The Ambassador of Ukraine in Baku quoted the message of the President of Ukraine to Ilham Aliyev on May 28, he wrote: “I highly value our constructive dialogue, so I look forward to your personal participation in the Peace Conference, as well as the active involvement of Azerbaijan in the participation of the Ukrainian Peace Conference.”
The president of Ukraine sent a similar message to Aliyev at the beginning of the year, to which the president of Azerbaijan replied after the meeting with Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Azerbaijan will not join the anti-Russian coalition, will continue to provide humanitarian aid to Ukraine, but will never provide weapons.
According to that, the President of Ukraine is actually driving Ilham Aliyev into a corner, expecting his personal participation in a conference, towards which Russia’s attitude is openly hostile. And this is done in a situation where both sides consider the Russian-Azerbaijani relations as “mutually beneficial, strategic-partnership and alliance”. It would be naive to say that the president of Ukraine is not aware of the depth of Russian-Azerbaijani relations.
Zelensky also expresses hope that Azerbaijan will participate in the Peace Conference. What was said, perhaps, can be understood in the sense that Aliyev can not only be present himself, but also “ensure the presence of others?” Is it about Turkey? On the same day, Turkish President Erdogan convened a meeting of the Security Council, the discussion of the Ukrainian crisis was key. The official message revealed only one wording. Erdogan said that “the humanitarian situation in Ukraine is deteriorating day by day”.
The Russian President’s statement that Volodymyr Zelensky “is no longer legitimate, there is a body of legal power in Ukraine, the Verkhovna Rada” adds to the problem. Before that, Putin said that the main goal of the Peace Conference was to “legitimize Zelensky’s rule.” Russian experts assessed Putin’s observation as “epoch-making”. In the sense that he has the right to say. “I am ready for negotiations, but there is no legitimate president in Ukraine.”
It is an opportunity to legitimize war. Will Aliyev help Zelensky gain international legitimacy or will he support Putin’s policy of legitimizing the war? Returning from Moscow, he said that no one predicts the outcome of the Ukrainian war, but it is possible to reach a ceasefire. Zelensky does not agree with establishing a ceasefire on the current line of contact, but who said that he decides the fate of Ukraine and the Ukrainian war? Or Ilham Aliyev can decide on his own whether he will go to the Ukrainian Peace Conference or not.
According to one of the Azerbaijani experts, the Turkish world can mediate the settlement of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. But from the Turkish world, who? Or is the “Turkish world” united in that matter? And the relations between Russia and the “Turkish world”? But the most important thing, perhaps, is whether Ukraine’s military and political sponsors, first of all, the United States, accept the “mediation of the Turkish world”. Accepting it would mean legitimizing the “Turkish world” as an independent pole of power in the new world order.
It is fundamentally not beneficial to the West. And maybe Russia should? Maybe Aliyev will go to Switzerland as a “special adviser” of Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan?
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