Theme - USA

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 234 (September 29, 2026)

August is traditionally considered a month when academic activity grinds to a halt—a trend that applies particularly to publishing. It is precisely in August that reputable journals make room for publications with unusual or even exotic themes, and authors find the time to work on such pieces. In this edition of our monitoring report, we have not strayed beyond the scope of conflicts in the post-Soviet space—and yet, we will be discussing epic heroes, artificial intelligence systems in public service, and medical education amidst political instability.

The article “Multilingual Education in Kazakhstan: Policy and Practice,” authored by Kulpash Koptleuova of Baishev University, Akhmaral Khairzhanova of Kh. Dosmukhamedov Atyrau University (corresponding author), Kamar Aldasheva of Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University, and colleagues Kulyash Bainiyeva, Alla Leonova, and Gulim Saiynova, appeared  in the International Journal of Society, Culture & Language in August 2026. It offers a timely examination of Kazakhstan’s language education policy as an instrument of nation-building and conflict management in a multiethnic post-Soviet state.

The study centers on how official discourses and institutional measures shape the roles of Kazakh as the state language, Russian as the language of interethnic communication, and English as the vehicle of global integration. The authors ask what policy discourses, language ideologies, and status-planning mechanisms define Kazakhstan’s educational language regime, and how far official statistics reflect the stated goal of balancing the three languages. Their method is qualitative document analysis of the Constitution, the 2003 Law on Languages, the State Program for the Development of Education and Science 2020–2025, the 2023 Concept for preschool and secondary education, CLIL guidelines, and national statistical reports, including the 2021 census and 2023 sociological surveys on language proficiency. Following a six-phase thematic procedure adapted from Braun and Clarke, they identify five interlocking themes: the ideological framing of the “Trinity of Languages,” the construction of language hierarchies through status planning, mechanisms of pedagogical implementation, teacher preparation as a persistent challenge, and the tension between nation-building and global competitiveness.

The analysis reveals that the “Trinity” is not a neutral technical arrangement but an ideological construct that privileges Kazakh symbolically while preserving Russian’s functional dominance and casting English in instrumental terms. Constitutional and statutory provisions place Kazakh at the apex, yet Russian retains de facto primacy in administration, education, and everyday life, with 90.6 percent overall proficiency. English has advanced modestly—29 percent of adults report some competence—but advanced command remains limited. Statistical trends confirm a steady expansion of Kazakh-medium schooling and higher education, from roughly 37 percent of students in 1993 to over 70 percent of recent school graduates, yet the authors underscore the uneven rollout of trilingual instruction, the conflation of basic CEFR B1 proficiency with genuine CLIL pedagogical capacity, and the absence of transparent criteria for institutional readiness. These gaps reproduce regional and resource asymmetries, leaving the policy’s equity claims only partially realized.

For scholars of the post-Soviet space, the article contributes a carefully documented case of how language planning seeks to prevent interethnic conflict while consolidating statehood. Its relevance to Israeli academic readers lies in the parallel challenges of managing linguistic diversity within multiethnic societies, the strategic use of education to foster social cohesion, and the delicate balance between national identity and international competitiveness—issues that resonate with Israel’s own experience of nation-building amid competing cultural claims and its growing engagement with Central Asian partners. By illuminating both the achievements and the structural tensions of Kazakhstan’s trilingual project, the study supplies a nuanced lens through which to view language as a potential site of both conflict and accommodation in the wider post-Soviet region.

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Artem Hmelnykov of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and Nataliia Khoma of Lviv Polytechnic National University examine the conceptual interdependence of local democracy and local political management in an article published in the Baltic Journal of Economic Studies, volume 12, number 1, 2026. Drawing on a neo-institutional approach, the authors treat local democracy as a value-institutional dimension centred on citizen participation, legitimacy of authority, transparency and accountability, while presenting local political management as the organisational-managerial dimension concerned with the development, adoption and implementation of decisions at the territorial level. Their working hypothesis holds that local democracy supplies the institutional foundation of procedures, norms and practices that confer legitimacy and participatory quality on local governance, and that political management in turn supplies the technologies, competencies and mechanisms through which democratic principles are realised.

The analysis proceeds by first mapping the regulatory and legal prerequisites that enable genuine local democratic institutions—constitutional guarantees of self-government, statutes regulating referendums, public hearings, electronic petitions and participatory budgeting, anti-corruption standards, inclusion norms and financial transparency rules. These elements together constitute the “operating environment” within which management operates. The authors then formulate a dialectical relationship: democracy shapes the rules and opportunities for management, while the quality of management either strengthens trust, participation and institutional resilience or, conversely, undermines them through bureaucratic insulation or opacity. A concise conceptual formula crystallises this mutual dependence: local democracy provides the institutional, value-based and procedural foundation; local political management, resting on that foundation, ensures the formulation and execution of decisions; together they constitute a coherent system of democratic community governance.

Particular attention is given to the prospective post-war reconstruction. Under wartime conditions, local democracy adapted by prioritising mobilisation, solidarity and secure online and offline participation, while local political management performed critical crisis functions—evacuation coordination, defence support, assistance to displaced persons and rapid infrastructure repair. The authors argue that the legitimacy of these managerial actions rested on residual democratic trust. Looking ahead, they contend that reconstruction will amplify the same interdependence: large-scale resource allocation, priority-setting and integration of veterans and returnees will require inclusive consultation, public oversight and budgetary transparency if they are to avoid corruption, social discord and loss of legitimacy. Without robust democratic institutions, even well-funded programmes risk inefficiency; without competent management, democratic procedures remain empty formalities.

The study’s contribution lies in reframing two concepts usually treated in isolation as mutually reinforcing elements of contemporary local governance, and in demonstrating the continued validity of this coordinate system under conditions of existential conflict and recovery. For Israeli academic readers concerned with post-Soviet conflicts, state resilience and the management of contested territories, the analysis offers a timely reminder that the durability of local institutions under external pressure is inseparable from the quality of the democratic-managerial nexus that sustains them. The Ukrainian case illustrates both the vulnerability and the adaptive potential of that nexus, providing comparative insight into how communities maintain governance capacity amid war and prepare for reconstruction without sacrificing legitimacy.

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Neda Atanasoski and Redi Koobak’s article “Automated Myth and the Postsocialist Digital State: The Imperial Trick of the Kratt AI Initiative in Estonia,”  published in Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies, volume 17, number 1, 2026 (pages 131–165), examines Estonia’s national strategy for incorporating artificial intelligence into public services. The authors analyze the state’s decision to name these systems after the kratt, a mythic servant from Estonian folklore constructed from everyday objects and animated through supernatural means, which turns on its master when left idle. They advance the concept of “automated myth” to describe folklore embedded in AI systems that naturalizes the link between technological progress and liberal democracy.

The study addresses how cultural narratives shape AI governance in a postsocialist context. Methodologically, the authors combine Roland Barthes’s understanding of myth as depoliticized speech with Evgeny Morozov’s critique of techno-solutionism. They examine state promotional materials for Bürokratt, the world’s first public-service AI virtual assistant, alongside two artistic responses: Eugénie Baccot and Cyril Abad’s digital photo essay The Kratt Metaphor (2024), commissioned for Tartu 2024, and Rasmus Merivoo’s horror-comedy film Kratt (2020). This approach reveals how policy branding and cultural interfaces construct national identity while obscuring geopolitical entanglements.

The central conclusion is that the automation of the kratt myth performs an imperial trick. It indigenizes technofutures as Estonian national heritage, presenting AI as an organic extension of local folklore and identity, while simultaneously masking the influence of Silicon Valley capitalism that has driven postsocialist digital reforms since the 1990s. The authors argue that this process erases the Soviet technological foundations of the present, depoliticizes citizens by recasting them as consumers of efficient services, and naturalizes a model of governance oriented toward global competitiveness and foreign investment. Analysis of Bürokratt shows how the state contrasts the new transparent digital servant with the opaque Soviet bureaucrat, yet the system ultimately aligns Estonia with transnational capital through initiatives such as e-residency. The photo essay aestheticizes technology as continuous with sacred Estonian landscapes and rituals, thereby defanging potential risks, whereas the film satirizes techno-utopianism by exposing hidden costs, including exploited labor and residual imperial relations.

The article contributes to both postsocialist studies and critical AI research by demonstrating that folklore operates as an infrastructure of state power in the era of algorithmic administration. For an Israeli academic audience concerned with transformations in the post-Soviet space, the work illuminates how digital statecraft and techno-nationalism reconfigure sovereignty and identity after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It highlights cultural mechanisms that sustain new forms of imperial entanglement under the appearance of national innovation and democratic service, offering comparative insight into the long-term political effects of technological modernization in the region.

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Veja Lianga’s master’s thesis, submitted on 1 August 2026 for the Erasmus Mundus Euroculture program jointly awarded by the University of Strasbourg and Uppsala University, examines the discursive construction of opposition to the Istanbul Convention in Lithuania. Supervised by Sandrine Beaudry (Strasbourg) and Andreaz Fagerberg (Uppsala), the work is framed as an original contribution to the study of anti-gender politics in Central and Eastern Europe.

The central research question asks how Lithuanian political actors discursively constructed “gender” (translated as “social gender”) in opposing ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence between 2018 and 2024, and how these constructions relate to the broader European anti-gender mobilisation and the restriction of women’s rights. Drawing on literature on the anti-gender movement (Kuhar and Paternotte, Graff and Korolczuk), Europeanization theory, norm contestation, post-Soviet historical legacies, and moral-panic frameworks (Cohen, Butler), the author employs qualitative critical discourse analysis. Primary material consists of quotations from politicians, political spokespeople and religious figures published in mainstream Lithuanian news outlets. The analysis identifies six recurring discursive constructions: gender as ideology, gender as moral threat (especially to children and family), gender as foreign imposition, legal/pragmatic irrelevance, confusion, and cultural irrelevance.

Lianga demonstrates that anti-ratification discourse systematically portrays “gender” as an ideological project that endangers traditional family structures, national sovereignty and cultural identity. These framings closely mirror rhetoric circulating in other EU member states and in Russian discourse, positioning the Istanbul Convention as a symbolic battleground for anxieties over European integration, social change and patriarchal order. The thesis argues that such constructions generate a moral panic that impedes the advancement of gender-equality measures and leaves gaps in protection against gender-based violence unaddressed. Lithuania’s specific post-Soviet and Catholic heritage intensifies the framing of “social gender” as an externally imposed threat, whether attributed to Brussels or residual Soviet influence. Counter-discourses exist but remain marginal within the political arena examined.

By focusing on a smaller Baltic state often overlooked in English-language scholarship that privileges Poland and Hungary, the thesis enriches understanding of how transnational anti-gender narratives are localised and adapted. For an Israeli academic audience interested in conflicts and identity politics in the post-Soviet space, the study offers insight into the mechanisms of norm contestation, the instrumentalisation of historical memory, and the entanglement of religious nationalism with resistance to European legal frameworks—dynamics that illuminate broader patterns of sovereignty claims and cultural security discourses across the region.

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The syllabus under review, authored by Professor Julia Verkholantsev of the Department of Russian and East European Studies, outlines the intellectual framework and structure of the undergraduate course.

The course is offered at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn).It is a specialized Benjamin Franklin Seminar (BFS) that is currently scheduled for the Fall 2026. Although presented as a pedagogical document rather than a conventional monograph, it functions as a carefully reasoned scholarly intervention into the study of how medieval narratives and material culture have been mobilized to construct modern national identities across Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe.

The subject of the course is the phenomenon of “national antiquities”—genealogical origin stories, hagiographic traditions surrounding holy figures of national significance, and sacred objects such as crowns, manuscripts, and icons—and the ways these elements have shaped nationalist discourse from the nineteenth century to the present. Verkholantsev situates the inquiry against the backdrop of contemporary European political rhetoric that continues to draw on medieval sources to assert ethnogenetic claims, territorial entitlement, or historical grievance. The methodological approach is comparative and critical: students are guided to examine primary medieval texts and later historiographic traditions, distinguishing between information, interpretation, argument, and significance, while remaining alert to the methodological weaknesses that allow such materials to be instrumentalized. The syllabus emphasizes active, AI-free engagement with approximately thirty to sixty pages of reading per session, regular production of concise reading notes, and two in-class assessments derived largely from students’ own analytical takeaways. The culminating project requires each participant to curate an imagined national museum, selecting and arranging a limited set of antiquities so as to construct a coherent narrative of national identity.

The central conclusions advanced by the syllabus are that national pasts are not simply recovered but actively constructed, that medieval materials acquire political force only through successive layers of interpretation, and that scholarly scrutiny of these layers is essential for dismantling the uncritical authority they still command in public discourse. Verkholantsev argues that nineteenth- and twentieth-century philological and historiographic scholarship transformed origin myths, royal sainthood, and sacred objects into instruments of nationalist mobilization; the task of contemporary scholarship is therefore to expose the selective and often anachronistic character of those transformations. Case studies of Bohemia and Moravia, Hungary, Poland, the Rus’ lands and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (encompassing modern Lithuania, Ukraine, and Belarus), and Croatia illustrate how the same medieval repertoire—Attila and Scythian ancestry, St. Wenceslas and the Knights of Blaník, the Holy Crown of St. Stephen, the Częstochowa icon, Varangian legends, Glagolitic script—has been differently appropriated to serve distinct national projects.

The scholarly contribution of the syllabus lies in its insistence on treating national antiquities as objects of critical rather than celebratory study. By combining ethno-symbolic approaches to nationalism with close attention to medieval textual and material evidence, it offers a model for historicizing the very claims that continue to structure political debate in the region. For an Israeli academic audience concerned with conflicts in the post-Soviet space, the syllabus is particularly relevant. Its examination of competing origin narratives in Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania, and of the symbolic resources deployed to legitimize or contest political boundaries, supplies analytical tools for understanding how historical memory shapes contemporary identity conflicts. The neutral, source-critical posture modeled throughout the course encourages precise discussion of competing national myths without recourse to partisan labeling, thereby enriching scholarly discourse on the region’s enduring tensions.

Orhan Gültekin, a doctoral student at the Social Sciences University of Ankara’s Institute of Area Studies, published the article “The Social and Political Impact of Turkish TV Series in Central Asia in the Context of Cultural Diplomacy” in the International Journal of Idil-Ural and Turkistan Studies, volume 8, issue 2, pages 337–353, in 2026. The study examines the influence of Turkish television series on the Central Asian Turkic republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, framing these productions as instruments of soft power and cultural diplomacy in the post-Soviet environment.

The research rests on a qualitative literature review and secondary-data analysis that draws together sectoral reports, academic studies, field inquiries, and institutional publications. Gültekin organizes the inquiry around a central question: how Turkish series shape political perceptions, everyday social practices, and collective identity constructions in these societies, and through which mechanisms—linguistic affinity, shared religious and historical references, and a synthesis of modern and traditional values—they operate. The analysis proceeds along three interrelated dimensions: the political, the social, and identity formation.

