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Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has accused the Russian Armed Forces of deliberately striking his country’s diplomatic facilities in Ukraine. He made the statement following a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
According to Aliyev, the Azerbaijani embassy has come under attack three times over the course of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“Our embassy in Ukraine was struck three times. After the first strike, we thought it might have been accidental. We then provided the Russian side with the coordinates of our diplomatic missions — the consular section, the cultural center, and the embassy. Despite this, two more strikes followed. This is a deliberate attack on Azerbaijan’s diplomatic missions,” Aliyev said.
He added that Baku had sent an official note to Moscow and summoned the Russian ambassador to the Foreign Ministry. The Azerbaijani leader called Russia’s actions an “unfriendly step.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry responded by saying it was “puzzled” by the accusations. It emphasized that during strike planning, “careful control of combat data is carried out to prevent harm to civilians,” and that the locations of diplomatic missions are taken into account.
Aliyev’s statements come amid a prolonged crisis in relations between Moscow and Baku. In December 2024, a Russian air defense missile fired from a battery near the city of Grozny caused the crash of an Azerbaijani Airlines passenger plane, and Aliyev publicly expressed his displeasure with the fact that Vladimir Putin did not call him to offer personal condolences. Instead, Putin had Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov contact the Azerbaijani head of state, a move that Baku interpreted as a deliberate snub.
Then, in the fall of 2025, tensions escalated again after a raid by Russian security forces in Yekaterinburg targeted multiple suspects of Azerbaijani descent. More than 50 people were detained during the operation, and two — brothers Ziyaddin and Guseyn Safarov — died while in Russian custody. Baku accused Moscow of “extrajudicial killings” and opened a criminal case over the torture and murder of its citizens.
Shortly thereafter, Azerbaijani authorities detained the heads of pro-Russian outlet Sputnik Azerbaijan: Executive Director Igor Kartavykh and Editor-in-Chief Yevgeny Belousov. They were charged with fraud and illegal business activities and were later expelled back to Russia.