By Vusal GULIYEV, Leading Advisor at the Baku-based Center of Analysis of International Relations (AIR Center)

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev delivered a speech at the “Shanghai Cooperation Organization Plus” (SCO+) meeting in Tianjin, China (September 2025) underlining Azerbaijan’s role in regional connectivity and energy cooperation. Energy is a cornerstone of Azerbaijan’s economy and a major area of cooperation with both China and other SCO countries. As a hydrocarbon-rich nation on the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan brings significant oil and gas assets to any partnership. It has leveraged its dialogue partner status in the SCO to advance energy collaboration aiming to diversify its export markets, attract investment in energy infrastructure, and even develop new energy technologies. Building on this foundation, Azerbaijan has gradually shifted its energy focus from its traditional European partners toward emerging Asian markets. Traditionally, Azerbaijan’s oil and gas have flowed Westward to Europe (through pipelines like BTC and TANAP), but now Asian markets are increasingly in focus. China has begun importing Azerbaijani crude oil in recent years. Although volumes are modest relative to Azerbaijan’s exports to Europe, they signal a growing Far Eastern demand. READ MORE

• EGF Editor  |  Published on EGF: 12.09.2025  |  Energy
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By Vasif HUSEYNOV, PhD, Head of Department, AIR Center, Adjunct Lecturer, ADA and Khazar Universities, Baku

On August 28, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced that his country will start substantive talks next month with the United States and Azerbaijan on the practical arrangements for opening a transit route to Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave via the territory of Armenia. The agreement on this route (hereafter the Zangezur Corridor) was reached on August 8 during a trilateral meeting between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Prime Minister Pashinyan, mediated by U.S. President Donald Trump. According to the trilateral agreement, the route (renamed as the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, or TRIPP) would serve as an “unimpeded” passage and be managed through what Trump called an “exclusive partnership” between Armenia and the United States for 99 years. According to Pashinyan, this implies the deployment of an “Armenia-United States company” which “will carry out the business management”. He underscored that the company “will not control that road but manage it,” refuting the domestic criticism about the loss of Armenian sovereignty over the route and the sublease of the territory to the United States. READ MORE

• EGF Editor  |  Published on EGF: 12.09.2025  |  External Relations
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By Fuad Shahbazov, Baku-based independent regional security and defence analyst

Uneasy neighbours at the best of times, open hostility from the Kremlin is pushing Azerbaijan closer to Ukraine.
Russian drones attacked an oil depot in Odesa in Ukraine on August 17. That’s not unusual, but that night’s target was notable in one important sense — the Kremlin struck high-profile infrastructure owned by SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state oil company. This was no accident. Russia had attacked the same SOCAR facility in Ukraine on August 8. Taken together with a series of other events, it has become clear that Putin’s men are sending a message. That comes at some risk to themselves and potential benefits for Ukraine. These weren’t the first or even the most serious Russian acts of hostility against the energy-rich South Caucasian nation. On Christmas Day, Russian missile batteries shot down a scheduled Azerbaijan Airways plane, killing 38 people. The incident caused uproar, not least because while the missile firing may have resulted from mistaken identity, Russian air controllers refused the badly damaged aircraft permission to land. READ MORE

• EGF Editor  |  Published on EGF: 08.09.2025  |  External Relations
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By Yunis GURBANOV, PhD, Senior Advisor at the AIR Center, Baku

The Alaska summit highlighted the discordant divergence between Washington and Moscow after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and exposed the limits of summit diplomacy in the context of a grinding war. President Trump reaffirmed America's formal commitment to Ukraine's sovereignty and NATO's deterrent stance, but his words were typically qualified by continual calls for a "realistic settlement" with Moscow. This contrasted sharply with the State Department’s prior line, suggesting internal tensions within Washington’s approach. President Putin, for his part, sought to capitalize on these uncertainties: he promoted Russia's military successes as irreversible facts on the ground, demanded Western recognition of occupied land, and framed Moscow's actions as a defensive reaction against NATO "encirclement. READ MORE

• EGF Editor  |  Published on EGF: 08.09.2025  |  External Relations
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By Benyamin POGHOSYAN, PhD, Senior Research Fellow at the APRI Armenia

Turkey-Russia relations are typically based on compartmentalization. They simultaneously compete and cooperate in various regions, separating the areas in which their interests are overlapping from those where they are in competition. This concept was the base of their competing relations in Syria until the demise of Assad regime in 2024, and mutual interactions in post-Gaddafi Libya. Another aspect of compartmentalization is the conscious separation of economy and geopolitics: they have been developing economic cooperation while competing in geopolitics. Economic cooperation is significant for both Russia and Turkey, considering Russian gas and oil imported by Turkey and the construction by the Russian state nuclear energy company ROSATOM of a nuclear power plant in Akkuyu, southern Turkey. READ MORE