At the political level the author argues that the series transmit Turkey’s experience of modernization and its democratic values, thereby raising the visibility of a “Turkish model” and lending societal legitimacy to interstate diplomatic ties. Socially, linguistic closeness and common cultural codes allow the productions to affect consumption patterns, family norms, and lifestyle preferences; historical dramas reinforce notions of shared ancestry and unity. In the realm of identity, the series supply a unifying reference point of “Turkishness” for populations still negotiating national self-understanding after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Gültekin concludes that Turkish television drama functions not merely as entertainment but as one of the most effective tools of cultural diplomacy, amplifying Turkey’s regional influence, catalyzing social change, and nourishing a common cultural foundation. The study introduces the notion of “dizi diplomacy” as a contribution to the broader literature on soft power.

For scholars concerned with the post-Soviet space the article offers a concrete case of non-state cultural actors shaping political and social realities in Central Asia. It demonstrates how media flows can reinforce or reconfigure identity narratives in societies that emerged from Soviet institutional frameworks, and how such flows interact with state-led initiatives such as those of TİKA and the Organization of Turkic States. The findings therefore illuminate the softer dimensions of regional realignment and the ways cultural proximity can translate into durable political capital—issues of direct interest to Israeli academic and policy communities that monitor stability, identity politics, and external influence across the former Soviet periphery.

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The article “Digitalization of medical and healthcare education in a Low- and middle-income country: a mixed-method case study of institutional transformation at Yerevan State Medical University,”  authored by Karine Sargsyan and colleagues affiliated with Yerevan State Medical University, the Medical University of Graz, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and related Armenian institutions, appeared in Frontiers in Digital Health in August 2026. It examines the deliberate institutional shift toward digital modes of medical training in Armenia, a post-Soviet low- and middle-income setting marked by infrastructural constraints, a lingering Soviet-era pedagogical legacy, and recurrent regional disruptions.

The study is framed as a mixed-methods institutional case study covering the period 2019–2023. Its central subject is the translation of constructivist and activity-based pedagogical theories into practical digital infrastructure, faculty development, student digital literacy programs, simulation-based training, telemedicine, tele-education, and hybrid learning formats. The authors pose the question of how a resource-limited medical university can sustain educational continuity and quality amid pandemic pressures and regional tensions, including the conflict in Artsakh. Methodologically, the work rests on an institutional transformation framework that sequences strategic vision, faculty digital-competency training, infrastructure development, student engagement, digital interventions, assessment, and quality assurance. Supporting evidence is drawn from an anonymous electronic survey of 513 undergraduate medical students (response rate 12.6 percent of the eligible cohort), employing eleven Likert-scale items and optional open comments. Analysis remains descriptive, reporting frequencies, percentages, and mean scores without inferential testing, and is supplemented by institutional observation and process documentation.

The principal findings indicate high levels of student-perceived satisfaction, with an overall positive response rate of 90.2 percent and mean scores ranging from 4.26 to 4.51 on a five-point scale. Respondents reported gains in theoretical knowledge, clinical skills confidence, digital literacy, and appreciation of hybrid flexibility; simulation training received particularly strong endorsement among clinical-year students. Technical barriers scored lowest, suggesting they were not perceived as insurmountable. Qualitative comments praised simulation centers and telemedicine sessions while noting occasional internet instability and the need for further faculty digital preparation and bilingual materials. The authors position these perceptual outcomes as evidence that a coherent institutional strategy—rather than technology alone—can overcome infrastructural, pedagogical, and equity obstacles. They stress that the results reflect self-reported experience rather than objectively measured learning or patient-care gains, and they explicitly limit claims of generalizability to a single institutional trajectory.

In scholarly terms the study contributes a concrete, context-sensitive roadmap for digital transformation within the post-Soviet medical-education landscape. It demonstrates that strategic alignment of mission, sustained faculty development, active student participation, and modest infrastructure investment can generate resilient hybrid and remote educational capacity even under conditions of regional instability. For an Israeli academic audience concerned with conflicts and institutional resilience across the post-Soviet space, the Armenian case offers instructive parallels: the capacity of higher-education institutions in geopolitically exposed environments to maintain professional training pipelines, to mitigate brain-drain pressures, and to preserve human-capital continuity during crises. The documented emphasis on simulation, tele-education, and quality-assurance mechanisms underscores practical pathways for sustaining medical expertise when physical access is constrained—an issue of enduring strategic relevance for regional security and public-health preparedness.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 233 (September 27, 2026)

Iran is becoming increasingly isolated. Under pressure from the United States, countries that for years had maintained a relatively neutral stance are beginning to sever their remaining ties with the Islamic Republic. The latest development has been the suspension of air links with Iran. As U.S. sanctions against Tehran expand, more countries are closing their airspace to aircraft operated by Iranian airlines. The process began with the UAE and Iraq, but it has not stopped there.

The main external factor behind the current aviation restrictions is the U.S. Treasury Department’s sanctions package of September 8, 2026, which targeted 36 individuals and entities linked to Iran’s aviation sector, including Iranian airlines and the companies that service them. Washington has also warned foreign businesses about the risk of secondary sanctions.

On September 22, Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) announced that flights by Iranian carriers to Azerbaijan would be suspended from that date. The airline said the decision was linked to the new U.S. sanctions package against Iran, particularly the restrictions affecting the aviation sector. Iran Air initially said that it had received no notification, but Azerbaijani authorities later confirmed that the flights would remain suspended until further notice.

Georgia’s Civil Aviation Agency also announced that it would comply with the sanctions regime. Five of the 27 Iranian airlines targeted by the U.S. Treasury sanctions operate flights to Georgia. They will no longer be permitted to serve those routes.

Although the government of Turkmenistan has made no official statement on the issue, a Tehran-Dushanbe flight that had been due to cross Turkmen airspace was forced to return to the Iranian capital. The Civil Aviation Organization of the Islamic Republic said the pilots learned only after takeoff that Turkmen authorities had closed their airspace to Iranian aircraft. They attempted to reroute through Azerbaijan, but permission was denied there as well. The aircraft ultimately turned back.

The broader picture is that the South Caucasus and Central Asia are increasingly isolating Iran due to U.S. sanctions. Tehran appears to have largely lost its ability to persuade neighboring countries to maintain relations with it, whether by appealing to mutual economic interests or by resorting to threats. Iran’s setbacks in the 2025 war with Israel and the 2026 war with Israel and the United States exposed weaknesses in its military capabilities. At the same time, irrational and aggressive actions by the Iranian authorities, including strikes on Azerbaijani and Turkish territory without justification, have further undermined the argument that maintaining close ties with Tehran can help neighboring states avoid security problems. Recent decisions by Georgia, Azerbaijan and, apparently, Turkmenistan show a growing willingness to align with U.S.-led financial and economic pressure on the Iranian government.

There are, however, exceptions. Armenia continues to cooperate with Iran and is even entering into new agreements with Tehran. On September 14, Armenia and Iran signed a protocol establishing a “facilitated customs corridor,” effectively easing the movement of freight between the two countries. Passenger traffic between Armenia and Iran also continued in late September.

Ten days later, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. The two discussed strengthening bilateral relations. Pashinyan expressed satisfaction with the development of Armenian-Iranian cooperation and noted that joint programs were being implemented across a range of sectors.
At almost the same time, Armenian National Assembly Deputy Speaker Ruben Rubinyan received Iran’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Yerevan, Khalil Shirgholami.

During the meeting, the two sides discussed the development of Armenian-Iranian relations and ways to deepen cooperation in a number of areas. They also considered opportunities to expand interparliamentary ties and exchanged views on regional issues.

Meanwhile, Armenian Ambassador to Iran Grigor Hakobyan called for broader cooperation between Yerevan and Tehran in the railway and trade sectors. Hakobyan discussed prospects for expanding rail links with Iran’s Deputy Minister of Roads and Urban Development and CEO of the Islamic Republic of Iran Railways, Jabbar Ali Zakeri. The two sides reviewed the state of railway infrastructure in both countries and discussed opportunities to expand regional transport and economic links. One of the principal projects under consideration is the construction of a railway connecting the two countries through Armenia’s Syunik Province. For Iran, the project has particular strategic significance: the proposed route would cut across the planned TRIPP transport corridor, an initiative pushed by President Trump that Tehran strongly opposes.

More recently, during a visit to Iran, Chairman of Armenia’s State Revenue Committee Eduard Hakobyan met Iran’s Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance and head of the country’s customs administration, Foroud Asgari. The two signed a protocol establishing an exchange of advance information on goods and vehicles moving through Armenian and Iranian territory under the framework of the “Facilitated Customs Corridor.”

Armenia therefore remains one of the few countries bordering Iran where Tehran’s pressure and incentives still appear to retain some influence. Yerevan continues to expand its cooperation with the Islamic Republic, although it is unclear how long Armenia will be able to move against the broader regional trend. At some point, Yerevan’s potential role in helping Iran circumvent sanctions may find its way onto the agenda in the White House and on Capitol Hill. If that happens, the question will ultimately be put directly to the Armenian authorities.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 177 (January 14, 2026)

Armenia finds itself at a pivotal juncture in its modern history. The August 2025 peace declaration brokered by President Donald Trump in Washington offered Yerevan something previously unimaginable: a pathway to normalized relations with Azerbaijan, access to new trade corridors bypassing both Russia and Iran, and deeper integration with Western economic and security structures. Yet even as fuel shipments from Baku begin crossing into Armenian territory after decades of hostilities, Armenian officials are simultaneously courting Tehran with pledges to elevate bilateral relations to a strategic partnership. This hedging strategy, while understandable for a small nation surrounded by larger powers, may ultimately prove self-defeating.

The stakes could hardly be higher. Armenia, a landlocked country of fewer than 3 million people, sits at the intersection of Russian, Turkish, Iranian and increasingly Western spheres of influence. Its geography has historically been both a curse and an opportunity. The Trump administration’s active diplomacy in the South Caucasus represents a rare moment when American attention has focused on this strategically significant but often overlooked region. Whether Armenia seizes this opportunity or squanders it through contradictory signaling will shape the country’s trajectory for decades to come.

The Constitutional Conundrum

The Trump-brokered agreement remains unsigned, caught in a constitutional impasse. Azerbaijan demands Armenia remove what Baku interprets as territorial claims embedded in the Armenian constitution before formalizing the peace. The preamble to Armenia’s 1995 constitution references the 1990 Declaration of Independence, which in turn alludes to a 1989 joint resolution by Soviet Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh regional council calling for unification. For Azerbaijan, these references constitute an implicit territorial claim that must be excised before any lasting peace can be achieved.

The required constitutional changes cannot occur without a referendum, now postponed until 2027. This delay creates dangerous uncertainty. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan faces parliamentary elections this year with approval ratings in the low double digits. Many Armenians blame him for the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023, when over 100,000 ethnic Armenians fled what the European Parliament has called ethnic cleansing. The trauma of that exodus remains raw, and opposition politicians have seized upon Pashinyan’s peace overtures as evidence of capitulation rather than pragmatic diplomacy.

Separating the polarizing election from the constitutional referendum may be tactically prudent for Pashinyan, but it leaves the peace agreement in diplomatic limbo, vulnerable to spoilers on all sides. Should Pashinyan lose power before the referendum takes place, his successor may prove far less willing to pursue normalization with Baku. The window for peace, opened by American mediation, could close as quickly as it appeared.

Russia and Iran: Colossi on Clay Feet

Both Moscow and Tehran are actively working to prevent Armenia from drifting westward, deploying a combination of political pressure, economic inducements and propaganda. Russia is supporting opposition figures who advocate for a union state on the Belarus model, while billionaires with Kremlin connections position themselves as potential challengers to Pashinyan. Samvel Karapetyan, a dual Russian-Armenian oligarch arrested in June over allegations of plotting to overthrow the government, exemplifies this pattern of Kremlin-aligned figures positioning themselves as alternatives to the current leadership.

The Kremlin’s intentions were laid bare when state television host Vladimir Solovyov openly discussed launching a special military operation against Armenia, declaring that losing the country would be as significant as losing Ukraine. Solovyov’s remarks went further, questioning why Russia should respect international law if its national interests demanded otherwise. Armenian politicians called his remarks an attempt to justify the use of force against a sovereign state. The leader of the Republic party noted that Solovyov does not treat Armenia as a state but rather as a zone of Russian influence, adding that the Russian propagandist’s nervousness stems from his awareness that Armenian voters have repeatedly rejected Moscow’s preferred candidates.

Iran, meanwhile, deploys softer tactics. President Masoud Pezeshkian visited the family of an Armenian Christian martyr from the Iran-Iraq war on Christmas Eve, emphasizing millennia of shared history and religious ties. During the visit, Pezeshkian stressed that Iran’s strength and stability owe much to the sacrifices of martyrs from all ethnic and religious backgrounds, a message clearly calibrated to resonate with Armenian sensibilities. Tehran is also eager to discuss regional transit routes, positioning itself as an alternative to Western-backed corridors. Iranian officials have emphasized the goal of elevating relations to a strategic level, offering Armenia an alternative axis should Western engagement falter.

Yet both patrons are severely weakened. Russia remains mired in Ukraine with grim prospects for international rehabilitation, its military reputation tarnished and its economy under unprecedented sanctions. Iran faces the largest protests in over a decade, with demonstrators challenging the regime’s legitimacy across multiple provinces. The threat of intensified sanctions under a second Trump administration looms large, potentially crippling Tehran’s ability to offer meaningful economic support to allies. Choosing either as a patron carries substantial risks that could burden multiple generations of Armenians.

The Promise of Peace

The concrete benefits of normalization are already materializing. In December 2025, Azerbaijan dispatched its first fuel cargo to Armenia since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with SOCAR sending over 1,200 tons of gasoline by rail via Georgia. A second, larger shipment followed in January 2026, comprising 6,100 tons of petrol and 1,500 tons of diesel. These deliveries reduce Armenian dependence on Russian energy imports, which accounted for over 60 percent of fuel consumption in 2024. The symbolism is as important as the substance: commercial ties severed for three decades are being restored, demonstrating that peace can deliver tangible economic dividends.

More importantly, the proposed Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity would connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave through Armenian territory, transforming the South Caucasus into a viable alternative corridor linking Europe to Central Asia while bypassing both Russia and Iran. For Armenia, participation in this corridor would end its isolation, attract foreign investment and create leverage that small states rarely enjoy. The question is whether domestic politics will permit Yerevan to capitalize on this opportunity before it evaporates.

The Diaspora Dilemma

Armenian-Americans represent another complicating factor in Yerevan’s calculations. The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) has positioned itself in opposition to the current government, viewing Pashinyan as a traitor who surrendered ancestral lands. This stance places the diaspora lobby at odds with the elected leadership in Yerevan and complicates efforts to present a unified Armenian voice in Washington.

