A trilateral meeting in Washington between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and U.S. President Donald Trump will no doubt go down as a watershed moment. For some Russian propagandists and TV pundits it also felt like a rude wake-up call. They claim Russia has been sidelined in the Baku–Yerevan settlement. That is humiliating and hurtful; given Russia’s historical role in the region, some may see it as unfair. But on closer inspection the outcome looks predictable and, in many ways, inevitable. And those in Moscow who should be “thanking” for this outcome are the very fans of the so-called "red folders" - stamped "top secret".
It’s hard to believe now, but until late 2024, relations between Azerbaijan and Russia were improving. City streets were plastered with posters for touring Russian stage stars. In December 2024, President Ilham Aliyev even sat for an interview with Russian journalist and TV presenter Dmitry Kiselev - a clear, if ambiguous, signal.
Then came the tragedy: Russian air defences shot down an Azerbaijani civilian airliner near Grozny. It was a mistake - a catastrophic failure. Within hours, it was clear that the Russian air-defence system had erred: fragments from the warhead of a standard Pantsir missile were found in the fuselage, in the cabin fittings and in the bodies of victims. Could Moscow have averted a full-scale bilateral crisis? Absolutely. The usual civilized response would have been to apologise, accept responsibility, launch a thorough investigation, hold the guilty to account and pay compensation. Instead, Moscow has been slow to apologise and has behaved in a way that many consider uncivilised. Outlandish explanations - "a collision with a Ukrainian drone" (despite the fact that there is no drone that functions like an anti-aircraft missile) or a "CIA operation" designed to drive a wedge between Baku and Moscow - were floated. No proper investigation has been conducted; no compensation has been paid. Ramzan Kadyrov was put forward to offer “material assistance” to victims’ families — an offer Baku rejected. There is a difference between assistance and compensation, and Azerbaijan understands that distinction well.
Azerbaijan waited several days and gave Moscow time to respond. When it did not do enough, Baku published its own findings, blamed Russian air-defence forces and formally appealed to ICAO, rejecting an investigation by the Interstate Aviation Committee.
There is an iron rule in geopolitics: amoral policy is self-defeating. It may yield short-term gains, but in the long run, it inflicts devastating damage on those who pursue it. That is what is happening to Russia today, including on the Azerbaijani front.
Russia had many chances to defuse tensions. Azerbaijan signalled it did not want confrontation - recall, for example, the evacuation of Russian citizens from Iran during the "12-day war". But after a short pause, the old patterns resumed. Moscow has kept looking for ways to pressure Azerbaijan, which, in the Kremlin narrative, has become so bold as to demand apologies from Russia. Propagandists are working overtime; security services put pressure on the diaspora, at times violently, as seen in Yekaterinburg. Rosselkhoznadzor began to "discover" problems in Azerbaijani tomatoes and peaches.
The most telling things happen behind the scenes - in those "red folders" on the desks of senior Russian officials. Judging by everything, those folders include not only Ukraine but Azerbaijan as a central subject. Azerbaijan seeks constructive, neighbourly relations with Russia - cooperation across many fields - but on the basis of sovereignty: no imperial diktat, no meddling, no provocations. The authors of the red-folder playbook, however, were not ready for that. They were not prepared to accept that relations must be built on equality and mutual respect. And this shift did not start only after the downing of the airliner.
I recall a telling exchange in the mid-1990s on Russia’s Channel One. The presenter said - somewhat lecturingly - that there were circles in Russia upset that Azerbaijan planned to export oil via Türkiye. I nearly laughed on air: I knew the security circles she meant. I pointed out that their logic was odd - a Russia-Türkiye pipeline was fine, but Azerbaijan-Türkiye was bad. If they think that way, that’s their problem: we would build our pipeline anyway.
Moscow long believed it had the right to decide which routes Azerbaijan should use to export hydrocarbons. Nobody in the "red folders" had the courage to write plainly that Azerbaijan is a sovereign state and will choose its own markets and routes. As Sergey Lavrov once advised, better not to "break pots". But the vocabulary in those folders said otherwise: "If Azerbaijan gets big oil, it will grow rich and we won’t be able to control it", "Don’t let it happen", "They’re following the Anglo-Saxons","Russophobia", and so on. After the 'Contract of the Century' was signed on 20 September 1994, Azerbaijan suffered terrorist attacks, the killing of state figures, escapes from detention and an attempted coup on 4 October — yet the bypass pipelines were built anyway, with predictable consequences for bilateral ties.
