BAKU, September 8
A fleeting handshake between Presidents Ilham Aliyev and Vladimir Putin in Beijing has become the Rorschach test of the week for South Caucasus watchers. Political analyst Vladimir Kopchak, speaking to Novosti Kavkaza, said the brief exchange signaled a cooling, crisis-tinged phase in Russia – Azerbaijan relations rather than any rapprochement. He argued that subsequent Russian messaging – including a foreign-ministry line about compensation related to the downed aircraft case – only sharpened Baku’s irritation, given that payouts came via insurance as a routine legal matter, not a Kremlin decision.
Commentators also dwelt on optics that cut deeper than protocol. The carefully choreographed images of the first ladies of Azerbaijan and Armenia – including a trio of shots alongside Turkey’s first lady – were framed as the week’s most telling tableau, reflecting momentum around the Armenian–Azerbaijani peace track. Aliyev’s on-record remarks in a recent Al Arabiya interview, where he spoke of two strikes on the aircraft and honored the pilots, were cited as further evidence of Baku’s hardened narrative – one Moscow has struggled to counter.
The SCO summit and its sidelines loomed large. Analysts said the much-discussed possibility of synchronized Armenian – Azerbaijani accession never stood a real chance; both capitals, they argued, arrived in the mood “not to join.” China’s role as an emerging “overseer” in Eurasia was flagged alongside a caution: don’t expect a CSTO-style security umbrella with Chinese characteristics. The one concrete note in otherwise diffuse communiqués, they said, was a sharper line condemning U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran — while Ukraine was conspicuously absent.
Armenia’s strategy was cast as a “new normal”: resisting overt Russian pressure while diversifying defense ties and keeping relations with Iran and India in delicate balance. Reports of Indian displeasure over Yerevan’s outreach to Pakistan were portrayed as diplomatically manageable. The bigger shift, analysts claimed, is that Armenia has built an internal procurement market that no longer runs through Moscow – a political achievement they rate as more consequential than any single arms deal.
Georgia entered the conversation as a warning sign. The ruling camp in Tbilisi was described as formalizing a slow break with the EU and NATO “by design and with taunts,” using culture-war themes and foreign-agent legislation as wedges. The forecast: a strong showing in October’s municipal contests, no early parliamentary elections, and continued brinkmanship with Brussels regardless of whether visa-free travel is ultimately curtailed. In this telling, any EU leniency would be read not as engagement but as weakness.
Infrastructure politics threaded through it all. Why hasn’t China moved on the Anaklia deep-sea port? The simplest answer offered was “political stability”: Beijing is waiting out Georgia’s turbulence while defaulting to existing Russian routes. If sanctions on Russia were ever eased, analysts warned, pressure would grow to channel trade through Novorossiysk and the Trans-Siberian, with Anaklia recast as a complement rather than a pivot.
Across the week’s debates, one through-line kept surfacing: Moscow’s leverage is eroding in Baku and constrained in Yerevan, yet still potent enough for economic pressure. Beijing watches and waits. And the region continues to live with a new baseline – not a plateau of calm, but a colder, testier equilibrium.
Source: Novosti Kavkaza (in Russian). Full video here