ANCA recently escalated its criticism of Israel, claiming Israeli policy runs contrary to Jewish traditions while accusing the Netanyahu government of denying the Armenian genocide and endangering Jerusalem’s Armenian Quarter. Such rhetoric risks antagonizing the Trump administration, which maintains close ties with Israel and has little patience for organizations that criticize American allies. At a moment when American engagement in the South Caucasus could prove decisive, ANCA’s positioning threatens to marginalize the very diaspora lobby that should be amplifying Armenia’s case in Washington. The organization’s approach may satisfy nationalist sentiments among some diaspora Armenians but does little to advance Armenian interests in the corridors of power.

The West Must Step Up

If the United States and Europe are serious about fostering a peaceful South Caucasus beyond the reach of Russian and Iranian influence, the time for sustained engagement is now. The Trump administration brokered a historic agreement; the challenge now is ensuring that agreement leads to lasting peace rather than another frozen conflict. This requires diplomatic follow-through, economic support and a clear message that the West will not abandon Armenia to Russian or Iranian pressure.

The recent USAID shutdown ended programs designed to help Armenian media achieve financial sustainability and stopped funding to increase the strategic communications capacity of the Armenian government. Investment in civil society and independent media would help counter Russian influence operations certain to intensify as parliamentary elections approach. The West should also consider supporting the Armenian government in making the case for peace to skeptical domestic audiences. Without such investment, Russian propaganda and disinformation may prove decisive in shaping Armenian public opinion.

Choosing a Path

Armenia’s policy of hedging between competing powers may appear rational for a small state navigating treacherous geopolitics. But the ground is shifting beneath such calculations. Russia and Iran are not the patrons they once were, and aligning with declining powers carries long-term costs that successive Armenian governments will struggle to overcome. The Trump-brokered peace offers something tangible: economic integration, energy security and a stake in emerging trade corridors that could reshape the region.

The global political landscape has undergone a profound transformation. The era of multipolarity, in which smaller nations could deftly balance between great powers, extracting concessions from all while committing to none, is giving way to a starker reality. From Eastern Europe to the Indo-Pacific, countries are being compelled to choose their allegiances. Neutrality is becoming a luxury that geography and circumstance deny to many. Armenia, wedged between hostile and declining powers, cannot afford the illusion that it can indefinitely play all sides. The time for running with the hare and hunting with the hounds is over.

The West, for its part, must recognize that diplomatic victories require follow-through. A peace agreement initialed but never signed, a trade corridor promised but never built, would represent a failure not only for Armenia but for American credibility in a region where Russia and Iran remain eager to reassert their influence. Peace in the South Caucasus is within reach, but it demands commitment from both sides. Armenia must end its strategic ambiguity and demonstrate that it is prepared to anchor itself in the Western orbit. And the West must be prepared to support that choice with more than rhetoric.

PSCRP team

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 171 (December 15, 2025)

The role and place of the new U.S. National Security Strategy (2025) within the framework of the existing international order

The U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS-2025) is not merely another political memorandum but a coherent conceptual framework marking a radical departure from the paradigms of U.S. foreign policy that dominated the post–Cold War period. The system-forming principle of NSS-2025 is the “America First” doctrine, elevated to the status of a strategic imperative. This approach implies a fundamental reassessment of traditional commitments, alliance relationships, and security-provision methods, shifting the focus away from global governance and the maintenance of the liberal international order toward the direct, unconstrained pursuit of the United States’ narrowly defined material interests in the short and medium term.

A number of interrelated operational principles flow from this doctrine, which together shape a new, rigidly pragmatic context for all international relations.

First, there is the primacy of national sovereignty, understood as the absolute right of a state (above all, the United States itself) to define its interests independently, without regard to the norms of transnational institutions or ideological dogmas.

Second, there is a predisposition toward pragmatic non-intervention, which sets an extremely high threshold for foreign-policy actions beyond direct threats to national security, thereby de facto legitimizing the existence of spheres of influence of regional powers.

Third, this is a strategy of burden-shifting, under which allies and partners are required to bear the primary burden of both financial costs and strategic risks associated with ensuring regional stability, while the United States retains the role of supreme arbiter and holder of the key levers of influence.

Finally, fourth, there is the recognition of economic security and technological superiority as the main arena of global competition, where issues of trade, control over supply chains, access to critical resources, and the protection of intellectual property are treated as equal in importance to military-political confrontation.

For the post-Soviet space—a region characterized by a high density of “frozen” and active conflicts, incomplete processes of nation-building, and intense competition among external actors—the application of these principles carries significant transformative potential. NSS-2025 introduces a different optic through which Washington will assess developments from Donbas to the Fergana Valley. Conflicts that were traditionally viewed through the prism of violations of territorial integrity, human rights, or threats to European security risk being re-evaluated exclusively in terms of their impact on U.S. economic interests, the balance of power among great powers, and the degree of strain placed on American diplomatic and military resources.

This approach does not merely alter U.S. tactics; it reconfigures the very environment in which conflicts exist and evolve, encouraging certain actors while weakening others, legitimizing some methods of action and marginalizing others.

 Methodological Approaches

The present analysis constitutes a structural study of the potential impact of the key provisions of the new U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS-2025) on the dynamics of conflicts across the former Soviet space.

In this analysis, the doctrinal document is treated as a set of operational principles capable of reshaping the region’s political context—even in cases where a specific conflict in the post-Soviet space is not explicitly mentioned in the text of NSS-2025.

We conceptualize the post-Soviet region as an interconnected system of conflict nodes, which encompasses both interstate confrontations and internal crises of nation-building and statehood.

The analysis consistently applies the principles of NSS-2025 to each subregion and major conflict, identifying likely trajectories of change, opportunities for regional actors, and a fundamental shift in the paradigm of external intervention—not only on the part of the United States, but also of other global actors.

 Fundamental Principles of NSS-2025 and Their Interpretation for the Post-Soviet Reality

1. “America First” and a Narrowed Definition of the National Interest:
   The Strategy explicitly states that its objective is the protection of strictly concrete, even material, U.S. interests, discarding ideological goals. This signifies a de-ideologization of the U.S. presence in global affairs—and, in particular, in the post-Soviet space.

   • “The purpose of foreign policy is the protection of core national interests; that is the sole focus of this strategy.”(Section I.1).

   • “It is not grounded in traditional, political ideology. It is motivated above all by what works for America—or, in two words, ‘America First.'”(Section IV.1).

2. A Predisposition toward Non-Intervention and the Primacy of National Sovereignty over the Expansion of American Values as the Basis of Influence Policy: The document formally proclaims sovereignty as a supreme political principle, which in practice may be interpreted as an acknowledgment of the right of strong regional powers—within the post-Soviet context, above all Russia—to their own zones (or regions) of interest. In addition, this significantly broadens the boundaries of what is deemed permissible in the domestic politics of other states—even when such practices do not align with U.S. domestic political norms. In essence, authorities across the former Soviet space are granted a de facto carte blanche regarding the degree of regime rigidity, with the obvious exception of actions and measures that are unacceptable under contemporary international law.

   • “We recognize and affirm that there is nothing inconsistent or hypocritical in acting according to such a realistic assessment or in maintaining good relations with countries whose governing systems and societies differ from ours…”(Section 1, the Principle of “Flexible Realism”).

   • “For a country whose interests are as numerous and diverse as ours, rigid adherence to non-interventionism is not possible. Yet this predisposition should set a high bar for what constitutes a justified intervention.”(Section IV.1, the Principle of “Predisposition toward Non-Intervention”).

3. The Balance of Power and Burden-Shifting: The Abandonment of the Global Policeman Role: The United States openly declares the end of the era in which it bore the primary burden of global security, shifting this responsibility onto its allies. When projected onto Europe’s fragmentation and political weakness, combined with the lack of clearly articulated interests in the post-Soviet space among other U.S. allies (with the exception of Turkey), this amounts to a transition from the expansion of a “unified West” to selective, case-by-case engagement in situations where threats to U.S. interests (or opportunities for advancing them) emerge.

   • “The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over.”(Section IV.2, the Priority of “Burden-Sharing and Burden-Shifting”).

   • “President Trump has set a new global standard with the Hague Commitment, which pledges NATO countries to spend 5 percent of GDP on defense…”(Section IV.2).

   • “As the United States rejects the ill-fated concept of global domination for itself, we must prevent the global, and in some cases even regional, domination of others.”(Section IV.1, the Principle of “Balance of Power”).

4. Economic Security as the Central Arena of Competition:
   The document unambiguously identifies the economy as the main front of global competition, placing technological dominance, the reindustrialization of the United States, and American control over supply chains at the forefront. For the post-Soviet space—which, from the perspective of economic geography, constitutes a logistical expanse spanning eleven time zones and a major global resource base for the minerals essential to the sixth technological paradigm—this approach is of critical importance.

• “economic security is fundamental to national security”(Section IV.2, the Priority of “Economic Security”)

• “the United States must never be dependent on any outside power for core components—from raw materials to parts to finished products—necessary to the nation’s defense or economy.”(Section IV.2).

• “We reject the disastrous ‘climate change’ and ‘Net Zero’ ideologies that have so greatly harmed Europe, threaten the United States, and subsidize our adversaries.”(Section IV.2, the Priority of “Energy Dominance”).

Detailed Regional and Country-Specific Analysis

Belarus, Ukraine, and the Baltic States: Managed De-Escalation and the Burden of European Responsibility

• Ukraine: From a Paradigm of Victory to a Paradigm of Settlement.
  The Strategy explicitly identifies a ceasefire as the objective rather than Ukraine’s victory. The primary burden of support is shifted onto Europe.

  • “It is a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, in order to stabilize European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and reestablish strategic stability with Russia…” (Section IV.3.C).

  • “Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less. As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies.” (Section IV.3.C).

• Belarus: Legitimation through the Principle of Non-Intervention.
  The abandonment of democracy promotion largely removes pressure on Alexander Lukashenko and the political model he has constructed. Moreover, the stability and resilience of the Belarusian regime—unique within the post-Soviet space—its proven capacity for negotiation, and the complete absence of conflicts with other former Soviet republics (with the exception of certain frictions with the Baltic states) transform Minsk into a valuable asset for the pursuit of U.S. interests in the post-Soviet region.

  • “We seek good relations and peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories.” (Section IV.1, the principle of “Flexible Realism”).

• The Baltic States: Self-Defense and a Reduction in the Level of Guarantees. The requirement to spend 5% of GDP on defense, combined with rhetoric about Europe’s weakness, calls into question the absolute nature of NATO guarantees toward the Baltic states. To an even greater extent, the Baltic countries find themselves in a zone of political risk due to practices of political restrictions that are often mistakenly associated solely with limitations affecting the Russian-speaking population, but which in reality extend far beyond the so-called “problem of Russian non-citizens.” Clear, high-profile steps by the Trump administration in support of European traditionalists—most notably Alternative for Germany (AfD)—demonstrate the United States’ willingness to support internal opposition within allied countries if, in Washington’s view, their policies undermine “freedoms.” This, in turn, creates an additional instrument of pressure.

  • “We will oppose elite-driven, anti-democratic restrictions on core liberties in Europe, the Anglosphere, and the rest of the democratic world, especially among our allies.” (Section IV.2).

The South Caucasus: A Theater of Pragmatic Deals and Power Redistribution

• Armenia–Azerbaijan: Trump’s “Deal Diplomacy” Model.
  The conflict is cited as a successful example of settlement, signaling the United States’ readiness to act as an arbiter based on the balance of power and direct American benefit (the Zangezur Corridor).

  • “President Trump has leveraged his dealmaking ability to secure unprecedented peace in eight conflicts throughout the world… He negotiated peace… between… Armenia and Azerbaijan…” (Section IV.1).

  • “Seeking peace deals at the President’s direction, even in regions and countries peripheral to our immediate core interests, is an effective way to increase stability, strengthen America’s global influence, realign countries and regions toward our interests, and open new markets.” (Section IV.2, the Priority of “Realignment through Peace”).

• Georgia: “Freezing” and the Removal of Territorial Integrity from the Agenda. The principle of taking the de facto balance of power into account, combined with a focus on direct threats to the United States, leads to the marginalization of “frozen” conflicts.

  • “But to focus on everything is to focus on nothing. America’s core national security interests shall be our focus.” (Section IV.1, the Principle of “Focused Definition of the National Interest”).

Central Asia: A Field of Resource Competition and Managed Instability
General Trend: From Democracy to Resources.
The region is becoming a field of economic competition—primarily with China—for resources and logistical supply chains.

• “We must re-secure our own independent and reliable access to the goods we need to defend ourselves and preserve our way of life. This will require expanding American access to critical minerals and materials…” (Section IV.2).

• “The United States should instead look to partner with select countries to ameliorate conflict, foster mutually beneficial trade relationships, and transition from a foreign aid paradigm to an investment and growth paradigm…” (Section IV.3.E).

Counterterrorism: Targeted Engagement without an Expanded Presence. The United States will provide resources to combat terrorism while avoiding long-term commitments and, even more so, a sustained military presence.

• “And we must remain wary of resurgent Islamist terrorist activity in parts of Africa while avoiding any long-term American presence or commitments.” (Section IV.3.E). This principle, originally formulated with Africa in mind, is directly transposed to Central Asia as well.

Russia: No Longer an Opponent, but a Potential Deal-Making Partner and, in Part, a Competitor

• From Total Confrontation to Managed Engagement within the U.S. Orbit of Influence (“Nixon in Reverse”). The document recognizes Russia as a great nuclear power with which pragmatic relations must be built, based on a combination of deterrence and the pursuit of negotiated deals.

  • “President Trump uses unconventional diplomacy, America’s military might, and economic leverage to surgically extinguish embers of division between nuclear-capable nations and violent wars caused by centuries-long hatred.” (Section IV.1). This directly indicates a readiness for dialogue with nuclear powers, including Russia.

  • “Managing European relations with Russia will require significant U.S. diplomatic engagement, both to reestablish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass, and to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states.” (Section IV.3.C). This confirms that the United States views itself as a mediator in establishing a new balance with Russia, rather than as a party to the conflict.
    

 Comprehensive Risks and Conclusions Derived from the Strategy

1. Escalation of Local Conflicts Due to the Perception of a Power Vacuum.
   This approach предусматривает preventing the dominance of others, but it does not guarantee protection for any actor in the post-Soviet space in situations where U.S. interests are not directly affected or where such protection would entail high risks for the United States. The doctrine creates a new arena for deal-making over spheres of influence at specific points across the former Soviet space and in specific resource-related conflicts.

   • “The outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations.”(Section IV.1).

