PSCRP-BESA Reports No 237 (October 11, 2026)
On October 2, Ilham Aliyev told the congress of his ruling New Azerbaijan Party in Baku that the world has two superpowers and “there is no third.” Russia went unnamed. Six days later, the presidents of Central Asia and Azerbaijan met at the Turkmen Caspian resort of Avaza to take up trade, energy, transport and regional security. No Russian leader was among the attendees.
What Aliyev Said at the New Azerbaijan Party Congress
Aliyev spoke at the eighth congress of the New Azerbaijan Party at the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku. Azerbaijan, he said, has strategic partnerships with both China and the United States, backed by a comprehensive declaration with Beijing and a strategic charter with Washington. Then came the sentence: “China and the United States are the world’s two superpowers; there is no third”. A sovereign state that has recently signed such documents with both capitals describes the world accordingly.
Expect Moscow’s commentators to call the remark a trifle. Their employer has a long record on the subject of greatness. In his 2005 address Putin called the collapse of the Soviet Union the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. In June 2022 he toured an exhibition for Peter the Great’s 350th birthday and announced that Peter had “returned” land, and that the task of returning it now fell to Russia. A man who sees himself in Peter’s boots watches very closely who gets called a superpower. Aliyev’s list leaves him off, and the Kremlin has no way to demand an amendment.
Tokayev’s Omsk Proposal and Kazakhstan’s Oil Exports
Kazakhstan’s Kassym-Jomart Tokayev made his case to Putin in person. At a forum in Omsk on July 25 he proposed freezing the war in Ukraine and going back to what he called “Istanbul Formula 2.0.” Then he added that the nature of the war is “not entirely clear to many, including us.” Moscow has spent more than four years explaining this war, and its closest partner has just reported that the explanation did not take. Putin promised to keep him informed about the front. Kyiv’s foreign minister called the message wise. Peskov replied that the Kremlin did not agree, and described Kazakhstan as Russia’s closest partner. A patron with leverage would have found a firmer sentence.
Tokayev has a reason for his candor, and it runs through a pipe. About 80 percent of Kazakhstan’s oil exports travel through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium to a terminal at Novorossiysk, on the Russian Black Sea coast, which Ukrainian drones keep visiting. The consortium suspended operations three times in July alone. Transit of Kazakh oil to Germany through the Druzhba pipeline has been halted since May 1. Kazakhstan’s export revenue passes through a port that is under fire, and each extra month of war makes the bill larger.
So Tokayev asks politely and keeps a second set of keys. In Berlin on September 29 he called Putin the most acceptable political figure for Central Asia, Europe and the world, a courtesy that costs nothing. The same trip produced more than 30 commercial documents worth about $2 billion, including a joint value chain in critical minerals, which cost Germany something. He also says freight on the Trans-Caspian route, which avoids Russian territory, grew 22 percent in the first eight months of 2026.
Russia remains a large partner. Trade between the two countries reached $28.1 billion in 2024, and they share more than 7,500 kilometers of border. China is Kazakhstan’s largest individual trading partner, and the European Union, counted as a bloc, is both its largest partner and its main source of investment. Astana is developing the Trans-Caspian Corridor, which connects China to Europe without crossing Russia. It is also deepening ties with Turkey, Azerbaijan and the Gulf states, and drawing closer to Uzbekistan under the “Central Asia 2040” project. A leader who asks Putin in public to end the war and sends his freight around Russia is planning for a different neighborhood.
Central Asia and Azerbaijan Organize Without Moscow
Tokayev and Aliyev sat at the same table on October 8 at Avaza, where Turkmen President Serdar Berdimuhamedov hosted them together with Sadyr Japarov, Emomali Rahmon and Shavkat Mirziyoyev. The six presidents had already signed the Cholpon-Ata Declaration on July 31, which commits them to closer cooperation on transport, energy, trade and security. Azerbaijan became a full participant in the format at the Tashkent meeting in November 2025.
Aliyev has his own reasons to be at that table. Baku carries a fresh wound from Moscow. On December 25, 2024, Russian air-defense missiles detonated beside an Azerbaijan Airlines jet, and 38 people died. Putin acknowledged Russian responsibility ten months later. Two months before that admission, Azerbaijan and Armenia had asked in Washington to dissolve the OSCE Minsk Group, the mediation format Russia co-chaired.
Yerevan Calls Putin’s Bluff
Armenia, which joined Azerbaijan in asking Washington to dissolve the Minsk Group, is also moving out of Russia’s security arrangements, since its membership in the Russian-led CSTO rested on guarantees of protection that lost their credibility when Armenia ran into difficulties in the face of Azerbaijan, as IRIS notes, and Yerevan froze its participation in 2022. Moscow answered with a threat, and when Putin warned on May 9 that Armenia risked a “Ukrainian scenario” if it pursued European integration, Armenian voters replied on June 7 by returning Nikol Pashinyan’s party, whose government has pursued closer ties with Europe. Putin, who likes to recall a boyhood in the courtyards of Leningrad, appears to have forgotten the rule known to gangsters and politicians alike, never to draw a gun unless one intends to use it, and the threat achieved nothing. Putin may still have a few tricks in stock, as RUSI points out, so Yerevan had better keep its ears perked.
Why Moscow Cannot Afford to Object
The Kremlin sees all of this and says little, because its problem is leverage. The IRIS analysis finds that sanctions have raised the value of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to Russian companies as intermediaries and alternative routes, and that Moscow depends on its neighbors to redirect its trade. Every punishment of a client’s candor costs Moscow a channel, and a verbal objection puts the routes for sanctioned cargo at risk. The clients know it. So the Kremlin does what it can afford: it answers the Omsk proposal in a sentence and goes on routing trade through the same neighbors, whatever their presidents say.
The war has stripped Moscow of its power to decide how much independence its neighbors may have. IRIS notes that the war has weakened the hierarchy in which the Kremlin set the limits of their acceptable autonomy, and the neighbors have taken that decision into their own hands, which is why Baku can speak of superpowers without naming Russia, Astana can propose a freeze in Putin’s presence and Yerevan can answer his warning at the ballot box.
A Russia that cannot hold its neighbors leaves a bill for its heirs. The elite that burned through its inheritance on imperial nostalgia is now borrowing against its grandchildren, who will receive a poorer country, a restless border and few neighbors who stay out of habit.
The inheritance has takers: China expands its economic influence, Turkey consolidates its networks across the Turkic world, and the European Union invests in transport, energy and critical raw materials. Beijing, Ankara, Brussels and Washington have all noticed that a declining bear makes a handsome rug, and several would like a square meter. None needs to fire a shot, since contracts, corridors and charters will do. The hide lay on the table at Avaza, and polite company left it unmentioned.