In geopolitics, timing is never an accident. When Russian drones hit a SOCAR oil depot in Odesa on the night of August 8, the world saw another attack in Moscow’s relentless campaign against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Four Azerbaijani employees were injured, a diesel pipeline was damaged, and a blaze raged for hours before firefighters brought it under control. Azerbaijan and Ukraine on Sunday condemned the airstrikes targeting Azerbaijani energy infrastructure in Ukraine, including facilities owned by state oil and gas company SOCAR, vowing the attacks would not derail bilateral energy cooperation.
The condemnation came during an Aug. 10 phone call between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “Both sides condemned the deliberate airstrikes by Russia on an oil storage facility owned by Azerbaijan’s state oil and gas company SOCAR in Ukraine,” the Azerbaijani presidency said. The statement also cited attacks on “other Azerbaijani facilities and a gas compressor station transporting Azerbaijani gas to Ukraine.”
The headlines around the globe framed it as part of Russia’s broader effort to cripple Ukraine’s economy. But the strike’s timing told another story — one that had less to do with Ukraine and more to do with Azerbaijan. The Odesa attack — like the earlier strike on the Orlivka gas compressor station in late June — came as Azerbaijan was engaged in sensitive final-stage negotiations over the peace agreement. Less than 24 hours after those drones hit, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stood in Washington to sign a U.S.-brokered peace agreement that will reshape the South Caucasus. At the heart of that accord is the Zangezur corridor — a transport link cutting through Armenia’s Syunik province to connect mainland Azerbaijan with its Nakhchivan exclave and Turkey beyond. The deal grants the United States a 99-year lease to secure and manage the corridor, transforming it from a concept born in Russian-brokered ceasefires into a pillar of Western influence in Eurasia.
From Moscow’s perspective, this corridor is not just infrastructure. It is a direct challenge to Russian strategic control in the Caucasus. For decades, the Kremlin has viewed the region as part of its post-Soviet sphere of influence, maintaining leverage over both Yerevan and Baku by controlling borders, trade routes, and energy corridors. Now, that grip is slipping — and the Zangezur corridor is the clearest symbol of the shift. Once envisioned under Russian supervision, it will now bypass both Russia and Iran, tying Azerbaijan’s connectivity to Turkey and embedding U.S. security oversight for nearly a century.
The United States and European Union have already been reinforcing Azerbaijan’s westward pivot. EU-backed pipeline investments and the recent start of Azerbaijani gas shipments to Ukraine via the Trans-Balkan route are tying Baku’s fortunes to European energy diversification goals. The Washington peace signing further locks Azerbaijan into a regional framework in which Russia is no longer the primary broker.
Seen in that light, the Odesa strike looks less like a random blow against Ukraine’s energy grid and more like a preemptive warning to Azerbaijan. By targeting a high-profile Azerbaijani asset far from the Caucasus, Russia demonstrated both reach and willingness to impose costs on Baku for geopolitical choices it doesn’t approve of. The message: if Azerbaijan deepens its alignment with the West, Moscow can make life painful well beyond the Zangezur corridor.
The strikes also landed amid a deep and escalating deterioration in Russia–Azerbaijan relations. The December 2024 downing of an Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet by Russian air defenses, killing 38 people, shattered trust. The June 2025 Yekaterinburg raids, in which two Azerbaijani brothers died in custody under what Baku says was torture, pushed relations into open hostility. Azerbaijan retaliated with arrests of Russian nationals, a freeze in diplomatic contacts, and increasingly confrontational rhetoric from its leadership.
For two years, Azerbaijan had maintained a careful neutrality in the Ukraine war, supplying humanitarian and infrastructure aid to Kyiv but no weapons. That restraint is now in doubt. Officials in Baku have warned that continued Russian strikes on Azerbaijani assets could prompt the lifting of its self-imposed arms embargo, potentially opening the way for deliveries of drones, precision munitions, and other advanced systems — many developed in partnership with Turkey and proven in the 2020 Karabakh war.
For Russia, such a move would be a strategic blow, adding a capable and politically willing arms supplier to Ukraine’s roster of backers. For Azerbaijan, it would mark the definitive end of its decades-long balancing act between East and West, signaling not only a deepened alignment with Western capitals but also potentially paving the way for closer integration with Euro-Atlantic security structures — even opening the door, in time, to a NATO membership bid.
In trying to warn Azerbaijan off the Zangezur corridor, Russia may instead have accelerated its westward trajectory, pushing Baku toward the very military and strategic choices the Kremlin most fears — a fortified partnership with the West, a role as a regional security hub, and the eventual anchoring of NATO’s presence on Russia’s southern flank.