2. Fragmentation of the Region into Competing Spheres of Influence. The Strategy encourages states to prioritize their own interests (“the Primacy of Nations”). This leads to the erosion of common rules and the formation of ad hoc coalitions. The document explicitly supports the creation of such coalitions to counter—first and foremost—China, but also Iran, a logic that by analogy is applicable to other regions of the former Soviet space as well:

   • “We should form coalitions that use our comparative advantages in finance and technology to build export markets with cooperating countries.”(Section IV.3.B).

3. The Rise of Authoritarianism and Coercive Methods. The abandonment of democracy promotion, combined with a readiness to use force to protect interests (as reflected in the “Trumpian corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine), sets the overall tone. This logic, articulated in the NSS-2025 section on policy in the Western Hemisphere, demonstrates a willingness to undertake unilateral coercive actions, thereby legitimizing the use of force-based approaches by other actors as well.

   • “Targeted deployments to secure the border and defeat cartels, including where necessary the use of lethal force to replace the failed law enforcement-only strategy of the last several decades”(Section IV.3.A).
     

 Conclusion and Systemic Findings

The text of the U.S. National Security Strategy (2025) consistently constructs a vision of a world in which Washington abandons the role of guarantor of the liberal international order in favor of that of the principal pragmatic actor within a global system of power and economic competition. As the document explicitly states, “The world works best when nations prioritize their interests.” (Section IV.1, “Primacy of Nations”).

For the post-Soviet space, this implies a systemic devaluation of multilateral institutions and ideological commitments. Conflicts that were once framed as problems requiring resolution are, within the logic of the document, transformed either into instruments for concluding deals advantageous to the United States (“Realignment through Peace”) or into peripheral issues, responsibility for which is delegated to regional powers.

The end result will be a return to intense competition over spheres of influence, in which the rights of small states and their societies will depend directly on their resource value and on the ability of local elites to forge short-term, pragmatic alliances with external centers of power.

A key philosophical pillar of the Strategy is the Primacy of Nations, which affirms sovereignty and the right of states to place their own interests first. When combined with a Predisposition to Non-Interventionism, this creates the foundation for the de facto recognition of spheres of influence of great powers—among which the Doctrine explicitly and unambiguously includes the Russian Federation.

The U.S. retreat from the ideology of promoting democracy and human rights (explicitly stated in the sections dealing with Europe and the Middle East) reduces ideological pressure on authoritarian regimes aligned with Russia (Belarus and Central Asia). This may strengthen the Kremlin’s position in conflict management on its own terms (“the Russian world,” peacekeeping on Russian-defined conditions), without regard for Western criticism. The emphasis on “respect for different systems of governance” diminishes the potential for U.S. pressure on the authoritarian tools employed by post-Soviet governments (the suppression of protests in Belarus, the situation in Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan).

The Strategy proclaims economic competition as the central battlefield. The goals of U.S. “reindustrialization,” securing supply chains, and ensuring access to critical materials directly affect the resource-rich post-Soviet region. The region becomes an object of competition for access to rare earth elements, hydrocarbons, and transport corridors. References to Africa as a zone for investment in critical minerals are, by analogy, applicable to Central Asia as well. As the United States seeks to reduce its dependence on China, it may intensify economic diplomacy with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Azerbaijan. This could alter the balance of influence in a region currently dominated by Russia and China and potentially become a destabilizing factor if local elites maneuver between competing centers of power.

The Strategy proclaims successes in the settlement of numerous conflicts (Cambodia–Thailand, Pakistan–India, and others) as a model. This model (Realignment Through Peace) is based on the president’s personal diplomacy and the use of economic and military leverage for the “surgical” de-escalation of conflicts. Such an approach, which relies on rapid (and often weakly institutionalized) deals among elites, may ignore the deeper root causes of conflicts, including historical grievances and identity-related issues.

The section on the Western Hemisphere notes a willingness to employ lethal force against cartels. While this provision does not directly concern the post-Soviet space, it reflects a broader posture favoring uncompromising use of force to protect national interests.

If implemented, the new U.S. National Security Strategy will mark a fundamental shift from global interventionism to focused pragmatism.

For the post-Soviet space, this creates a paradoxical situation. The weakening of U.S. security guarantees for Eastern Europe, the potential reduction of support for Ukraine, and the retreat from an active role in “frozen” conflicts may generate a power vacuum. This vacuum is likely to be filled by regional powers (Russia, Turkey, Iran) and a global competitor (China), increasing the risk of a new wave of tensions and a redistribution of spheres of influence. At the same time, countries of the region—especially those rich in resources and possessing strategic positions (Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan)—may gain greater room for maneuver, pursuing multi-vector policies by leveraging economic competition among the United States, China, and the European Union.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 166 (November 21, 2025)

Reviving the “Abraham Accords” — the process of normalizing relations between Israel and the previously hostile yet “moderate” Sunni Arab regimes of the Saudi bloc (the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Northern Sudan), initiated by U.S. President Donald Trump during his first term — has become one of the top priorities of the Republican administration following Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025.

From the Saudi bloc to Azerbaijan — and beyond?

Part of this package was the achievement of a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, with the prospect of transforming it into a long-term truce capable of ending the two-year war that began with the bloody aggression against Israel by Hamas — the radical Islamist terrorist organization controlling the Strip — on 7 October 2023, followed by the IDF’s response operation Iron Swords. That escalation, in turn, derailed the process of rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The normalization of relations between Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia would undoubtedly become a trigger for the establishment of full diplomatic relations between the Jewish state and not only other pro-American Arab regimes in the Middle East, but also a number of non-Arab Muslim states, such as Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia — the latter being the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country. Therefore, the end of the war in the Gaza Strip (though not yet in the Middle East as a whole) may revive the dialogue between Jerusalem and Riyadh, especially given that Trump’s plan envisions the involvement of the Saudis and their allies in the Washington-designed plan for “external administration” and reconstruction of the Strip “after Hamas.”

However, this time Donald Trump’s vision for the scope and meaning of the Abraham Accords is clearly far broader. Abraham Accords 2.0 envisions the formation, under U.S. auspices, of a large-scale economic, political, and — not least — defense-oriented strategic alliance in the eastern segment of the “Greater Middle East.” Such an alliance could become a serious counterweight to the anti-Western axis of Moscow and Beijing across Central, South, and Southeast Asia, and in the Middle East — to the jihadist regime of the Shiite ayatollahs in Tehran and its satellites, patronized by those global competitors for influence in the “Global South.”

In light of these prospects, the expanded version of the Abraham Accords could also include states that have maintained diplomatic and partnership relations with Israel for several decades already, in some cases quite close ones.

It was expected that among such states the first candidate to join this project would be Azerbaijan, which has maintained long-standing strategic partnerships with Israel in diplomacy, economics, and security, driven by shared challenges and threats emanating from the Iranian bloc. Moreover, it was assumed that Baku would be able to persuade other post-Soviet Central Asian states — and the entire Turkic world — to join this “pact of reconciliation”.

Unsurprisingly, the pro-government Iranian think tank Iran Diplomacy expressed concern, stating that “by bringing Central Asian countries closer to Israel, Baku is seeking to enhance its own ties with the United States and bolster its role in Washington’s regional policy”.

Their concerns were well-founded: with Baku launching the ambitious Middle Corridor (TITR) project — a trade route from Southeast Asia to Europe via Central Asian states — Azerbaijan is becoming one of the critical links in a developing transcontinental network. Israel may find itself integrated not only into this promising trade architecture, but also into the merging of the “extended” Abraham Accords with the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) — a 5,000-kilometer transport and infrastructure system consisting of a rail link, an electricity grid, a hydrogen pipeline, a high-speed data cable, and other elements. IMEC is envisioned as an economic-geopolitical alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Why Kazakhstan?

Yet the first post-Soviet Turkic state to openly declare its intention to join Abraham Accords 2.0 was Kazakhstan — as officially announced by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev during his meeting with Donald Trump on 7 November of this year.

Signs that such an initiative was already being diplomatically prepared became evident earlier, on 12 June of this year, following a meeting in Washington between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Kazakh counterpart Murat Nurtleu.

The starting point for the process that culminated on 6 November at the second “U.S.–Central Asia” summit, held at the White House, was the creation ten years earlier of a forum aimed at advancing economic and geopolitical cooperation between the United States and the five post-Soviet Central Asian states — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

For the first several years, cooperation occurred primarily through contacts among foreign ministers. However, the clear mutual interest — and the regional leaders’ desire to diversify their systems of strategic partnership beyond Russia, which had remained the dominant geopolitical force in the region for three decades after the USSR’s collapse — gradually elevated U.S.–Central Asian cooperation in the C5+1 format to the highest political level.

This trend accelerated sharply after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In the same year, the Secretariat of the C5+1 group was established, aiming to further institutionalize the platform and expand U.S.–Central Asian engagement in support of shared priorities.

And already in September of the following year, 2023, the summit in New York brought together the leaders of the post-Soviet Central Asian republics — hosted by then U.S. President Joe Biden.

The new/old master of the White House, Donald Trump, continued this tradition: the second summit of the C5+1 forum took place in Washington a little over a year later — on 7 November 2025. It was on this occasion that the official and ceremonial announcement of Kazakhstan’s entry into the Abraham Accords was made.

Although many observers, noting that Kazakhstan — the largest and most economically powerful state in the region — has actually had formal relations with Israel since 1992, downplayed the significance of Astana joining the Accords and considered its move primarily a symbolic gesture, as noted by Dov Zakheim, a columnist for the semi-official Washington outlet The Hill, in fact, Kazakhstan’s accession signifies far more than merely a rubber stamp of a long-standing relationship.

Indeed, Kazakhstan, according to observers, has emerged as the United States’ primary economic partner in Central Asia, accounting for over 96% of Central Asia’s U.S. exports (approximately $2.4 billion out of a regional total of $2.5 billion). U.S.–Kazakhstan trade has grown meaningfully in recent years. Bilateral trade peaked in 2024 at $4.2 billion, the highest level in six years, with U.S. exports to Kazakhstan accounting for 53.2% of the total.

Although in the first eight months of 2025 total trade between the two countries experienced a 25.8% drop compared to the same period in 2024, U.S. exports to Kazakhstan remained relatively stable. So for the United States, Kazakhstan might be seen as a “flagship” in converting diplomatic engagement into tangible deliverables: critical minerals (antimony, tungsten, rare earth elements, and 40% of the uranium deposits in the world), regional connectivity, and security coordination.

In light of these trends, for Astana — as President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev openly stated while departing for the Washington summit — joining the expanded version of the Abrahamic alliance “means that we will receive certain dividends in terms of economic cooperation,” that is, this is mostly about bilateral relations with the United States. And the traditional “good relations with Israel and the Middle Eastern countries” serve as a positive backdrop on the way to that goal. (In the wording of the country’s Foreign Ministry statement — “this important decision is taken exclusively in the interests of Kazakhstan and fully corresponds to the balanced, constructive, and peace-loving foreign policy of the republic”.)

Although even in this sense it is hardly worth fully accepting the opinion of those who see Astana’s move — and, potentially, future moves by other Central Asian leaders — as “an attempt to find creative ways to secure foreign policy victories for Trump and earn his favor at minimal cost to themselves.”

In any case, in the vision of Trump’s team, however important the economic aspect may be for the United States in its relations with Kazakhstan, and whatever political image dividends it might bring, this is clearly not the limit of their ambitions. Likewise, in our view, it is not limited to the desire to find an alternative to the stalled process of expanding the first circle of the “Abraham Accords,” which came to a halt after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and the beginning of Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip.

The struggle for rare earths and other valuable minerals is a critical element of Washington’s regional and global geopolitical game — including, and possibly among its highest priorities, in its confrontation with Beijing and, to some extent, Moscow. And Central Asia occupies far from the least important place in this context. All the more so because it is precisely there that the eastern flank of the strategic geopolitical and economic alliance of U.S. partners on the Asian continent is located.

By entering Central Asia on such a scale, Trump, in search of a weak link on the geographic axis between the two contenders for leadership in the “Global South,” as noted in conversation with the author by the respected Israeli military and political analyst Grigory Tamar, “is in effect putting his boot between China and Russia.” If Trump indeed succeeds in linking all these states — from post-Soviet Central Asia to Israel and Saudi Arabia, and the members of its bloc — into a single economic and defensive alliance, Tamar argues, “then considering their combined volume of raw materials, technologies, military capabilities, economic and industrial resources, and so on, we will get a construction that may well surpass the former Soviet Union in its potential… And integrating such a conglomerate with India would allow Trump to build a monster that even China will not be able to cope with”. 

Interim conclusions and possible prospects

So, while the American strategy on this issue is complex, multifaceted, yet overall fairly transparent, their South Caucasian and Central Asian counterparts are still determining not so much the general idea — which appears broadly acceptable to them — as the methods of integrating themselves into the Abraham Accords 2.0 and the potential consequences of such a step.

On the one hand, for the Central Asian states, participation in the project offers an opportunity to maintain their multi-vector foreign policies, avoiding dependence on either Russia or China. On the other hand, as they move closer to the West, it remains equally important not to damage relations with Moscow or Beijing. It is telling that on 11 November, exactly four days after participating in the Washington “5+1” summit, Tokayev travelled to Moscow for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The meeting resulted in the signing of a Declaration on elevating interstate relations between Russia and Kazakhstan to the level of a comprehensive strategic partnership and alliance, which, as one can see, was not hindered by Astana’s recently announced rapprochement with Washington and may even have accelerated the process. (Notably, once the presidential aircraft crossed into Kazakhstan’s airspace, it was escorted by an honor guard of the Russian Air Force.)

Another indicator of Astana’s updated multi-vector policy was a speech delivered on 11 November of this year at the academic conference “Expanding Horizons of BRICS Cooperation” held at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. Rustem Kurmanguzhin, a professor at Narxoz University in Almaty, proposed an innovative idea: that BRICS countries should view the current U.S. Republican administration not as a geopolitical rival or adversary, but as a “potential situational ally”.

It is difficult to imagine that this proposal — voiced by Kurmanguzhin, a figure close to President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and formerly his colleague in Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry — was not previously coordinated and likely approved at the level of both Kazakh and Russian leadership. And considering that today China, even more than Russia, sets the tone within BRICS — an organization created, as analysts note, “to expedite the rebalancing of global power away from the West”, this seemingly academic proposal also contains a message directed toward Beijing.

The next unresolved question concerns the reasons why Azerbaijan did not become the first to embark on the path toward a new interpretation of the Abraham Accords. Three explanations are commonly offered.

The first: Azerbaijan had indeed hoped to become the first post-Soviet Muslim country in Asia to join the Abraham Accords 2.0, expecting that, along with importing weapons from Israel and Turkey, it would gain direct access to American defense technologies. In this view, Kazakhstan’s move came as a considerable surprise to Baku. However, it is difficult to believe that Azerbaijan was so unaware of ongoing developments that — had it had such intentions — it would have failed to stake its claim to a leading role in the emerging process of rapprochement among the Muslim states of the former USSR.

