Azerbaijan is reportedly considering breaking its embargo on supplying Ukraine with military weapons if Russia continues to strike its interests in Ukraine.
The Azerbaijani pro-government media outlet Caliber has on Sunday claimed that Baku will “begin considering” supplying Ukraine with weapons following a Russian attack on an Azerbaijani oil depot.
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Citing anonymous officials, the outlet wrote that Russia’s army has begun “systematically striking” Azerbaijani energy facilities in Ukraine, and said that the situation “forces Baku to take retaliatory measures.”
“All of this will inevitably lead to a further deepening of the crisis in bilateral relations,” the outlet wrote.
On Friday, Aug. 8, Russia hit an oil refinery of the Azerbaijan oil company SOCAR in the Odesa region with five drones, causing damage to the diesel fuel pipeline.
Four SOCAR employees were seriously injured in a fire sparked by the attack, which Ukrainian law enforcement officers said was the main target of the strike.
Friday’s attack was the second of such attacks on energy infrastructure linked to Azerbaijan in the past week. It followed another Russian attack on a gas compressor station near Orlivka in the Odesa region on Aug. 6.
The station is part of the newly launched gas corridor, known as the Trans-Balkan route, to help Ukraine alleviate its energy deficit ahead of the 2025-2026 winter season.
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Azeri gas began flowing into Ukraine through the pipeline following a recent deal, but deliveries stopped in August.
Baku has thus far refrained from supplying weapons to either Russia or Ukraine, though it has supplied Ukraine with more than $40 million in humanitarian aid, including transformers and generators, to repair power grids damaged by Russian attacks.
However, despite this official stance of neutrality, it is clear that its attitude towards Moscow has hardened in recent months even though some Azeri businesses – potentially with state involvement – have helped Moscow evade sanctions in the past.
Last month, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev advised Ukraine to “never give up” and “never agree to occupation,” adding that he sees no prospect for peace between Ukraine and Russia in the foreseeable future.
Azerbaijan holds a substantial arsenal of Soviet- and Russian-made weapons, including artillery systems, multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS), armored vehicles and tanks.
According to Defense Express, officials in Azerbaijan are mulling sending Ukraine supplies from the country’s existing military inventory, much of which hails from the Soviet era, as opposed to newly manufactured products from its defense industry.
On Monday, Aliyev signed an order to allocate $2 million to the Ministry of Energy of Ukraine for purchasing and shipping Azerbaijani-made electrical equipment as humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
It followed a phone conversation on Sunday between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Aliyev, in which the leaders condemned Russia’s “deliberate airstrikes” on oil facilities owned by SOCAR, according to a statement from Azerbaijan’s presidential office.
Aliyev and Zelensky “emphasized their confidence that these attacks would not hinder energy cooperation between Azerbaijan and Ukraine,” the statement continued.
In his own statement on the conversation, Zelensky said he had told Aliyev that Ukraine considers the attacks on its energy infrastructure “a deliberate attempt by Russia to block energy routes that guarantee energy independence for us and other European countries.”
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