Much of today’s situation was anticipated. In 2000, I warned in Nezavisimaya Gazeta that the thinking behind those memos was stuck in the age of Ochakov and imperial conquest. That warning was ignored. Moscow’s foreign policy often ran counter to the "Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation" then in force, which emphasised protecting the rights of Russian citizens and compatriots abroad and promoting the Russian language and culture. In practice, however, Moscow failed to notice that among the 15 former Soviet republics only Armenia had effectively closed all Russian-language schools - something neither the Baltic states nor Ukraine did. Yet Moscow publicly accuses Ukraine, not Armenia, and even went to war over the supposed suppression of Russian language and culture in Ukraine - a claim that does not withstand scrutiny.
The strategic error was made early. In the 1990s, many in Moscow believed the former republics would play at independence and eventually "crawl back". Boris Berezovsky quoted security officials who claimed as much. I argued then - and repeat now - that they would not. The former republics are sovereign; treating them as vassals was a fundamental mistake. If Moscow had chosen to foster friendly, mutually respectful ties, the post-Soviet space might look very different today.
Instead, some Russian strategists seem to think the war against Ukraine will change everything — that a few more missile strikes or the devastation of cities will force others to “crawl back.” That assumption is dangerous and unrealistic.
The language coming from many Russian deputies, propagandists and some university lecturers has been crude and insulting toward Azerbaijan and its people. Criticism of Russia in the Azerbaijani press can be harsh, but it is not laced with the crude, mass-abuse rhetoric we have seen on Russian state TV. Is that the way to conduct international dialogue? Does it show respect for a partner?
Moscow clearly wants to keep influence in the former USSR, but are its chosen tools appropriate? The world now understands "soft power" - economic, humanitarian, cultural and personal ties. Russia had enormous potential here. Did it use it? Largely no. Where economic cooperation should have grown, there were energy blockades and trade wars; where human ties should have been nurtured, there were persecutions of people of Caucasian origin. No wonder soft power faltered - and it falters even more now, when, in response to Azerbaijan’s move to take the aviation case to an international court, some in Russia talk of striking Baku’s centre with an “Oreshnik” missile. There have been even more extreme calls: a State Duma deputy and an MGIMO lecturer urged bombing Azerbaijan’s oil industry with nuclear weapons; TV host Vladimir Solovyov openly talked about hitting Baku and Almaty. Such rhetoric only undermines any claim to be a constructive partner.
It is astonishing that in the 21st century Moscow believes threats and crude propaganda will strengthen bilateral ties. Every country has a ministry of defence to decide military matters — but there is also a foreign ministry and tools of soft power, including media and cultural diplomacy. When those instruments resort to talk of strikes and insults, it is no surprise that Russian policy unravels.
A harsher illustration is Russia’s long record in the Karabakh conflicts. Russia had ample opportunity to stop the fighting and use its influence for peace, but often chose otherwise: arms supplies to Armenia, the presence of Russian units fighting on Armenia’s side in the 1990s, and similar patterns during the Second Karabakh War. The “red folders” reflected a 19th-century view of geopolitics: Armenia as a historical ally. But what kind of ally is useful if there is no reliable land route to supply and support it? Since 1998, Russian-language education in Armenia has largely disappeared, and the country has become increasingly monoethnic. Moscow failed to notice this reality. The result: the largest U.S. embassy in the region is now in Yerevan, Armenia has at times turned West, and Russia’s old levers of influence have weakened.
The post-Soviet space is saturated with conflicts. Russia has often been involved - as mediator, peacekeeper or party to the conflict — and in many cases its involvement has made reconciliation harder. In Karabakh, this was painfully clear: atrocities, shelling of civilian areas, the alleged participation of Russian units in the Khojaly massacre, widespread destruction and desecration of cultural sites. Yet today both peoples have taken steps toward peace - a development that pains Russian propagandists, not only because it tarnishes Russia’s image as a peacekeeper but because manipulating conflicts no longer yields the same leverage.
In short, the era of heavy-handed, imperial tactics is passing. Some in Moscow still cling to outdated mental maps and the "red-folder" mindset. They imagined that the former republics would return to Moscow’s orbit; they were wrong. Sooner or later, the current crisis may be eased, but the old level of trust will not be restored. Moscow has lost its privileged role as mediator between Baku and Yerevan, and reopening that position will be difficult.
The lesson is straightforward: foreign policy must adapt to modern realities. The world has changed; the tools of influence that mattered in the 19th or even the late 20th century do not work the same way today. Had Moscow chosen engagement, dialogue and soft power earlier, the outcome might have been very different.
Fuad Akhundov
political analyst