Ex-Soviet state warns of NATO-Russia ‘apocalypse’
Azerbaijan hopes tensions between Russia and NATO will not escalate into a direct war, which would be catastrophic for the world, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev told Russian media on Wednesday.
”Pondering this scenario, NATO and Russia engaging in a hot war, is like imagining the apocalypse,” the leader of the post-Soviet republic told journalist and media executive Dmitry Kiselyov.
It is clear that there would be no victor in such a confrontation and that “no nation, even those located far from the regions of NATO and Russia, would feel safe,” the president added.
Baku hopes that Washington and Moscow, as well as other players, will have enough political wisdom to prevent this “nightmarish scenario” from coming true, Aliyev said. If required, “we are ready to contribute to the cause of deflating the tensions,” he added.
Russia has blamed NATO expansion in Europe and the bloc’s failure to acknowledge Russian security concerns for the current enmity between the two sides. The Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022 largely due to NATO’s intention of bringing the country into its ranks, according to officials in Moscow.
Aliyev stated that his government has certain issues with the US-led bloc too, due to its increasing involvement with Azerbaijan’s rival Armenia.
”NATO infrastructure is being created on our border on the Armenian side under the guise of so-called European observers,” he told Kiselyov.
Baku and Yerevan have been in conflict for decades, largely over the Azerbaijani region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The large ethnic Armenian population in the territory declared independence amid the collapse of the USSR and maintained de facto self-rule until recently. Azerbaijan reestablished its control in two major military campaigns in 2020 and 2023. Armenia and Azerbaijan have also engaged in several rounds of direct border clashes in recent years.
Yerevan has accused its traditional ally Moscow of failing to ensure its safety and turned to Western nations, such as France, for military assistance. Russia has warned Armenia that its hopes are ill-placed, and that the US and its allies only pursue their own interests and have a record of exploiting and abandoning nations that rely on them.