The second explanation: Azerbaijan, whose relations with Israel are at the level of de facto strategic partnership, must also take into account the position and interests of its strategic partner both de facto and de jure — Turkey, including the moods (and at times, the “whims”) of that country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. President Ilham Aliyev has repeatedly succeeded in reducing tensions between Jerusalem and Ankara and even achieving, at least at the declarative level, normalization of their economic and diplomatic contacts. Yet Erdoğan has consistently disrupted this process from within.

Today, despite Azerbaijan’s considerable political experience and successful diplomatic efforts within the Baku–Jerusalem–Ankara triangle, its leadership appears somewhat constrained in its maneuverability along the Israel–Turkey axis. If so, a declarative accession of Azerbaijan to a defense alliance with Israel could appear as a provocative gesture toward Turkey, whose leader is currently displaying yet another escalation of anti-Israeli rhetoric. If this is the case, then Azerbaijan — especially against the backdrop of its increasingly complicated relations with Russia over the past year — clearly cannot afford to provoke Ankara, whose assistance, including military assistance, Baku may need in the event of new tensions with Moscow.

And the third hypothesis — which to the author of these lines appears the most logical, though it may not exclude the previous two — is the following: from the perspective of Azerbaijan’s leadership, it would be far more rational if the official declaration of Baku’s accession to the expanded version of the Abraham Accords were to become a symbolically significant culmination of the formation of the aforementioned U.S.–Middle Eastern supra-regional bloc, rather than a loosely binding “declaration of intent.”

If this hypothesis is at least partially correct, the Azerbaijani leadership may be taking into account the experience of the Saudi leadership, which at the dawn of the Abraham Accords 1.0 preferred to “let their closest allies from the Saudi bloc — the UAE and Bahrain — go first,” expressing their intention to join the process only if it proved its relevance, and not before the United States and Israel were able and willing to accommodate the requirements and conditions of official Riyadh. Considering that Azerbaijan, within the new geopolitical framework outlined by the Abraham Accords 2.0, is expected to become a key supporting element of the Washington–Jerusalem–Baku axis — playing on the western-northern flank of the Middle East–South Caucasus macro-region a role similar to that which Saudi Arabia is supposed to play on its western-southern flank in the Washington–Jerusalem–Riyadh vector — the Azerbaijani leadership indeed has no need to rush.

And finally, what place does the Jewish state itself occupy in this diplomatic wave triggered by Kazakhstan’s announcement of its accession to the Abraham Accords?

At first glance, the main contacts and negotiations with the project’s new potential participants are being conducted directly by the U.S. administration, giving the Israeli leadership, for the moment, the role of a “side observer.” At the same time, there is reason to assume that behind Trump’s message about the “very good,” as he put it, phone conversation he held in parallel on 7 November with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, there is something more than a polite gesture toward the Israeli partner. At least in theory, this gives the Prime Minister’s Office grounds to claim that everything is taking place in close coordination with Jerusalem — which may well correspond to reality. And it may allow Netanyahu and his government to somewhat strengthen their not especially high standing in the eyes of Israeli society, where the news of the U.S.–Kazakh initiative was received positively, but without the excitement that accompanied the first reports of breakthroughs in relations with the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf a little more than five years ago.

Moreover, even at this early stage, Israel is already gaining new and interesting opportunities. In particular, there is considerable potential for expanding Israeli arms exports to the Central Asian states, including Kazakhstan, with which Israel’s defense industry previously carried out a number of joint military projects (especially in 2007–2009), though later cooperation declined due to access-level restrictions. Clearly, Kazakhstan’s participation in the Abraham Accords is capable of lifting such restrictions, and Israel’s defense industry may gain access to a market that was previously partially closed.

Last but not least for Israel: unlike the Saudis — who demand a solution to the Palestinian issue as an ultimatum-like condition for normalizing relations with Israel — the Kazakh leadership, it appears, is not particularly concerned with this matter. In any case, Astana virtually ignored the statement issued by the leaders of the Hamas terrorist organization, who described Kazakhstan’s decision to join the Abraham Accords and strengthen the country’s ties with Israel as “justifying genocide,” allegedly committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip, and called for “Islamic solidarity,” demanding that all Muslim countries sever relations with Israel. Tokayev himself limited his response to a noncommittal affirmation of the “good relations with Israel and the countries of the Middle East” that Kazakhstan had always maintained, and that its accession to the Abraham Accords would be “a logical continuation of current policy.”

It is not impossible that a similar reaction could be expected from the leaders of other potential entrants into the Abrahamic bloc with the United States and Israel among the post-Soviet Central Asian states — including Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and possibly even (though less likely) Tajikistan, where, unlike in the more moderate, “ethnically Muslim” Kazakhstan, internal and external threats from radical Islamist groups are felt quite acutely. However, at the time of writing, these states are still refraining from binding steps or statements.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 163 (November 10, 2025)

Kazakhstan’s decision to endorse the Abraham Accords declared on 6 November 2025 in connection with Kazakh president Tokayev’s visit to Washington fits neatly within Astana’s long-standing multi-vector foreign policy, which seeks to balance the interests of major powers while maintaining the broadest possible network of partnerships. For Astana, supporting an initiative aimed at normalizing relations between Israel and a number of Muslim-majority states aligns with core principles of its external strategy: interfaith dialogue, peaceful coexistence, and a deliberate refusal to operate within rigid bloc politics. The move, however, has a clear pragmatic dimension — and it lies not in relations with Israel, but in relations with the Trump administration. By backing the Accords, Kazakhstan extended a meaningful political gesture toward President Donald Trump, for whom the Accords (and the broader idea of advancing peace in the Middle East) represent a signature foreign-policy achievement. Astana has been searching for credible points of engagement with Washington, and symbolic support for the Trump-backed initiative offered a convenient and low-risk way to build political rapport.

Crucially, this step does not contradict Kazakhstan’s overarching commitment to multi-vector foreign policy. On the contrary, it illustrates the flexibility of that doctrine: Astana remains firmly oriented toward cooperation with Russia, China, Turkey, and the wider Islamic world, yet is simultaneously identifying new ways to strengthen its U.S. track — in this case, through a gesture toward Israel. Kazakh policymakers calculated that endorsing the Abraham Accords would allow them to move closer to Trump without crossing any red lines for Moscow or Beijing, whose relations with Kazakhstan carry far greater strategic weight simply by virtue of geography.

Astana is, in fact, seeking a new framework for relations with Washington compared to earlier decades. In the early 2000s, cooperation centered largely on security, particularly on the fight against terrorism during the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. Once the United States withdrew from Afghanistan, that agenda lost its relevance. Under the Biden administration, the format of engagement was effectively exhausted, and by 2024–2025 the bilateral relationship required new substantive content.

Coordinating geopolitically against Russia or China is not an option for any Central Asian capital — Astana, Tashkent, and others expressly rule out participation in anti-Russian or anti-Chinese initiatives. This leaves only one viable basis for deepening ties between Kazakhstan and the United States: economic cooperation, technology, and investment. These areas do not carry the geopolitical risks that could undermine Kazakhstan’s delicate balancing act.

Yet a purely economic foundation was not enough. Kazakhstan’s geographic distance from the United States and the limited scale of bilateral trade meant that economics alone was unlikely to capture Trump’s attention. A political gesture was needed — and support for the Abraham Accords provided precisely that: a symbolic but strategically calibrated step that could anchor a renewed Kazakh-American dialogue without destabilizing Kazakhstan’s relations with its much closer neighbors.

In this context, Kazakhstan’s endorsement of the Abraham Accords becomes a significant political act. It introduces a symbolic layer into Kazakh-American relations that speaks directly to Donald Trump’s foreign-policy priorities. At the same time, Astana is confident that this gesture will not provoke serious irritation in Moscow or Beijing. Unlike any form of military or geopolitical cooperation with the United States, participation in a framework aimed at normalizing relations between Israel and Muslim-majority states can be interpreted in both capitals as a neutral diplomatic initiative, consistent with Kazakhstan’s established foreign-policy behavior.

Indeed, Kazakhstan has long positioned itself as a state that promotes dialogue and de-escalation. It initiated the creation of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in Central Asia; it launched the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA); it has invested heavily in global interfaith dialogue; and it has at various moments helped facilitate rapprochement between Russia and Turkey as well as between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Against this background, support for the Abraham Accords appears as another iteration of Kazakhstan’s familiar diplomatic toolkit rather than a departure from its established line.

The country that most strongly opposes to the Abraham Accords is Iran. But for Kazakhstan, this does not constitute a decisive constraint. Astana maintains cautious, functional relations with Tehran, and potential criticism from Iran does not rank among its major foreign-policy risks. This is precisely why the Abraham Accords emerged as an ideal vehicle: they allow Kazakhstan to signal goodwill to the Trump administration without disturbing the regional balance on which its multi-vector strategy depends.

Kazakhstan’s decision was not only politically calibrated but also carefully timed. Astana acted at a moment when the broader international environment allowed for a degree of maneuverability: tensions among major powers had eased slightly, and the diplomatic climate was more forgiving.

A key factor was the Gaza ceasefire of 10 October 2025, brokered with the involvement of the Trump administration. This de-escalation reshaped the context by making Kazakhstan’s support for the Accords appear as a contribution to peace rather than an alignment with one of the parties to the conflict.

A second important element of the broader context was the renewed engagement between the United States and China. The meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping on 30 October 2025 — after which both sides signaled a willingness to pursue a “pragmatic exchange” and reopen working-level communication channels — reduced the likelihood that Beijing would interpret Kazakhstan’s move as a shift toward the American camp. It is worth noting that, from China’s perspective, the economic dimension of Kazakhstan’s recent agreements with the United States is far more consequential. Beijing has repeatedly used its dominance in rare-earth minerals as leverage over Washington, while Kazakhstan has now agreed to expand cooperation with the United States precisely in this strategic sector. By comparison, the Abraham Accords do not touch the core lines of U.S.–China rivalry, which is why Beijing views Kazakhstan’s endorsement of the Accords without particular concern.

A third factor that eased political risks was the meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin on 15 August 2025 in Alaska. Although the talks did not produce breakthroughs and, in fact, the two sides have since resumed trading hostile statements and actions, the meeting nonetheless demonstrated a basic willingness to keep communication open, as well as an element of personal rapport between the two leaders. This temporary softening of tone made it less likely that Moscow would read Kazakhstan’s outreach to Washington as a “geopolitical choice.” If anything, given the current dynamics, Moscow may see President Tokayev’s ability to maintain dialogue with multiple actors as a useful asset in its own search for a workable modus vivendi with Trump.

Finally, in this same vein, it is particularly significant that immediately after his visit to the United States, President Tokayev is scheduled to travel to Russia on 12 November 2025. This serves as an explicit signal to Moscow that Kazakhstan remains committed to the strategic character of the bilateral relationship and is not departing from its multi-vector course.

Kazakhstan’s announcement of support for the Abraham Accords was prompted by the C5+1 Summit in Washington (this diplomatic format includes five Central Asian states and USA). A central outcome of Tokayev’s visit to the summit — and one of strategic importance for the U.S. government — was the formal institutionalization of cooperation on critical and rare-earth minerals. Kazakhstan and the United States signed a Memorandum of Understanding on collaboration in the field of strategic raw materials, laying the groundwork for technology exchange, support for processing facilities, American investment in value-added production chains within Kazakhstan, and the integration of the country into “clean” global supply networks for critical minerals.

Other areas of cooperation include logistics, transport, and advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence — the latter being particularly significant in light of the new domestic and economic priorities recently outlined by President Tokayev.

Kazakhstan’s decision to align itself with the Abraham Accords was, above all, a political gesture aimed at strengthening relations with the Trump administration; for Israel, its practical significance remains limited for now. President Tokayev effectively opened a “political door” toward Washington while preserving room to develop cooperation with Israel gradually and carefully, and strictly within areas that pose no geopolitical risks or tensions in Kazakhstan’s relationships with Russia, China, or its partners in the Muslim world.

For precisely this reason, an economic format is the only viable and natural avenue for Astana. Israel is a global leader in water management, agrotechnology, cybersecurity, medicine, and innovations — sectors in which cooperation offers Kazakhstan tangible benefits and fits squarely within its broader strategy of economic modernization. None of this carries the political weight that could upset regional balances, which makes economic engagement both safe and mutually advantageous.

One of the most promising platforms for such cooperation is the Negev Forum, a multilateral mechanism designed to turn the principles of the Abraham Accords into practical, sector-based collaboration.

It brings together working groups on water and food security, energy, logistics, healthcare, education, and interfaith dialogue. Kazakhstan’s participation in selected clusters would allow it to plug into the technological and investment networks of the Middle East and the United States without straying from its characteristically cautious foreign-policy posture. For the southern regions of Kazakhstan, which increasingly face water scarcity, cooperation on Israeli irrigation technologies, precision agriculture, and the management of arid lands would be particularly relevant.

A further avenue is bilateral cooperation with Israel, which Astana can expand independently of the Abraham Accords framework. Here, Kazakhstan has considerable freedom to choose the most pragmatic directions: joint projects in agrotechnology, energy, transport, innovation, and medical technology; educational partnerships; and new forms of IT collaboration. Israeli companies already have experience working in Central Asia, and Kazakhstan is well-positioned to scale up this engagement without taking steps that would be politically sensitive for its neighbors.

Kazakhstan’s support for the Abraham Accords also carries broader international significance. Astana became the first Muslim-majority country to take advantage of the opening created by the Gaza ceasefire to explore future cooperation with Israel. The move aligns with Kazakhstan’s multi-vector diplomacy, but it also establishes a new precedent within the Muslim world — particularly within the Turkic sphere.

Turkey’s stance is an important part of the picture. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has pursued an overtly anti-Israeli line in recent years. Yet the Turkic world is far from uniform: Azerbaijan has developed a markedly different model, building a strategic partnership with Israel. Kazakhstan’s endorsement of the Accords falls squarely within this second, more pragmatic trajectory.

By positioning itself in this way, Kazakhstan may serve as a reference point for other post-Soviet Turkic states. Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan closely follow shifts in the region’s diplomatic architecture, and Kazakhstan’s ability to cultivate calm and mutually beneficial relations with Israel could lower the political costs for others to explore similar avenues. The step taken by Astana encourages a view of Israel grounded not in ideological or religious confrontation but in economic and technological opportunity.

