16:12, 13 August 2025

Russian Foreign Ministry Reacts to Information on Azerbaijan's Arms Supplies to Ukraine

Moscow stated that Azerbaijan's arms supplies to Ukraine would worsen the situation. The lifting of the embargo on arms supplies to Ukraine was reported with reference to unnamed sources.

As "Caucasian Knot" reported, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed an order to allocate $2 million to the country's Ministry of Energy to provide humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

On July 28, the chairman of the board of the Ukrainian company Naftogaz, Serhiy Koretsky, announced the conclusion of the first agreement with SOCAR Energy Ukraine (a subsidiary of the Azerbaijani State Oil Company SOCAR) for the purchase of gas. The agreement provides for a test supply of a small volume of gas. The novelty of the signed agreement between Kiev and Baku is that for the first time the Azerbaijani side will supply gas via the Trans-Balkan Corridor. Although the deal is primarily commercial in nature for Azerbaijan, it will allow it to count on political dividends from Ukraine's Western allies.

A possible lifting of the embargo on arms supplies to Ukraine by Azerbaijan will not contribute to the settlement of the conflict, said Alexey Fadeyev, Deputy Director of the Information and Press Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

"Our Azerbaijani partners are well aware of our position regarding the supply of... dual-use weapons or humanitarian aid. We believe that such actions will not contribute to the settlement of the conflict and will only aggravate the situation," Interfax quotes Fadeyev as saying at a briefing.

According to him, the Russian Foreign Ministry "paid attention" to reports in the Azerbaijani media that Baku may allow arms supplies to Ukraine.

Earlier, on August 10, the Azerbaijani publication Caliber, citing "reliable sources," linked possible arms supplies to Ukraine and strikes on Azerbaijani facilities on Ukrainian territory. "This situation forces Baku to take retaliatory measures. All this will inevitably lead to an even deeper crisis in bilateral relations,” the publication says.

On August 10, during a telephone conversation between Aliyev and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, they condemned the attacks on energy facilities belonging to Azerbaijan. We are talking about the oil storage facility of the Azerbaijani company SOCAR in Ukraine, as well as other facilities, including a compressor station transporting Azerbaijani gas to Ukraine. The Russian Ministry of Defense reported that between August 2 and 8, “gas transportation system facilities that ensure the operation of enterprises” of the country's defense industry were hit in Ukraine.

Azerbaijan is probably already supplying weapons to Ukraine through intermediaries, said Konstantin Zatulin, First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs.

"According to certain information, they have already carried out these deliveries - shells and other things - through intermediaries, that is, Azerbaijan has not seriously limited itself in this regard. Azerbaijan's threats to supply weapons to Ukraine... well, let them try," RTVI quotes the deputy as saying.

Recall that relations between Moscow and Baku have noticeably worsened after the plane crash, more details about this can be found in the "Caucasian Knot" report "Baku-Grozny Plane Crash" and in the article "Geopolitical Confrontation: What Did the AZAL Plane Crash Lead to?".

A new round of deterioration in relations between the two countries was the ethnic raids in Russia and the retaliatory detentions of Russians in Azerbaijan. Baku accuses the Russian authorities of extrajudicial reprisals against Azerbaijanis, and footage of the brutal detention of Russians in Baku looks like a demonstrative response to Moscow's actions, according to the "Caucasian Knot" report "Crisis in Relations between Azerbaijan and Russia".

Materials about the deterioration of relations between the two states have been collected by the "Caucasian Knot" on the thematic page "Collapse of Relations between Baku and Moscow".

Translated automatically via Google translate from https://www.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/413787