region are moving away from it," she told Kontur.

Armenia is one of them. Though still formally aligned with Moscow through the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Yerevan has distanced itself from the bloc after Russia failed to intervene during Azerbaijan's 2023 offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, a region in Azerbaijan that Armenia controlled for three decades.

The attack displaced more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians and deeply eroded Armenian trust in the CSTO. In January, Armenia and the United States signed a new security cooperation agreement.

And on June 20, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan conferred with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Istanbul on possible normalization of ties, a historic step analysts see as part of a broader effort to ease tensions in the region.

Pashinyan made significant concessions in pursuit of peace with Armenia's two neighbors.

Political analysts see the shift as a setback for Moscow.

Armenia's cooperation with Türkiye and Azerbaijan could deliver a serious geopolitical blow to Russia, Arman Shurayev, a Kazakh opinion leader and former director of his country's Khabar and KTK TV channels, said.

"This means that the Turkic-speaking states will be connected in a single space, from Central Asia to the Mediterranean, and Russia will lose its levers of influence in the South Caucasus," he told Kontur.

Such a bloc, he said, could form a more self-sufficient political and economic space, increasingly independent from Russia.

With Moscow weakened by its war in Ukraine, Azerbaijan now has a real opportunity to expand its regional influence, said Shurayev.

"A new center of influence is being formed in the region, which will create the conditions for the realization of the idea of a Greater Turan that unites Turkic-speaking peoples," said Shurayev.

"This could become a serious force capable of countering the Kremlin's imperial ambitions."