For Israel, this is a strategically valuable signal. Kazakhstan’s support could mark the beginning of a transformation of the Abraham Accords from a primarily Middle Eastern initiative into a broader platform for cooperation between Israel and Muslim-majority states — one centered on technological development, infrastructure, energy, water management, and interfaith dialogue. In that sense, it offers Israel a chance to lay new foundations for its relations with the Islamic world in the post-war period — a period one hopes will eventually arrive.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 156 (September 29, 2025)

The core element in the foreign policy of post-Soviet countries in Central Asia and the South Caucasus is so-called multivectoralism: maintaining relations with multiple global actors without binding themselves exclusively to any single one. These states seek to balance ties with the China–Russia axis and the collective West (including the USA and the EU—although it should be noted that the internal fragility of this grouping has never been as evident as it is now). These actors, who claim global influence in the world politics, can be regarded as the first tier of influence in the South Caucasus and Central Asia. A second, regional tier consists of other regional neighbors, with Turkey (and, to a lesser extent, Iran) being the most prominent actors in this “regional league.”

Amid today’s global uncertainty and high risks, the states of the South Caucasus and Central Asia are striving to diversify their foreign policies as much as possible, with the goal of strengthening their autonomy and agency. In Central Eurasia, where these countries are located, there is currently a clear weakening of the Western vector of influence. There are several reasons for that:

• The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the resulting loss of interest in adjacent post-Soviet regions.

• The war in Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East, both of which have diminished the earlier geopolitical relevance of the South Caucasus and Central Asia.

• The weakening of the West due to internal political conflicts and the confrontation between the Trump administration and the European political mainstream.

Nevertheless, preserving good relations with the West - and, in many cases, artificially “boosting” this vector of foreign policy despite limited reciprocal interest from the Western side — has become, within the framework of multivectoralism, a strategy of survival for the post-Soviet South. Otherwise, these states risk falling into complete dependence on the China–Russia bloc, which aspires to global influence, as well as on regional powers such as Turkey and Iran.

The above features of foreign policy were clearly visible in the policies of the several key states of the South Caucasus and Central Asia in late summer and early autumn 2025. Two distinct diplomatic styles can be identified: a “soft” Central Asian one (most evident in the recent diplomatic moves of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan), and a “hard” Caucasian one (best exemplified by the policies of Azerbaijan and Armenia). In both cases, however, there is a clear attempt to rebalance foreign policy so as to reduce dependence on immediate Central Eurasian neighbors by strengthening ties with the West - above all with the United States, as the leader of the Western world.

At the 80th session of the UN General Assembly on 23 September 2025, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev delivered a speech in which he called for reform of the UN (a logical position, given his earlier service as UN Deputy Secretary-General) and for strengthening the global role of the “middle powers.”

Tokayev stressed that middle powers such as Kazakhstan can contribute to global balance by acting as intermediaries between major powers. He also advocated for diplomatic solutions to armed conflicts, including the war in Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East.

Amid the UN General Assembly, on 22 September 2025, Wabtec Corporation (USA) announced the signing of a $4.2 billion contract with Kazakhstan’s national railway company, Kazakhstan Temir Zholy, for the supply of 300 locomotives and their long-term maintenance. This agreement is considered the largest locomotive supply contract in Wabtec’s history. The contract goes beyond delivering locomotive kits, including servicing, technical support, and likely local assembly. The deal creates about 11,000 jobs in the United States across supply chains, manufacturing, and maintenance. Previously, Kazakhstan had procured locomotives from Russian manufacturers (Transmashholding).

Several analysts have also drawn attention to the strategic dimensions of the deal. Kazakhstan’s leadership is not only creating jobs in the United States -something the Trump administration welcomes — but also strengthening the Trans-Caspian route to Europe, bypassing Russia and Iran. It should be noted that the West has long supported this route for strategic reasons, while China has also traditionally favored it as part of its broader policy of diversifying continental transport corridors and assisting the development of Central Asian and South Caucasus states. Thus, although the move is unwelcome in Moscow and Tehran, it is well received in Brussels and Washington, and cannot be described as directed against Beijing. Overall, it can be seen as a subtle diplomatic maneuver within the framework of Kazakhstan’s multivector foreign policy. In June 2025, Kazakhstan awarded Russia a major contract for the construction of a nuclear power plant; the new U.S. locomotive contract serves to balance that move.

Russian experts paid even closer attention to the meeting that took place on 23 September 2025 on the sidelines of the 80th UN General Assembly in New York between President Tokayev and President Zelensky of Ukraine. Observers noted that the two leaders conversed in English, rather than Russian. For Tokayev – a career diplomat and polyglot - this was natural and carried little symbolic meaning. For Zelensky, however, the choice was more significant, as he consistently conducts his diplomatic communication either in English or in Ukrainian. During the meeting, Zelensky thanked Kazakhstan for supporting Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Tokayev, in turn, emphasized that a final resolution of the conflict must be achieved through diplomacy. The two leaders also discussed economic and humanitarian cooperation. Afterward, Tokayev stated that Kazakhstan was ready to provide a venue for a meeting between the presidents of Russia and Ukraine, should both sides express interest.

Kazakhstan had previously played a similar role in facilitating rapprochement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as between Russia and Turkey during a flare-up of tensions over Syria. At the same time, in the context of his visit to New York, Uzbekistan’s President Mirziyoyev achieved a significant breakthrough in relations with the Trump administration. Like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan under its second president seeks to strengthen contacts with the West while avoiding rhetoric directly aimed against Russia or China. Unlike his predecessor Islam Karimov, Mirziyoyev generally avoids political framing in such cases, emphasizing instead the economic pragmatism of his actions.

On 23 September 2025 in New York, on the sidelines of the 80th session of the UN General Assembly, President Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan met with Donald Trump. During the meeting, the two discussed issues of strategic partnership between Uzbekistan and the United States, expansion of economic cooperation, as well as projects in key sectors (aviation, infrastructure, technology). After the meeting, Trump publicly praised Mirziyoyev, calling him a “man of his word” in reference to the fulfillment of agreements.

Before meeting Trump, Mirziyoyev had held talks with representatives of more than 50 American companies and banks, discussing large-scale business deals. During his UN visit, Uzbekistan and Boeing signed a contract for the purchase of up to 22 Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft, valued at more than $8 billion. The initial agreement provides for the delivery of 14 Boeing 787-9 aircraft, with an option for an additional 8 units. The deal is described as the largest of its kind in Central Asia. Deliveries are expected to begin in 2031, with the contract projected to support about 35,000 jobs in the United States.

The foreign policy content of Mirziyoyev’s speech at the UN General Assembly on 23 September 2025 largely mirrored that of Tokayev’s address. He stressed the need to reform international institutions, especially by strengthening the role of developing countries and reshaping the composition of the UN Security Council to better reflect contemporary challenges. He also noted the growing number of conflicts in today’s world, voiced support for diplomatic efforts to resolve the crises in Ukraine and the Middle East and called for the development of regional transport corridors.

The similarity of the policies of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, as demonstrated by the September visits of their presidents, became quite clear. In both cases, the countries face growing geopolitical conflicts and global uncertainty, and they seek to strengthen their position through multivector diplomacy—particularly by deepening ties with the U.S. administration. In both cases, diplomacy is pursued through expanding economic cooperation with the United States and promoting transport corridors that enhance economic diversification and reduce dependence on Central Eurasian neighbors.

To strengthen the comparative dimension of the analysis, the diplomatic moves of the leaders of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan should be contrasted with the summer actions of the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia.

On 8 August 2025, a ceremony was held at the White House in Washington, where Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a joint declaration. Trump acted as mediator, and the project was named the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.”

Under the agreements, Armenia granted the American side a 99-year concession for development of the territory. The corridor will function under Armenian law (meaning Armenian jurisdiction remains in place), but the United States will receive exclusive rights to develop infrastructure — roads, railways, energy pipelines, communication lines, and more. The corridor is intended to provide transport connectivity between mainland Azerbaijan and its Nakhchivan exclave through southern Armenia (Syunik/Zangezur). This transit corridor is a key element of the peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, aimed at normalizing communications and opening transport routes. Russia and Iran expressed concern over the agreement, viewing it as an expansion of U.S. influence in the South Caucasus and a potential weakening of Moscow’s and Tehran’s role in the region.

The agreements are important not only as a U.S.-backed solution to the previously tense diplomatic situation around Zangezur, which threatened to trigger a new war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, but also from a geopolitical perspective. They represent a major strategic step in developing the same Middle Corridor via the Caspian Sea that bypasses Russia and Iran — a route which, as shown above, Central Asian countries have been developing in a more diplomatically cautious manner. It is also significant that Trump thereby signaled Washington’s claim to hegemony in the South Caucasus. Other actors who had previously played a key role in the peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan (for instance, France and Russia) were thus sidelined.

It should be noted that both Azerbaijan and Armenia have entered into open confrontation with Russia. In Azerbaijan’s case, this concerns the conflict over the Azerbaijani civilian airliner damaged over Chechnya on 25 December 2024, resulting in the deaths of most of its passengers, as well as the crisis surrounding the Azerbaijani diaspora in Russia. Whereas earlier Azerbaijan, within the framework of its multivector foreign policy, sought to maintain a strategic partnership with Russia, this is now far less of a priority for Baku. Demonstrative elements may also be linked to recent developments in the Middle East: the fall of Assad’s regime in Syria and the rise of Turkey-friendly forces, as well as major Israeli strikes — supported by the United States — against the Iranian “axis of resistance.” These events appear to have led President Ilham Aliyev to conclude that Russia’s and Iran’s influence in the Middle East is weakening. At the same time, in the spirit of multivector diplomacy, Aliyev sought to “balance” his deepening contacts with the United States by making a working visit to China on 30 August 2025, during which he exchanged a handshake and brief conversation with then-present Russian President Putin. Thus, Aliyev is leaving open the option of engaging with the China–Russia axis if necessary.

In Armenia’s case, the issue lies in longstanding tensions between Russia’s leadership and Pashinyan’s government. The unresolved conflict with Azerbaijan had represented the sole obstacle preventing Armenia’s full reorientation toward the West. With Trump’s assistance, that obstacle is now beginning to disappear. Moreover, within Armenia’s multivector foreign policy, Yerevan may now have less need to use Tehran — already weakened by Israeli and U.S. actions — alongside the United States and France as a balancing partner in the security sphere. As a “safety net,” however, Armenia remains a member of the Russia-centered CSTO and the Eurasian Economic Union, and it has not severed ties with Tehran completely.

Overall, an analysis of the policies of Armenia and Azerbaijan in late summer and early autumn 2025 reveals clear similarities with the strategies of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan discussed above. In all the cases, the focus is on multivector foreign policy, on “boosting” the Western vector through engagement with the Trump administration, on economic diplomacy, and on the crucial role of the Trans-Caspian route. The only difference lies in diplomatic style: Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, while strengthening the American vector, seek to avoid conflict with other foreign policy vectors (above all Moscow), whereas Azerbaijan and Armenia act much more assertively — though still maintaining elements of a multivector “insurance policy” by preserving a certain level of relations with China, Russia, and, in Armenia’s case, Iran.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 149 (August 26, 2025)

On August 8, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump welcomed Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to the White House, where the two leaders signed a joint declaration on peace, ending nearly four decades of bitter conflict between the two post-Soviet states in the South Caucasus. The declaration, which still requires approval by the parliaments of both countries, not only ended the state of war between them and opened up travel, business, and diplomatic relations, but also paved the way for bilateral economic agreements—signed at the same meeting between each country and the U.S. — in the fields of trade, transit, energy, infrastructure, and technology. The key element of this agreement appears to be the U.S. intention to help build a major transit corridor, to be named the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP). Today thus marks a return to an issue first raised on the eve of the Soviet Union’s collapse but frozen for many years, remaining a stumbling block to resolving the smoldering and repeatedly escalating conflict in the South Caucasus. Both of its key dimensions—political and ethnic (or ethno-confessional) — have largely been tied to the so-called Zangezur corridor, a 40-kilometer extraterritorial transport artery running through Armenian territory and linking Azerbaijan with its exclave of Nakhchivan, which borders Turkey.

Post-imperial Mosaic

The problem of ethnic and religious diversity in the South Caucasus is by no means new. It is a legacy of two empires: Russia, which annexed the region during a series of Russo-Iranian and Russo-Turkish wars in the first half of the 19th century, and the Soviet empire that replaced it. In 1921, the South Caucasus was incorporated de facto into the Soviet sphere, and with the formation of the USSR in 1924, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia—states that had existed independently for just over three years (1918–1921) — were officially absorbed.

The administrative borders drawn by Moscow between these “union republics” reflected the classic imperial strategy of divide and rule. Territories claimed by the Armenian national movement were included in Soviet Azerbaijan in the form of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) within the Azerbaijan SSR. The NKAO encompassed, among other areas, the former capital of the Karabakh Khanate – city of Shusha, which was predominantly populated by Azerbaijanis and holds major significance for their cultural and historical identity. The oblast was separated from the Armenian SSR only by the narrow Lachin Corridor, inhabited mainly by Muslim Kurds, along with a majority Azerbaijani population.

At the same time, the Nakhchivan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic — where, according to the 1926 census, 84.5% of the population were Azerbaijanis and 10.77% were Armenians — was placed under Baku’s administrative authority, despite not sharing a border with Azerbaijan. The Zangezur region, which separated it from the main Azerbaijani territory, was incorporated into the Armenian SSR.

In addition, four Azerbaijani villages became exclaves of the Azerbaijan SSR, surrounded entirely by Armenian SSR territory, while one Armenian village became an exclave of the Armenian SSR within Azerbaijan SSR territory. According to the 1926 census, Azerbaijanis accounted for 9.73% of the population of the Armenian SSR, while Armenians made up 12.4% of the population of the Azerbaijan SSR, including Nakhchivan and Nagorno-Karabakh.

Despite the Soviet-era declarations of “friendship between peoples,” Armenians in the Azerbaijan SSR and Azerbaijanis in the Armenian SSR were subject to migration policies and to the ethnopolitical strategies of regional elites. This contributed to the near-total ethnic homogeneity of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic—where, according to the 1989 census, Armenians made up only 0.65% of the population — as well as to a gradual rise in the proportion of Azerbaijanis in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO). Nevertheless, Armenians remained a stable ethnic majority in Nagorno-Karabakh, constituting about 77% of the population until the end of the Soviet period.

Meanwhile, the authorities of the Armenian SSR encouraged the repatriation of Armenians from abroad while at the same time conducting campaigns to evict Azerbaijanis. As a result, by the time of the last Soviet census in 1989, Armenians made up only 5.6% of the population of the Azerbaijan SSR (including the NKAO and Nakhchivan), while Azerbaijanis accounted for just 2.6% of the population of the Armenian SSR.

Interethnic tensions, which had simmered beneath the surface throughout the Soviet period, erupted with the first signs of weakening central authority. On February 20, 1988, the regional council of the NKAO formally appealed to the Supreme Councils of the USSR, the Azerbaijan SSR, and the Armenian SSR demanding to transfer the oblast to Armenia. A week later, pogroms started in both republics, resulting in thousands of people fleeing from both sides. These events became the catalyst for a mass exodus: Azerbaijanis left Armenia, and Armenians left Azerbaijan. As a result, by the end of the Soviet period, the Azerbaijani minority in Armenia and the Armenian minority in Azerbaijan outside Nagorno-Karabakh had effectively ceased to exist.

