Moscow and Baku have recently marked the 20th anniversary of the free trade agreement, inspiring publications of expert opinions on developing Russian-Azerbaijani relations. Alexander Karavayev, Deputy Director of the Center for Information and Analysis of MSU, has expressed his attitude towards prospects for bilateral cooperation in an interview with VK.
- What has been the key aspect of Russian-Azerbaijani relations in the last 20 years?
- If we talk about the positive sides, it probably means 10 or more years. Everyone studying the problem of bilateral relations set the first milestone on the visit of Putin to Baku in 2001. After the visit, many essential agreements were signed, continuing their development in further work of the two states’ structures. Doors were opened for wide interstate cooperation after the meeting of Vladimir Putin and Heydar Aliyev. Then, relations kept improving in the first decade of the 21st century, although there were impartial problematic moments occurring naturally.
Let’s say, when Azerbaijan became an exporter of gas to foreign markets, it was a period of gas wars all over the post-Soviet space and Russia experienced numerous aggravations in relations with Ukraine, Belarus, problems of Central Asia.
The decision to switch gas cooperation from one line to another one, that is to quit exports of Russian gas to Azerbaijan and give Azerbaijan an opportunity to sell gas to Russia, is an example of a very wise and civilized solution of one of the primary problems in bilateral relations.
In general, all these decisions can be called optimal. Yet, our relations have an impartial limit and that limit is associated with the economic volumes of Azerbaijan and the opportunities Azerbaijan may find on the Russian market and Russian entrepreneurs on the Azerbaijani market. We cannot say that we face flourishing and absolutely trouble-free prospects for trade-economic cooperation. We have quite a large volume of work on the way we develop our relations in the modern format, a more complicated one, to form the positive content we achieved in the first decade of the 21st century for the second decade, so that our relations would meet the Zeitgeist.
- What is your impression of the future of socio-cultural relations between Russia and Azerbaijan?
- There are certain rules of normal and civilized relations between close friends and neighbors. In case of interstate relations, this would provide wide access to the information space of our states, so that the best achievements of Azerbaijani culture in all spheres, from modern to classical, would gain representation in the Russian information space. We need the presence of Russian cultural figures in Azerbaijan as well. In my opinion, we are well presented to each other at the moment, but we should understand that it is not some single-moment event, like holding an exhibition and then forgetting, holding a concert and saying “goodbye” after. It should be regular work. We need to attract modern Azerbaijani cultural officials to our socio-cultural space. It should be a social activity.
Concerning relations between elites, everything is generally fine and, I believe, we can become witnesses to further interesting joint projects. In early October we're opening the International Humanitarian Forum in Baku. It is one of those projects born at the crossroads of the two states’ elites, it was initiate by the Russian and Azerbaijani presidents. Here is an example of what is born from joint socio-cultural initiatives. They are not just cultural projects, they are socio-cultural initiatives, because they have discussions of topical issues of development of civilizations in general.
- What ways for the development of Russian-Azerbaijani relations do you consider a priority?
- We should think about a new boost to our relations. We need to consider the resources and opportunities that medium-sized and private businesses have in terms of organizing wider access to the economy of our states. There are moments that have little to do with politics. Many disappointments were caused by the border-crossing issue. Some business officials believe that settling the issues of trans-border crossing and customs operations on the River Samur could increase trade turnover by 75%. It has nothing to do with geopolitical projects, issues of large state financing, state guarantees, such as construction of large infrastructure projects.
We should concentrate on local points of growth. They might compensate for the missing segments in bilateral cooperation, which will be missed anyhow. For example, a gradual reduction of Azerbaijani gas exports to Russia. It seems this tendency will continue for a long time. Because the problem is not in Azerbaijan. There are certain problems in foreign markets, and Russia is reducing imports of gas from Central Asia and even internal independent producers in general. This example shows that stable reduction of this share in the economic cooperation should encourage us to expand other spheres. Considering the fact that we do not implement such serious promotion in other directions, we have to find ties between business interests of the participants of foreign-economic activity in a wide sense of the word.
Probably involvement of third sides and businessmen from third sides in joint business projects will help. We have to think about establishing new production lines. But in this case we face the question of state guarantees once again. For instance, Azerbaijani investments in the North Caucasus demand state guarantees from Russia. On the other hand, Russian contribution to Azerbaijani projects should demand registration of it in the form of an intergovernmental treaty. However, considering the growth of information and communication technologies of Azerbaijan, I think a joint investment project should be launched as an experiment.
