Today is the 15th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Friendship between Russia and Azerbaijan. Since that time, relations between the two countries have become a kind of strategic partnership, and this is no exaggeration, because the interaction between Azerbaijan and Russia is developing in several key fields, from energy to the participation of Russia in settling the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
The foundation of the bilateral dialogue was laid back in the mid-1990s, when Heydar Aliyev, the President of the Azerbaijani Republic, considered relations with Moscow to be one of the top priorities for the newly-independent Azerbaijan. Even in the most difficult periods of bilateral relations between Moscow and Baku we managed to find compromise solutions to the problems of energy, security and border cooperation.
The large-scale growth of trade turnover, in which an increasingly important role is played by non-primary goods, is evidence of the positive changes that have emerged in bilateral relations since the mid-2000s. Inter-regional cross-border cooperation has been markedly intensified. The representative offices of Dagestan, Tatarstan and Russian regional airlines are operating in Baku. Many regions of Russia are establishing direct relations with suppliers in Azerbaijan, especially with those dealing with agricultural products.
But the most important fact is that the character of bilateral relations is changing; it was quite lacking in the mid-1990s, when many representatives of the Russian elite acted on the principle of inevitability, not understanding those new realities which were formed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now it surely can be said that relations between Russia and Azerbaijan are based on the principles of pragmatism, mutual benefit and confidence.
Today, when the Russian government is actively implementing the new integration project, it is possible to create a common space of modernization, because both Russia and Azerbaijan are most interested in moving away from excessive dependence on natural resources, implementing real diversification of their economies using the experience of multiplying the capacity of national economies. To do this, we need to strengthen our cooperation, especially in terms of innovation, to support the united educational sphere, because it is clear that the economy of the 21st century is an economy of knowledge and information technologies.
But the core of relations between Russia and Azerbaijan remains economic and trade cooperation, which determines the pragmatic and balanced nature of the partnership dialogue. The structure of trade and economic relations today can be characterized as optimal. At the same time, the level of economic relations does not fully correspond to the real capabilities of the partner countries.
We need new impulses for moving to higher levels of trade, joint development of innovative production systems in the non-oil sector, integrating our efforts in the implementation of the regional modernization project.
We can express the belief that at present there are all the prerequisites for the consolidation of the format of bilateral relations at the level of strategic partnership and the transformation of Russian-Azerbaijani cooperation into a convincing example of mutually-beneficial and equal cooperation between post-Soviet countries.