On September 2, 1991, a joint session of the NKAO Regional Council and the Shaumyan District Council of Azerbaijan proclaimed the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic as part of the USSR. Almost immediately afterward, the First Karabakh War broke out, lasting two and a half years, during which a de facto “exchange” of territories and populations occurred.

One of the bloodiest episodes of this conflict was the Khojaly massacre, which, even more than 30 years later, remains an unhealed wound for the Azerbaijani people. At the time, more than 600 people were killed in this act of ethnic cleansing, most of them civilians. In many cases, the killings were accompanied by abuse and desecration of the victims’ bodies, as documented by numerous Western media outlets and human rights organizations. Among those killed were several families of Meskhetian Turks, who had fled another conflict zone of the late USSR shortly before the war in Karabakh: following the infamous Fergana pogroms of 1989, many thousands of members of this ethnic group had been forced to leave Uzbekistan.

In May 1994, Armenia and Azerbaijan signed a ceasefire agreement that formalized the situation established during the war, which then remained largely unchanged for more than a quarter of a century. Azerbaijan retained parts of two districts of the NKAO, part of the Shaumyan district, and the Armenian-populated section of the Khanlar district, which was not part of the NKAO. Armenian forces captured five districts of Azerbaijan in their entirety and two districts in part—together amounting to approximately 10 percent of Azerbaijani territory — forcing the vast majority of the local population to flee. All exclaves were also seized by the opposing sides. As a result, the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), which had declared independence in December 1991, came to control a compact territory bordering the Republic of Armenia and populated almost exclusively by Armenians.

The victory in the First Karabakh War was a powerful source of national pride for Armenians, but the subsequent quarter-century proved to be an unquestionable strategic fiasco. Not only did the international community—whose key members in this case preferred to uphold the principle of “the inviolability of post-imperial and post-colonial borders” — but Armenia itself, while supporting Karabakh, refrain from officially recognizing its independence or incorporating it into its territory. In doing so, Armenia effectively acknowledged Azerbaijan’s sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh. More significantly, Armenian leaders were unable, and in practice made little serious effort, to encourage diaspora Armenians to resettle in Karabakh.

Throughout virtually the entire existence of this self-proclaimed republic, emigration consistently exceeded immigration. The Republic of Armenia itself experienced a similarly negative migration balance. The primary reasons for mass emigration were economic.

After numerous attempts to resolve the conflict diplomatically failed to produce meaningful results, full-scale military operations resumed in September 2020, this time resulting in a decisive victory for Baku over the unrecognized republic of Artsakh and Armenia, which had supported it. It quickly became clear that the trilateral ceasefire agreement signed by Russia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan had only temporarily stabilized the situation. The final blow came at the end of September 2023, when renewed fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh led to the dissolution of the unrecognized republic, the disbanding of its army, and the withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from the region.

The Zangezur Corridor: From Problem to Solution

At first glance, with the disappearance of its primary point of contention, the Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict might — or even should — have ended there. However, the situation proved to be more complex. Immediately after the cessation of hostilities in September 2023, Azerbaijan began negotiations with Armenian representatives in Nagorno-Karabakh on the reintegration of the region within Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized borders. According to the plan presented on September 21, 2023, the residents of Nagorno-Karabakh were guaranteed the rights to preserve, use, and develop the Armenian language and culture, to practice freedom of religion, and to ensure the protection of cultural and religious monuments.

Nevertheless, nearly the entire Armenian population of Karabakh chose to evacuate to the Republic of Armenia even before any contact between the local civilians and Azerbaijani army occurred. Together with the mass fleeing of Ukrainian citizens following the Russian invasion 3.5 years ago, this became one of the largest episodes of ethnic exodus in the post-Soviet space. In practical terms, such movements could have affected relations between Baku and Yerevan, potentially turning indirect tensions into direct armed interstate confrontation, largely—if not primarily—driven by acute mutual resentment on both sides. In addition, the issue of four Azerbaijani exclaves controlled by Armenia and one Armenian exclave controlled by Azerbaijan remains unresolved.

To this can be added the foreign policy vacillations of the Armenian leadership. On the one hand, there is irritation—both within the leadership and in society as a whole — at the actions, or rather the lack thereof, of the official guarantor of the 2020 agreements, the Russian Federation. Preoccupied with the war in Ukraine, Russia did not provide Yerevan with the support it expected. Meanwhile, Russian peacekeepers along the line of contact in Karabakh chose not to intervene. In this context, the course of action pursued by Nikol Pashinyan’s government — seeking rapprochement with the West as an alternative to reliance on Russia—seems quite logical.

However, despite promising statements and isolated steps taken by Washington and Brussels, Yerevan remained uncertain for quite some time about the seriousness of its Western partners’ intentions. This uncertainty was heightened by the lack of a unified strategic line among Western leaders regarding the region. In particular, France, which has traditionally sympathized with Armenia, pursued its own agenda and, by the end of 2020, had almost officially sided with Armenia in its conflict with Azerbaijan. Paris was also concerned about the growing geopolitical activity of Turkey, a close ally of Azerbaijan in the region. As a result, Pashinyan’s team — “triangulating” between Russia, the West, and Iran — was in no hurry to abandon its partnership with Russia or its role as an important intermediary in the Moscow-Tehran strategic axis.

One potential way out of this, let us call it, “persistently unstable situation,” could be a compromise on an issue of critical economic and geostrategic importance to most of the major political players in the South Caucasus. In fact, such an issue was the creation of the “Zangezur corridor” mentioned at the beginning of this article — a 40-kilometer extraterritorial transport artery passing through Armenian territory and connecting Azerbaijan with its exclave of Nakhchivan on the border with Turkey.

Azerbaijan and Turkey pushed for the creation of such a corridor, while Armenia—like its recent patron Iran—traditionally opposed the plan. If implemented, Armenia would lose its border with Iran, while Azerbaijan would gain a land route to Turkey, transforming it into a major hub for transporting its own and Central Asian hydrocarbons and other goods to Europe, bypassing Iran, which perceives the corridor as a potential threat to its influence in the region. Russia’s position on the issue was initially, to say the least, ambiguous.

As a result, the issue—which, if resolved, could have paved the way for ending the Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict, brought enormous economic benefits to both countries, and, most importantly, created a mutually acceptable plan for the return or adaptation of Armenian, Azerbaijani, and other forced migrants and displaced persons — seemed to have no solution for a long time.

The situation changed with the start of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term, when he returned to the White House with ideas for ending regional conflicts he considered “unnecessary” for America. Among other initiatives, he decided — and, as events have shown, quite successfully so far — to address the conflict in the South Caucasus. Trump apparently believed, not without reason, that the current balance of power in the region is closely linked to the broader Middle East confrontation between the United States’ strategic ally, Israel, and its partners, and the radical Islamist “axis of evil” led by Tehran.

The moment to take practical action arrived when Israel weakened Hamas, decapitated Hezbollah in Lebanon, and struck the Houthis in Yemen; when Iran’s key ally, the Assad regime in Syria, collapsed; and when the outcome of Israel’s 12-day war—with U.S. participation—against Iran resulted in an apparent defeat for the Islamic Republic. All of these developments cast serious doubt on the Ayatollah regime in Tehran’s claims to set the agenda in the regions it considers its sphere of influence.

While Iran remains unequivocally opposed to this U.S.-led initiative, which alters the balance of power in the South Caucasus, Russia — expected to play only a limited role in the project — has so far been very cautious in its public statements.  This is hardly surprising: Russia is currently heavily dependent on its relationship with Turkey, particularly in areas such as trade and energy diversification, according to Israeli and Kazakhstani foreign policy expert Andrei Kazantsev-Vaisman. “… Moscow’s focus on the conflict in Ukraine, its influence in the post-Soviet space, especially in the South Caucasus and Central Asia, has weakened considerably. It is therefore unlikely that Moscow will confront Turkey, especially over the Armenian issue, where Russia has already lost much of its former influence after the Second Karabakh War.”

Within this framework, the issue of the Zangezur corridor shifts from being a problem to becoming a key element of its solution. The same applies to Armenia, which gains the opportunity to stabilize its domestic situation and, without losing its previous ties while acquiring new partners, strengthen its international standing.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 144 (August 8, 2025)

A trilateral meeting of the leaders of the United States, Azerbaijan, and Armenia is anticipated in Washington on August 8. The agenda includes the possibility of reconciliation between Baku and Yerevan, along with a potential declaration regarding Azerbaijan’s ascending to the Abraham Accords.
What are the reasons for not conflating these two processes?

According to Reuters, President Donald Trump’s administration is actively discussing with Azerbaijan the possibility of bringing that nation and some Central Asian allies into the Abraham Accords, hoping to deepen their existing ties with Israel. The agency cites “five sources with knowledge of the matter.”

According to sources in Baku, President Trump is expected to host Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan at the White House on the coming Friday (August 8). “The anticipated meeting is being seen as a significant diplomatic step toward resolving decades of conflict between the two countries. The expected announcement follows recent talks between the Azerbaijani and Armenian leaders held in Abu Dhabi, where both sides reportedly made progress on the key terms of normalization,” points out the AzerNews agency.

It’s unclear if these two reports are related or if someone is trying to create an artificial connection between them. The Reuters report quotes three sources who assert that the “sticking point is Azerbaijan’s conflict with its neighbor Armenia, since the Trump administration considers a peace deal between the two Caucasus nations as a precondition to joining the Abraham Accords.” This version is unverified, and there are several reasons why the mixing up of these two processes could be detrimental to both.

1.      Relations with Israel are a key factor in joining the Abraham Accords. Among all Muslim countries in the world, Azerbaijan has the longest and most comprehensive partnership with Israel. It is the only strategic partner of the United States’ main ally in the Middle East in the Muslim world, bordering both Iran and Russia. Israel views Azerbaijan as one of the pillars of the regional architecture of strategic security. Israeli and American analysts, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, have repeatedly noted that Azerbaijan is a model of Muslim-Jewish symbiosis and facilitates Israel’s relations with other Muslim countries. Reconciliation with Armenia is a process that is unfolding on its own and does not add any weight to the Abraham Accords. Relations with Armenia do not hold strategic value for Israel.

2.      The goal of the Abraham Accords project is to normalize relations between Israel and the Muslim world in order to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Armenia is not a Muslim country and has no relation to this conflict (except for the cooperation between Armenian and Palestinian terrorist organizations since the 1980s).

3.      Mandating Azerbaijan to negotiate a peace treaty with Armenia as a prerequisite for joining the Abraham Accords is unproductive. The conflict in the South Caucasus has no relation to the Accords; it is a result of the policies of the Russian Empire and later the USSR, aimed at creating ethnic tensions. Specific reasons, such as articles in Armenia’s constitution that form the basis for Armenian extremists’ claims to Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territory, obstruct the signing of a peace treaty. Signing a peace treaty without removing these articles preserves all the preconditions for the continuation of the conflict in the South Caucasus in the near future. This undermines the status of the Abrahamic Accords, turns them into an empty formality, and, in the event of renewed conflict, casts a shadow over Trump’s peacekeeping initiative.

4.     Almost the same story happened with Abraham Accords 1.0, signed in the first of Trump’s presidential terms, where the idea was almost exclusively about establishing full diplomatic relations between Israel and moderate pro-American Arab regimes concerned about the Iranian threat. The long-awaited official accession of Saudi Arabia to this process (and along with it, the expected joining of the rest of the Saudi bloc countries that have yet to have diplomatic relations with Israel) faced the obstacle of the Palestinian state issue. Pushing this issue before signing Abrahamic Accords 2.0, which is envisioned as a much wider model—the formation of a U.S.-led defense and economic alliance with the participation of Israel and the Arab countries of the Saudi bloc—might again harm this breakthrough idea. Conversely, Yerevan’s acceptance of the principal guidelines for joining the new model of the Abraham Accords could serve as a significant catalyst for resolving the Azerbaijan-Armenian conflict. As President Aliev put it, speaking about energy security, transportation, political dialogue, investments, and economic advantages, “Armenia could have been part of that process… When an agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia is signed, then, of course, there will be no obstacle to the beginning of cooperation.”

5.      Similar preconditions have never been imposed on other countries before their ascending to the Accords; for example, no one required Morocco to reconcile with Algeria as a condition for joining the format. Introducing such a precondition, especially toward a country so allied with Israel, constitutes a dangerous double standard. According to American and Israeli analysts, Trump is using the Abraham Accords to establish an elite “club” of countries that the U.S. can depend on for its foreign policy. This “club,” with significant financial and intellectual resources, could serve as an alternative to European countries whose interests conflict with Trump’s vision. In the past, Special envoy Witkoff has even mentioned that Armenia could join the Accords. But it has no value for such a structure. On the contrary, Armenia’s close ties with France, which opposes Trump’s initiatives, make it a potentially destabilizing factor.

6.      Iran, as the primary opponent of the Abraham Accords process, responsible for derailing the normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia (the terrorist attack on October 7, 2023), poses an existential threat to both Israel and Azerbaijan. In turn, Armenia maintains close strategic relations with Iran; officials in Armenia consistently emphasize the alignment of interests between Yerevan and Tehran. Armenian media and the Armenian diaspora actively participate in Iran’s media campaign to demonize Azerbaijan for its ties with Israel. Preconditioning Azerbaijan’s entry into the Abraham Accords on reconciliation with Armenia provides Iran with another tool to derail Trump’s initiative. In other words, Iran may see an advantage in disrupting peace agreements between Baku and Yerevan, for instance, through military provocations or terrorist acts.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 119 (March 15, 2025)

“Azerbaijan is an important strategic ally of Israel in the Caucasus region, with relations encompassing cooperation in security, trade, technology, and energy sectors. Israel will continue to strengthen cooperation with Azerbaijan and the US, and will stand firmly against any attempt to undermine it,” Israel’s Prime Minister’s office said on March 5th, announcing that Jerusalem was in active talks with Washington to advance a three-way alliance, according to The Jerusalem Post.

A week later, on March 14th, Steve Witkoff, the special envoy of US President Donald Trump, landed in Baku after an overnight visit to Moscow, in what appears to be a well-coordinated diplomatic move between Israel, the US, and Azerbaijan. “Sources involved in Israeli-Azeri relations reveal that coordination for the visit became particularly intensive after March 5, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emphasized his commitment to the trilateral partnership between the countries in the Knesset,” The Jerusalem Post reported.

For the last month, numerous US and Israeli publications mulled the initiative to integrate the Republic of Azerbaijan into the Abraham Accords. In our two previous papers on the issue, we described how deep the relations between Baku and Jerusalem are and brought up several recommendations on how to effectively engage Azerbaijan in Trump’s regional plans and for the sake of Israel’s interests.

