During a telephone conversation with President Ilham Aliyev Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated Ukraine’s unwavering support for Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, as was reported on July 1.
He conveyed condolences over the deaths of Azerbaijani nationals in Russia, urging a full investigation and stressing that “all facts will be clarified.”
The current crisis between Baku and Moscow was precipitated by an unprecedented FSB operation in Yekaterinburg on June 27, in which more than 50 individuals of Azerbaijani origin were detained. Post-mortem examinations revealed that two brothers, Ziyaddin and Huseyn Safarov, were beaten to death in custody, prompting Azerbaijani prosecutors to open a criminal investigation into what they denounced as “brutal killings.”
On the other side, on June 30, Azerbaijani security forces raided the Baku bureau of Sputnik Azerbaijan, detaining two Russian citizens on charges of spying for the FSB. Russia’s Foreign Ministry responded by summoning Azerbaijan’s ambassador, condemning the “illegal detention of Russian journalists” and demanding their immediate release.
In response to the Yekaterinburg incident, Azerbaijan canceled all cultural events organized by Russian state and private entities, summoned Russia’s chargé d’affaires to lodge a formal protest, and stripped Sputnik Azerbaijan of its accreditation for allegedly operating through illicit financing.
Analysts attribute the sudden escalation to Moscow’s growing unease over Azerbaijan’s emergence as a key link in the “Middle Corridor” transport network, which circumvents Russian routes, and Baku’s increasingly warm ties with the United States. “Moscow clearly sought to undermine Baku’s emergence as a transit hub by creating a crisis,” said Serhiy Danilov, deputy director of the Middle East Studies Center in Kyiv.
Despite the tension, both leaders agreed to deepen economic cooperation, scheduling the next session of the Ukraine–Azerbaijan intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation in the coming months. Zelenskyy highlighted Ukraine’s interest in expanding transport and energy links through the South Caucasus corridor.
Earlier, Azerbaijan officially expelled Rossotrudnichestvo, a Kremlin-backed organization, from its territory on February 6, terminating its operations as part of a broader campaign against external interference.
