The West’s Azerbaijan Paradox

On Sept. 25, three US senators sent an unusually clear and specific message about Azerbaijan. Senators Peter Welch, Thom Tillis and Tim Kaine called on US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to make the release of Azerbaijan’s political prisoners a condition of a deeper strategic partnership with Baku.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. In their letter, the senators specifically called for the immediate release of Ali Karimli, leader of the Azerbaijan Popular Front Party, alongside other prominent political prisoners. (It is worth noting that the letter mentions seven other names in addition to Karimli, although the true number of political prisoners is closer to 300+. Other prominent individuals not specifically mentioned in the letter include Ulvi Hasanli, Mamad Ibrahim, Azer Gasimli, and Bakhtiyar Hajiyev). The senators’ intervention is extremely timely and should be supported on both sides of the Atlantic. This is because the crucial question confronting Western governments is no longer simply whether they should speak more forcefully about human rights in Azerbaijan. Yes, Azerbaijan is one of the most authoritarian countries in the world, and according to V-Dem and Freedom House scores, it’s even below countries like Russia. But there’s also another, more realpolitik side to all this. The fundamental question is as follows: can the West build a durable strategic partnership with a government that is imprisoning some of the Azerbaijanis most committed to their country’s integration with the democratic West. Other Topics of Interest Russian Drones Sink Turkish-Owned Grain Ship as Ankara Pushes Black Sea Security Deal Two crew members were killed aboard the Royad Mammadov as Turkey seeks regional backing for safer Black Sea shipping. Can the West really build any meaningful strategic partnership with the very same regime that constantly hedges its bets, is very happy to help Russia escape sanctions and remove its oligarchs from the sanctions list, and is actively pursuing a deeper and deeper strategic partnership with China? Or is it finally time to fully support imprisoned pro-West, pro-Euro-Atlantic liberal democrats currently in jail for standing up to the corrupt and despotic rule of the Aliyev regime? The European Parliament has understood this contradiction better than most. Following Karimli’s arrest, in its Dec. 18, 2025 resolution, it condemned his detention and called for the immediate and unconditional release of Karimli and of all political prisoners in Azerbaijan. The European Parliament has urged the EU to consider measures against officials responsible for repression and argued that progress on any future partnership agreement with Azerbaijan should depend on tangible improvements in human rights and the rule of law. Yet the response from Europe’s executive leadership has been demonstrably (and embarrassingly) less forceful. That silence is extremely damaging because of how it is perceived by the Aliyev regime. They now think that they can absolutely dismiss any concerns about human rights, believing that there will not be any meaningful pressure on them. Western policy towards Azerbaijan rests on a pragmatic calculation: Azerbaijan supplies energy to Europe, occupies an important geographical position between Europe and Central Asia (the Ganja corridor as part of the Middle Corridor), and is an important participant in the emerging peace settlement with Armenia. These are indeed legitimate strategic interests. But strategic realism should not mean treating authoritarian stability as permanent stability. Because, unlike the wealthy Gulf monarchies in the Middle East, the Azerbaijani regime is extremely repressive but not very stable at all. In the past 10 years, there have been multiple riots in Ganja, Guba, Ismaili, etc. In spite of billions spent on security forces, in each of these instances, the Aliyev regime found it difficult to maintain order. What if next-gen Z-fueled protests, the likes of which we saw in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal, were to arise in larger cities like Baku, and in a country sandwiched between hostile Russia and an increasingly aggressive Iranian regime? In a geography of such hostile interventionist powers, the last thing that Azerbaijan needs is a spontaneous, uncontrolled revolt caused by the extreme corruption and economic mismanagement of the regime. But this doesn’t mean that Azerbaijan’s fate is a choice between spontaneous uprisings destabilizing the country, or an ever-increasing authoritarianism. A democratic alternative There is another Azerbaijan. It is a country whose democratic civil opposition has historically looked towards Europe, NATO, and the wider Euro-Atlantic community rather than Moscow. Indeed, Karimli himself has repeatedly advocated Azerbaijan’s integration with the European Union. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he has written explicitly in support of Ukraine and warned that Russian victory would whet Moscow’s imperialist appetite and strengthen authoritarianism throughout the former Soviet space. In February 2022, and mere days before the invasion, when the whole civilized West was uniting against Russian aggression, President Ilham Aliyev flew to Moscow to sign a treaty of alliance with Russia. Karimli was the opposition leader who stood up against this national embarrassment and pointed out that Azerbaijan must stand together with Ukraine and the Western, Euro-Atlantic community. And so, this is precisely what makes his imprisonment a strategic question for the West, not merely a humanitarian one. If Azerbaijan eventually becomes more democratic, there is every reason for Western governments to want the political forces emerging from that transition to regard Europe, Britain and the United States as partners. Yet what lesson are Azerbaijani democrats supposed to draw today? They see the European Parliament speaking for them. They now see American senators doing the same. But they also see Western governments pursuing ever deeper relations with President Aliyev while organized democratic opposition is systematically dismantled. Meanwhile, Baku is treating the very same West with increasing contempt, and Aliyev himself recently described the European Parliament as a “den of bribery”. (It is worth noting that in a few instances when such bribery did take place, it was the Aliyev regime itself that fueled and enabled these instances of corruption and bribery in Europe. It is all very well documented in Azerbaijan’s ‘‘caviar diplomacy” investigations.) And at the same time, the regime is developing relationships elsewhere. In 2025, Azerbaijan and China elevated their relationship to a “comprehensive strategic partnership.” And in September this year, Azerbaijan’s State Security Service signed a security cooperation agreement with China’s Ministry of Public Security. The two governments have pledged greater cooperation between law-enforcement and security institutions. Then there is the extraordinary recent affair involving Alisher Usmanov. France had been pressed by Azerbaijan over the EU sanctions imposed on the Russian-Uzbek billionaire, whom the EU had previously described as having particularly close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The EU subsequently removed Usmanov from its sanctions regime. The following day, Aliyev pardoned a French citizen imprisoned in Azerbaijan. This incident should therefore dispel the comforting assumption that Azerbaijan’s current government is naturally or irreversibly anchored in the Western geopolitical camp. In fact, the very opposite is true: the Aliyev regime is not even trying to hide its order-taking from the Kremlin and its desire to please Putin at any cost. The cost here is immediate and relevant to Ukraine: had Aliyev agreed to release the French citizen without conditioning it on a Russian oligarch’s sanctions release, the whole incident around sanctions on Russia would have been avoided. And Putin would not have as much leverage over European sanctions targeting its regime. And this then makes the distinction between Azerbaijan and its government essential. Azerbaijanis should not be written off as belonging naturally to some Russian, Chinese or authoritarian sphere of influence. Azerbaijan has a secular society, deep connections with Europe and a democratic tradition stretching back to the establishment of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in 1918. Given genuinely competitive elections, freedom of assembly, independent media and functioning political institutions, Azerbaijan could become one of the West’s most natural partners in the South Caucasus. But that possibility becomes more remote every time another journalist is imprisoned, another civil-society organization is dismantled or another opposition politician disappears behind prison walls. Karimli has now been detained since November 2025. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International has raised serious concerns about his treatment and detention conditions. And Karimli’s lawyers have witnessed firsthand how continuous sleep deprivation and drinking-water restrictions have led to his deteriorating health. (It is worth noting that the Aliyev regime has been extremely cruel in one other respect: keeping political prisoners facing other, more serious health risks in jail for as long as possible and only releasing them just before their health enters the terminal phase. Most recently, a prominent journalist Evez Zeynalli was suffering from cancer, and yet authorities refused to release him until the very last moment, when they realized he was about to die. Unfortunately, that day came on Sept. 28, 2026.) The preliminary investigation against Karimli has now reportedly been completed, bringing the prospect of a full trial closer. There is therefore little time for quiet diplomacy without consequences. Turning engagement into leverage The administration in Washington, and leaders in Brussels should both act on the bipartisan senators’ proposal and make the immediate release of political prisoners part of negotiations over a strategic partnership. European leaders should reinforce the position already taken by their own parliament. Britain, with its substantial economic relationship with Azerbaijan, should add its voice. This does not require abandoning the current engagement with Baku. But it does require using engagement as leverage. Western governments should communicate privately and publicly that Azerbaijan can have a deeper relationship with the democratic world, but that such a relationship cannot be built on the imprisonment of democratic opponents. The immediate objective should be simple: release Karimli and Azerbaijan’s other political prisoners. To this effect, both Washington and Brussels should be willing to use any leverage against the regime itself, including targeted sanctions, asset freezes, and travel bans against the leaders of the Aliyev regime. But the larger objective is more important still. The West should make clear that its partnership is not merely with whoever occupies the presidential palace in Baku today. It is with Azerbaijan and its people. And consequently, with the possibility of a democratic, sovereign and genuinely Euro-Atlantic Azerbaijan tomorrow. The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.