In a fresh instance of deteriorating relations between Moscow and Baku, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said Russia had “invaded and occupied” Azerbaijan in 1920 as it established what would later become the Soviet Union.
In an interview with the Al-Arabiya TV channel, translated into English by Azerbaijan’s state agency Azertac, Aliyev noted that when the Russian Empire collapsed in 1917, Azerbaijan established the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, which existed until April 1920, when it was seized by the Bolsheviks.
“We established our own state, but the Bolsheviks took it from us,” Aliyev said, blaming the USSR for creating territorial disputes between Armenia and Azerbaijan that had escalated following the fall of the Soviet Union, namely by “giving” Zangezur, or what is now Armenia’s southernmost Syunik province, to the Armenian Soviet Republic.
Commenting on the war in Ukraine, Aliyev said that Azerbaijan had supported the territorial integrity of Ukraine “from the very first days of [the] Russian invasion”.
Tensions between Russia and Azerbaijan have escalated in recent months after an Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane crashed near the Kazakh city of Aktau on 25 December, killing 38 of the 67 people on board. While Vladimir Putin apologised to his Azerbaijani counterparts for the crash, which he called a “tragic incident”, he refused to admit that Russian air defences had shot down the plane.
On 2 July, Azerbaijani media outlet Minval published a leaked note allegedly written by Russian military captain Dmitry Paladichuk, in which he takes responsibility for transmitting the final order to shoot down the flight.
Relations between Moscow and Baku worsened further over the summer, after two Azerbaijani citizens died under unclear circumstances, and over 50 were arrested, during a police raid in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg in late June. Since then, law enforcement authorities in Azerbaijan and Russia have engaged in tit-for-tat arrests in a series of high-profile raids.
Calling the June raid “an unprecedented act” against Azerbaijani people in the Al-Arabiya interview, Aliyev said Azerbaijan was “not responsible” for the ongoing deterioration of relations with Russia. “We only respond in a constructive and legal manner, but we will never tolerate any sign or demonstration of aggression or disrespect towards us,” he concluded.