Kyiv’s realpolitik in the South Caucasus

New Eastern Europe
Kyiv’s realpolitik in the South Caucasus

Ukraine's ties to autocratic Azerbaijan reveal the uncomfortable limits of a values-centric foreign policy.

Ukrainians typically conceive of the war against Russia as one fought on behalf of all of democratic Europe. Indeed, since Moscow’s 2022 invasion, Ukrainian, European, and American policy-makers have regularly framed the war as a global struggle between democracy and autocracy. Yet, there is an increasingly notable exception to this rule: Kyiv’s productive relationship with highly autocratic Azerbaijan.

Such an example came in early August when Kyiv rolled out the red carpet for Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov.

Over the course of two days, Bayramov met with Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, Head of Presidential Administration Kyrylo Budanov, and finally Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It was Bayramov’s first visit to Kyiv, which also included side trips to commemorate massacres of Ukrainian civilians at Bucha and Irpin.

Talks focused on increased cooperation in energy, economics, agriculture, and security.

In Kyiv, Bayramov spoke forthrightly about Baku’s support for Ukrainian territorial integrity, picking up on sentiments expressed by Azerbaijani strongman President Ilham Aliyev, who has urged Ukrainians to “never accept occupation”.

For Ukraine, there are good reasons to seek a stronger partnership with energy-rich Azerbaijan.

Ukraine, like a number of other European states, already purchases Azerbaijani hydrocarbons, and may be seeking to increase these imports. Beyond gas and oil, Azerbaijan is situated on strategically valuable geography, the largest and most populous state in the South Caucasus and a critical gateway from the region to Central Asia. Additionally, Azerbaijan is likely the single closest partner to strategically vital Turkey, creating another diplomatic incentive for Kyiv to maintain close working connections with Baku.

Zelenskyy previously visited Azerbaijan in April, where he met with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and signed a series of agreements on drone cooperation. During the trip, Zelenskyy posted to social media indicating that Ukrainian servicemen are on the ground operating in Azerbaijan, a country that borders both Russia and Iran.

From a broader geopolitical perspective, the country is a fellow post-Soviet state that has long sought distance from Moscow and has spent recent years renegotiating its relationship with Russia. Since 2024, Aliyev has extracted public apologies from Vladimir Putin after Russia shot down an Azerbaijani civilian airliner, welcomed the United States’ leading role in Azerbaijan-Armenia peacemaking, and removed much of the infrastructure of Russian influence in Azerbaijan.

 

Ukraine can now encourage and help facilitate this pivot away from Russia. Bayramov’s visit to Ukraine was notably more substantial than his July trip to Moscow, which consisted of only a meeting and joint press conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Yet, a warm relationship with Baku will inevitably rub up against Ukraine’s conception of itself as a fundamentally democratic state and power. A week prior to Bayramov’s recent visit to Kyiv, a Baku court sentenced a group of nine Azerbaijani journalists to prison sentences upwards of ten years each. The Committee to Protect Journalists released a statement condemning the verdict as a “textbook example of how an absence of international accountability emboldens autocrats like Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev”. 

Such heavy sentences have become increasingly common in Azerbaijan in recent years, as Aliyev has worked to destroy what little independent media remained in the country.

Putting aside the issue of how Aliyev chose to militarily resolve the question of Nagorno-Karabakh, the territory long disputed between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Baku is an aggressive actor beyond Azerbaijan’s own borders.

Since the Armenian-Azerbaijani clashes in late 2021 and 2022, Baku has occupied about 200 square kilometers of internationally recognized Armenian territory. These are positions Azerbaijan would appear to have no interest in vacating, with evidence that Azerbaijani troops have only entrenched their infrastructure there.

At the same time, Aliyev has stymied and complicated the post-2023 normalization and peace agreement talks with Yerevan, preventing Armenia from normalizing relations with both Azerbaijan and Turkey. As Russia has done to Ukraine, Azerbaijan is demanding Armenia modify its constitution as part of any peace process, a complicated task many see as having been introduced to draw out the normalization process and extract symbolic concessions.

Reflecting similar Kremlin talking points as they relate to Ukraine, Azerbaijani elites now frequently label Armenia “Western Azerbaijan,” demanding the right to settle Azerbaijanis in Armenian territory. In Yerevan, such rhetoric is seen as constituting a potential precondition for further military action against Armenia, even as relations move closer towards normalization.

In fairness to Kyiv, Ukraine is not the only democracy with growing ties to Azerbaijan. European Union officials have overseen a years-long expansion of relations with Azerbaijan as an important alternative source of energy amid the pivot away from Russian hydrocarbons.

A double standard in the Caucasus is likewise not only a Ukrainian phenomenon. Both EU and Ukrainian policymakers are quick to decry democratic backsliding in Georgia, yet overlook more severe human rights abuses in neighboring Azerbaijan. The difference is clear: Georgia is a former democracy becoming more Russian aligned, while Azerbaijan, a far more brutal autocracy, is nevertheless working to create distance from Moscow.

This is not to say it would be wise for Ukraine to begin raising the issue of human rights and Armenia with Azerbaijani policy-makers. Like European states, Ukraine needs sources of oil and gas other than Russia. The US-Israel-Iran war having nearly closed off the Strait of Hormuz, Azerbaijani resources and the Baku-backed Southern Gas Corridor has become all the more valuable.

Calling out the Aliyev regime for human rights abuses will likely produce little positive change. Former US President Joe Biden attempted such an approach, with the only outcome being a worse US-Azerbaijan relationship. Realistically, there is basically no prospect of a human-rights-oriented position materializing in Kyiv-Baku relations. After all, nothing will push a country towards realism and realpolitik like a war for its very survival.

Yet Ukrainians should be aware of the view of hypocrisy close relations with Baku can generate. Armenians are certainly aware of it. When Zelenskyy visited Yerevan for the first time this past May, an Armenian journalist asked the Ukrainian president about his close relations with Baku and arms sales to Azerbaijan. Zelenskyy declined to answer, producing a clip that went viral in Armenian circles.

Kyiv does appear interested in a broader South Caucasus regional approach. The pace of contacts between Ukrainian and Armenian policymakers has picked up notably since this May, and Ukrainian security services have noted the strategic significance of Armenia’s pivot away from Moscow. But the close ties to Azerbaijan look likely to complicate, if nothing else, the public perception of Ukraine within Armenian society.

As the relationships between the United States and Israel, Saudi Arabia, and others have shown, when a state which presents itself in value-centric terms backs one that routinely engages in human rights abuses, it can generate political blowback at home and abroad.

For now, the potentially troubling relationship with Baku is subsumed by the war against Russia and by the fact that there is a positive, if frustratingly slow, progression toward normalization of relations in the South Caucasus. Such a situation, however, is unlikely to be indefinite.

Nicholas Castillo is a freelance writer and a graduate student at Harvard University pursuing a Master of Arts in regional studies for Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. His primary research areas include the politics and security of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus and the politics of identity, ethnic conflict, and authoritarianism. Nicholas’s written work has appeared in outlets including the Moscow Times and OC Media, and he is the managing editor of the Substack Eastern Neighborhood Bulletin.