On May 7, Russian Presidential Aide Yuri Ushakov announced that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev would not attend the May 9 parade on Red Square. The cancellation of the visit is further evidence of rising tensions between the countries.
Traditionally, the leaders of all countries with which Russia maintains diplomatic relations are invited to the parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. Following the start of the "SVO" and the imposition of sanctions against the aggressor country, the guest list was reduced. This year, 27 people attended the parade: the leaders of Abkhazia, Armenia, Belarus, Burkina Faso, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Vietnam, Venezuela, Guinea-Bissau, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Congo, Cuba, Mongolia, Myanmar, Palestine, Serbia, Slovakia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, and South Ossetia.
The President of Azerbaijan was also planning to attend, but canceled his trip two days before the event, ostensibly due to commemorative events dedicated to his father's birthday. He did indeed lay flowers at Heydar Aliyev's grave early in the morning, even though he was born on May 10th. Ilham Aliyev then honored the memory of his fellow countrymen who died fighting fascism, opened a mosque and a hospital in the Shushensky district, attended the groundbreaking of a residential building and the opening of a substation, and attended the presentation of a new livestock complex.
The chill in relations between Russia and Azerbaijan began to deepen on December 25, 2024, when an Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) Embraer 190, en route from Baku to Grozny, crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan. It was rejected in Grozny due to a drone attack. Thirty-eight of the 67 passengers and crew were killed. Aliyev claimed that the plane was fired upon from the ground by Russian air defense systems and demanded that Moscow punish those responsible and compensate the victims. Putin apologized for the incident but denied responsibility for the shooting. Kazakhstan is leading the investigation into the crash.
Relations between the countries continued to deteriorate throughout the year. On January 9, Vladimir Karasev, a member of the Russian Civic Chamber, responded to Aliyev's accusations by calling him an obscene word on his Telegram channel. Baku responded by calling Karasev "an uncultured being." Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov then stated that Russia values its relations with Azerbaijan, and that "we have neither seen nor heard" Karasev's words.
On January 22, during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Ilham Aliyev met with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. "The parties discussed ties between Azerbaijan and Ukraine in the political, economic, and humanitarian spheres, energy cooperation, and regional security issues," according to the Azerbaijani leader's website. The meeting sparked another wave of speculation among Russian speakers about whether Baku supplies weapons to Kyiv.
In February, the Russian House at Rossotrudnichestvo was closed in Baku. In response, some media outlets and officials, including State Duma deputy Nikolai Valuev, began to talk about the need to tighten measures against the Azerbaijani diaspora in Russia. Baku declared Valuev persona non grata and banned him from entering Azerbaijan. In early May, Azerbaijani deputy Azer Badamov was barred from entering Russia due to his "Russophobic statements."
