Tbilisi / Online broadcast, September 25, 2025
Azerbaijani political figure Eldar Namazov said Russia “blinked first” in the South Caucasus and is now scrambling to spoil a U.S.-backed peace track between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Speaking on the Novosti Kavkaza YouTube channel with host Gela Vasadze, Namazov described Baku’s approach as “peace through strength,” arguing that Azerbaijan forced Moscow’s retreat despite the presence of Russian peacekeepers, and then pressed them to withdraw “ahead of schedule.” He called this a “deafening slap” to Moscow’s imperial circles and predicted that the Kremlin would shift tactics toward subversion inside Armenia.
Namazov laid out what he called the “Baku sandwich” – a sequence in which a peace agreement is first initialed and published, followed by a constitutional referendum and elections in Armenia, and finally formal signing of the treaty. In his view, this process turns the Armenian campaign into a referendum on war versus peace, a framing that sharply increases Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s odds of prevailing, since even critics are more likely to choose peace over renewed conflict with Azerbaijan.
The former presidential aide pointed to U.S. President Donald Trump’s visible engagement in the region, calling the connectivity initiative stretching from Central Asia through the South Caucasus to Europe the “Trump Route.”
He noted Trump’s public praise of Ilham Aliyev at the United Nations and linked it to major new U.S. economic agreements with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, which he said illustrate Washington’s re-entry into a region once seen as Moscow’s backyard.
Namazov also turned to the Ukraine war, claiming Trump has shifted from courting Moscow to arming Kyiv through NATO procurement. He described Russia as a “paper tiger” and predicted a long-term strategic stalemate that the Kremlin cannot overcome. He cited reports of new, relatively low-cost cruise missiles developed for Ukraine, which he said could alter the battlefield balance.
Beyond regional geopolitics, Namazov dismissed the United Nations as paralyzed, arguing that the body now resembles a “CIS 2.0” where leaders attend primarily to meet one another on the sidelines. He also mocked French President Emmanuel Macron after New York police briefly halted his motorcade near UN headquarters, quipping that the episode revealed the chaos of protocol during UN week.
Looking ahead, Namazov argued that only Azerbaijan currently has the capacity to alter the status quo militarily, but is deliberately choosing restraint.
Armenia, he said, lacks resources for escalation and will focus inward, unless Russian interference disrupts the planned constitutional and electoral sequence.
In his words, the stability of the South Caucasus now depends less on Yerevan’s will than on Baku’s decision to “use strength for peace” rather than force for conquest.
Source: Novosti Kavkaza (in Russian). Full video here