• EGF Editor  |  Published on EGF: 08.09.2025  |  External Relations
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By Sultan ZAHIDOV, Leading Advisor at the AIR Center, Baku and Senior Lecturer at the Baku State University

For decades, establishing lasting peace in the South Caucasus has been one of the most persistent challenges for regional states and international actors alike. Straddling vital geostrategic lines of Eurasia, this region has long been a geopolitical “shatter belt” — a zone where the interests of great and regional powers collide. External actors have repeatedly sought to exploit these divisions, employing “divide et impera” strategies that, rather than resolving disputes, have often exacerbated tensions. Not without reason, renowned scholar Thomas de Waal describes the South Caucasus as “the lands in between,” emphasizing its role as a crossroads of competing powers. According to Barry Buzan’s ‘overlay’ concept, the weakening and decline of great powers paves the way for the resurgence of past conflicts that had previously been de-escalated under the authority of the dominant power. Indeed, the collapse of the Soviet Union reopened the Pandora’s box of frozen conflicts, none more consequential than the Armenia–Azerbaijan conflict. READ MORE

• EGF Editor  |  Published on EGF: 08.09.2025  |  External Relations
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By Shanthie Mariet D’Souza, PhD, founder & president, Mantraya Institute for Strategic Studies (MISS)

Over the past few months, a process of normalization in the China-India bilateral has taken off.
Relations between nations can be fragile. Contingent upon internal and external factors – interests and compulsions – sour relations can turn into mutually beneficial partnerships. At the same time, harmonious relations that held out promises for the future can go awry. India is undergoing such a phase of transformation and rebalancing. Donald Trump’s United States, with the imposition of 50 percent tariffs, appears to have scaled down its interest in India as a checkmate to China’s assertive foreign policy in the Indo-Pacific, endangering the Quad. China, also bruised by Trump’s tariff policy, is sensing an opportunity to not just mend ties with India, but also try creating a Beijing-Moscow-New Delhi alliance. In light of these shifts, New Delhi’s much-avowed policy of strategic autonomy is undergoing a reorientation of sorts – swinging from a tilt toward the U.S. to one that is veering toward Beijing, albeit with a continued hope that Washington may realize its mistake and change tracks. READ MORE

• EGF Editor  |  Published on EGF: 08.09.2025  |  External Relations
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By Vasif HUSEYNOV, PhD, Head of Department, AIR Center, Adjunct Lecturer, ADA and Khazar Universities, Baku

President Donald Trump is right to describe the U.S.-mediated summit between the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders on August 8 in Washington as a historic event. It is historic not only for its contribution to the peace process between the two countries, but also for the significant reshaping of the South Caucasus’ security order that it has set in motion. The day after the summit, the region woke up to a new reality – one markedly different from what had existed until recently. Undoubtedly, the most significant outcome of the Washington summit for the people of the South Caucasus was the agreements signed between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The two countries initialled the peace agreement, agreed to sign it following the removal of territorial claims against Azerbaijan from Armenia’s state constitution, jointly appealed for the dissolution of the Minsk Group of the OSCE, and agreed on the opening of the Zangezur corridor. READ MORE

• EGF Editor  |  Published on EGF: 12.08.2025  |  External Relations
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By Yunis GURBANOV, PhD, Senior Advisor at the AIR Center, Baku

The high-level encounter between Russian and Ukrainian representatives took place on 23 July 2025 in Istanbul. Turkey hosted the encounter with significant diplomatic weight, focusing on limited ceasefire corridors, the exchange of prisoners, and grain exports through the Black Sea. Though apparently narrow in scope, the gathering represents a rebalancing in wider geopolitics. Turkey's mediating role in Istanbul facilitates Ankara's renewed desire to be at the centre of regional diplomacy, particularly considering that Turkey has just hosted Russia-Ukraine direct negotiations in 2025 as a testament to its resumed mediating interests. On the other hand, Western leaders remained unimpressed by Moscow's long-term intentions, particularly in light of Russia's unyielding ultimatums in negotiations and ongoing military belligerency, calling into question its genuine interest in arriving at a settlement other than temporary tactical respite or concession. READ MORE

• EGF Editor  |  Published on EGF: 12.08.2025  |  External Relations
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By Yeghia TASHJIAN, Beirut-based regional analyst and researcher, columnist, "The Armenian Weekly”

On August 8, Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and U.S. President Donald Trump endorsed a memorandum of understanding with seven points, affirming their commitment to finalize a peace agreement. At the same time, bilateral agreements were signed between the U.S. and each country separately. According to Narek Sukiasyan, a research fellow at the Center for Culture and Civilization Studies at Yerevan State University, the clauses in the memorandum carry considerable geopolitical weight. Most directly, they mandate the disbanding of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group, which was co-chaired by the U.S., France and Russia to help resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict peacefully. Baku has marginalized the group since 2020. READ MORE

• EGF Editor  |  Published on EGF: 12.08.2025  |  External Relations
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