Azerbaijan’s Tovuz district hosts much of the country’s critical infrastructure, such as oil and natural gas pipelines that supply Europe, the Transit Europe-Asia terrestrial (fiber optic) cable, the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway that connects Azerbaijan to Turkey, the M2 motorway that connects Azerbaijan and Georgia, and the Lapis Lazuli corridor, a multi-modal trade route that runs from Afghanistan to Turkey. United Nations and the European Union urged both sides to cease fire and on the 22nd the respective foreign ministers spoke but diplomacy doesn’t have much to show for itself since 1994 cease fire between the belligerents. Modern Azerbaijan, which borders Russia, Turkey, and Iran, was founded while defending its territory against Armenian secessionists in Nagorno-Karabakh. But the country had a history of early independence that predated the Soviet Union, where it was the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR). The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, a parliamentary republic, was founded in 1918 at the fall of the Russian Empire, but lost its independence in 1920 to the Red Army. In 1923, at the order of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union’s commissar of nationalities, the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO), was established within the borders of the Azerbaijan SSR.
While Russia is the biggest source of arms for Azerbaijan, it is also Armenia’s patron, and in July shipped an emergency supply of weapons to Armenia, which it claimed was “construction materials.” After the start of hostilities Russia conducted military exercises in the southwest of the country and offered to act as a mediator between Baku and Yerevan. One of its considerations, aside from its self-regard as the “big brother” of another Turkic country, was concern about the surety of the Caucasus transport lines as they are the only overland routes from Turkey (and Europe) to the Caucasus, Central Asia, and China not controlled by Russia or Iran. Another was to get ahead of Washington’s threatened sanctions on companies involved in Russian pipelines to Europe and Turkey which twins with Turkey’s policy of reducing its reliance Russian natural gas, which has seen a 70% fall in takings since 2019.