But there are some skeptics who attempted to argue the alleged impracticality of the idea. Their main counterarguments are:

• This initiative is irrelevant in the context of Azerbaijan, as the Abraham Accords are signed exclusively between Israel and Arab countries.

• These agreements are signed between Israel and Arab states that were previously in a state of war with the Jewish state. Azerbaijan, on the other hand, has never been at war with Israel and established diplomatic relations with it more than 30 years ago.

• The Abraham Accords are strictly a Middle Eastern initiative and therefore have no direct relevance to Azerbaijan.

Conceptual Clarifications

·       It must be noted that our policy papers did not merely discuss Azerbaijan’s accession to the Abraham Accords, but rather its inclusion in the “club“ of signatory states (“Azerbaijan should be included in the ‘Abraham Accords Club’”). Later, during his address in the Knesset, the MP from the SHAS party, Simon Moshiashvily, similarly stated not only the necessity for Azerbaijan to sign the accords but also that “it would be appropriate to integrate Azerbaijan itself into the Abraham Accords framework.” In both cases, the rationale was based on the fact that following the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020, the Negev Forum [1] was established in 2022, bringing together the United States, Israel, the UAE, Egypt, Morocco, and Bahrain as a functional mechanism for implementing the agreements. The forum was designed with a structured institutional framework, including a presidency, a steering committee, and working groups focusing on key areas such as: food security, water technologies, clean energy, tourism, healthcare, education, regional security.
Steering Committee meetings were held in Bahrain (June 2022) and the UAE (January 2023), while the first working group seminar took place in Washington (June 2023). However, under the Biden administration, this mechanism did not develop substantial momentum. Now, with the Trump administration’s anticipated expansion of the Abraham Accords, this mechanism is expected to be restructured and relaunched in an updated format. The goal is to establish a formalized platform for multilateral regional cooperation, backed by financial support from the United States and the UAE. When discussions arise about Azerbaijan’s inclusion in the “club” or “framework” of the Abraham Accords, the reference is specifically to this institutional mechanism, just ahead of its planned restructuring.

·       The claim that the Abraham Accords are intended exclusively for normalizing relations between Israel and Arab countries is contradicted by numerous publications in leading Israeli media (December 2024 – February 2025), citing sources within the Trump team. According to their information, there are plans to expand these agreements to 14 Muslim-majority countries, including non-Arab nations in Africa and Southeast Asia.

·       The assertion that these agreements are signed only by countries that were or still are de jure in a state of war with Israel is refuted by the precedent of the UAE. The United Arab Emirates did not participate in any Arab-Israeli war, never declared war on Israel, and therefore, prior to signing the Abraham Accords in 2020, were not in a state of war with the Jewish state.

There are also skeptics in Azerbaijan, who undermine the initiative, claiming it has no real value for Baku. But they have missed at least three obvious points:

1) The idea of integrating Azerbaijan into the Abraham Accords framework reshapes the prevailing perception of Azerbaijan in the U.S., which has been largely confined to the Armenian issue and the limited geopolitical scope of the South Caucasus.

2) The initiative brings out the following issue: other Muslim-majority countries that have merely signed the Abraham Accords receive political, military, and economic assistance from the U.S. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan, which has been Israel’s most reliable Muslim-world ally for decades, remains subject to U.S. sanctions under Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act. Israeli politicians and Jewish leaders are already calling Trump’s administration to repeal it, as it is outdated and unjust.

3) “Azerbaijani model” of relations with Israel can be set as a precedent for other Muslim-majority countries, that wish to join the Abraham Accords. The essence of this approach is as follows: the Abraham Accords risk becoming ineffective because every time Israeli-Palestinian tensions escalate, Arab signatories immediately freeze all regional partnership initiatives outlined in the accords. This enables Hamas (and Iran) to sabotage the implementation of the Accords, as seen on October 7, 2023: Hamas’ attack derailed the imminent signing of the agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. As for Azerbaijan, it continues to strengthen its partnership with Israel regardless of the Israeli-Palestinian relations, and despite external pressures from Iran and Turkey. If accepting Azerbaijan’s approach to its partnership with Israel turns to be the prerequisite condition for the future Abraham Accords members, it might not only enhance Azerbaijan’s image in Israel and the U.S., but also strengthen its strategic position in the eyes of Muslim-majority countries in Africa, Southeast Asia, and South Asia that are looking to advance their own lobbying efforts in Washington.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 116 (February 26, 2025)

The countries of the South Caucasus have approached Trump’s presidency under vastly different circumstances, which is unsurprising given that this region has never been geopolitically unified. Until recently, Georgia appeared aligned with the West, Armenia with Eurasia, and Azerbaijan with Central Asia. Yet, despite these orientations, they managed to interact—whether through alliances, conflicts, or trade.

The situation changed after 2020, when the 44-day war forced both Azerbaijan and Armenia to confront geopolitical realities, culminating between September 2023 and March 2024. The events of this brief period have presented the region’s countries with urgent challenges demanding immediate solutions.

Georgia’s leadership

Since Russia’s large-scale aggression against Ukraine, Georgia’s leadership has focused almost exclusively on maintaining power. The government opted for confrontation with its Western partners, appeasement of Russia, and the entrenchment of a political system where the informal rule of Bidzina Ivanishvili would remain unchallenged. This path was highly risky, as alienating Western allies not only exposed Georgia to severe socio-economic shocks but also increased its vulnerability to Kremlin influence. The Georgian economy relies heavily on a banking and financial sector integrated into international (i.e., Western) financial institutions, as well as on raw material exports (such as manganese and ferroalloys) to the EU. Additionally, its transport infrastructure plays a crucial role in the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TCITR, also known as the Middle Corridor). All these elements are critically susceptible to potential sanctions from both Europe and the United States.

Nevertheless, the Georgian authorities, seemingly resigned to their fate, severed ties with the West, openly abandoning past achievements and shaping an image of a nation that has rejected democracy, even as an idea. This culminated in the adoption of a series of anti-democratic laws, particularly in the electoral and judicial spheres, the blatant falsification of the October 2024 elections, a deliberate provocation in withdrawing from EU membership negotiations, and, finally, the brutal suppression of protests—actions that neither the EU nor the US could ignore.

This policy would have been politically suicidal for both the country and its leadership were it not for their bet on Trump’s victory. The Georgian government calculated that, with Trump in power, it could negotiate with the new US administration on the basis of ideological alignment and a shared enemy—an idea they began promoting from the moment of Trump’s victory by rebranding the “global war party” as the deep state. This bet paid off, as Georgia’s authorities now have the opportunity to gain Trump’s attention by co-authoring an alternative UN resolution on Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Whether the Trump administration will appreciate this move remains to be seen. The future of Georgia’s leadership now depends less on ideological affinity and diplomatic support and more on Trump’s negotiations with Moscow, Ankara, and Beijing.

Armenia’s Position

On the surface, Armenia appears to be the ultimate loser. The war was lost. An adversary that Armenians occupied for 30 years now stands at their borders, militarily capable of seizing the entire country and cutting it off from its ally, Iran. Hopes that a Democratic administration in Washington—one that had steadfastly supported Armenia without demanding concessions—would remain in power have been dashed. The strategic plan of waiting for a systemic crisis in Azerbaijan (and perhaps even facilitating it) before reviving the Karabakh conflict along the Kosovo model—a plan long supported by Armenian society and its diaspora—has collapsed.

For Armenia’s leadership, the widespread expectation of Karabakh’s reoccupation is a major obstacle to achieving peace and relieving the national psychological distress that has persisted since autumn 2020. However, the present moment offers an opportunity to abandon these long-term, illusory hopes of revanche, allowing Prime Minister Pashinyan room for compromise with Baku. Ultimately, these aspirations can always be revisited, but for now, progress in the peace process and improved relations with Turkey could serve as strong electoral assets for Pashinyan.

Thus, Armenia’s main expectations from Trump’s administration revolve around maintaining the status quo and securing guarantees that Azerbaijan will not resort to force. While the probability of Azerbaijan using force remains minimal, it is not zero, and the situation could change. To mitigate this risk, Armenia has influential allies within Trump’s administration, ranging from the establishment figure Marco Rubio to the anti-establishment Tulsi Gabbard. Therefore, Yerevan’s position is not as dire as it may seem. Moreover, the Charter on Strategic Partnership, signed under the previous US administration, serves as a tangible roadmap for advancing Armenian-Azerbaijani relations. If Georgia was able to extract significant benefits from a similar agreement in the late 2000s, there is no reason why Armenia, with its stronger foothold in US political circles, cannot do the same.

Azerbaijan’s Strategy

Azerbaijan, in the most advantageous position of the three, is now operating on a completely different level. The lingering psychological scars of its long war with Armenia remain, yet Baku is acutely aware of its economy’s critical dependence on European energy markets. However, this market is primarily Italian, where Azerbaijan enjoys strong relations, and Eastern European, where Baku has not just partners but genuine allies. Additionally, Azerbaijan’s energy exports extend beyond Europe to Israel, a strategic partner and major consumer of Azerbaijani oil.

With Trump’s administration, the risk of sanctions against Azerbaijan has diminished to near zero, allowing Baku to postpone Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement efforts and pursue concessions—from changes to Armenia’s constitution to opening a corridor to Nakhchivan and Turkey. There is no need for Baku to rush.

More importantly, Azerbaijan is undertaking a much more ambitious initiative: securing its long-term security through active participation in Middle Eastern and Eurasian (Central Asian) projects. Baku’s strong partnerships with Turkey, Israel, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan provide a solid foundation for this strategy. These projects not only yield economic dividends (such as involvement in TCITR, the development of Israel’s Tamar gas field, and Syria’s reconstruction) but also establish a political buffer against two existential threats to Azerbaijan: Russia and Iran. The recent diplomatic travels of Hikmet Hajiyev, Azerbaijan’s Presidential Advisor, underscore this approach.

The only potential weak link in Azerbaijan’s carefully constructed network is Georgia. Should Georgia fall under Russian influence, it would pose an unpleasant surprise for Baku. However, Azerbaijan’s leverage in this scenario is limited, leaving it to hope that this does not come to pass. Otherwise, Azerbaijan’s main expectations from Trump’s administration lie in US support for regional projects that will solidify its status as a mid-tier power.

In summary, Tbilisi seeks Trump’s recognition of its government as an ideological ally; Yerevan hopes for security assurances and the preservation of the status quo; and Baku anticipates US backing for its regional ambitions. The rest will be determined by time.

The concept and recommendations presented below were developed by the authors, who are Israeli experts, based on discussions with several former Israeli diplomats and ex-Knesset members, as well as with several American and Azerbaijani Jews. What unites us all is a commitment to strengthening regional alliances and deepening Israel’s integration into the “Greater Middle East.” Our approach is guided solely by the long-term interests of the Jewish state.

The authors have not coordinated their position with any official representatives of Azerbaijan. Therefore, it is only natural that situations may arise where Azerbaijani officials express opinions that contradict the authors’ perspective.

On January 15, we published a conceptual paper titled “Azerbaijan: One of the Pillars of Israel’s Regional Security System – A Brief Overview for the Trump Administration“. This publication is based on statements from Israeli officials, including heads of government and numerous ministers, as well as materials from Israeli media and think tanks covering the strategic partnership with Azerbaijan from 1995 to 2024.

Our “brief overview for the Trump Administration” sparked widespread discussion in Israel, the U.S., and, quite unexpectedly, even in India. Prestigious publications and think tanks that referenced it or analyzed our data and conclusions included: Atlantic Council, Forbes, The National Interest, Townhall, The Jerusalem Post, Israel Hayom, The Economic Times. The document was discussed during the recent forum on religious tolerance, convened by the U.S. Jewish organizations in Congress, with participation of the congressmen, legislative staffers, and State Department representatives. The booklets containing our analysis were distributed among them.

As the office of Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar informed the chief rabbi of Baku’s Sephardic community Zamir Isayev, the BESA report from January 15 “serves as an example of the importance of Israel-Azerbaijan relations and presents the substantive richness of their ties in the most positive light. A copy has been provided for [personal] review by Foreign Minister Sa’ar.” Our briefing also garnered significant interest among senior officials of major Jewish organizations in the U.S. Moreover, we have reliable information that several members of the new president’s inner circle have carefully reviewed the BESA report.

As a result, in recent weeks, we have been contacted by Knesset members, prominent figures in American Jewry, and representatives of leading conservative think tanks in the U.S. Many of them noted that, despite their deep understanding of Middle Eastern realities, they had never considered Azerbaijan’s geopolitical significance specifically within the framework of Israel’s regional strategic security architecture. Furthermore, our interlocutors emphasized that they share this broader vision of Israel’s ally in the Caucasus. At the same time, they raised an important question: What can be done to elevate Azerbaijan’s regional status and rebrand it in the eyes of the new administration in a way that would further strengthen Israel’s position? Initially, we addressed this question individually for each inquiry. However, as the number of such requests continues to grow, we decided to prepare another report—this time with practical considerations. But first, let us revisit the key indicators of Azerbaijan’s special significance from the perspective of Israeli interests, as outlined in our previous publication.

Key Indicators of Azerbaijan’s Special Role for Israel

• Among all Muslim-majority countries, Azerbaijan has the longest-standing and most comprehensive partnership with Israel. 

•  It is the only strategic partner in the Muslim world of the U.S.’s main ally in the Middle East that shares borders with both Iran and Russia.

•  The long-term partnership between the two countries positions Azerbaijan as one of the pillars of Israel’s regional strategic security architecture. This is reflected in three areas that are vital to the Jewish state:

1. For 30 years, this Muslim-majority country has been a key pillar of Israel’s energy security, serving as its largest supplier of energy resources. Israel’s economic growth in the 1990s and 2000s was significantly supported by Azerbaijani energy supplies. In 2024, during the war with Hamas and Hezbollah, when the IDF had an urgent need for an uninterrupted fuel supply, Azerbaijan increased its oil exports to Israel by 55%.

2. Azerbaijan is one of the largest importers of Israeli defense products. The billions of dollars generated from these deals not only support the livelihoods of many Israelis working in the defense industry but also fund new military developments essential for Israel’s own security.

3. Azerbaijan is one of Israel’s key partners in countering Iran. Both countries view the Ayatollah regime as an existential threat and have been cooperating in this context for many years.

• Despite pressure from Iran and Turkey, during Israel’s war against Hamas and Hezbollah, Azerbaijan not only maintained but even intensified its partnership with Israel. This occurred at a time when all other moderate Muslim-majority countries, including those that signed the Abraham Accords, distanced themselves from the Jewish state. A similar situation occurred during the Second Intifada (2000–2004), when Azerbaijan remained Israel’s only reliable partner in the Muslim world.

• The special importance of Azerbaijan for the Jewish state is recognized by representatives of all major political factions in Israel, even those that often disagree on other foreign policy issues. Thus, the significance of the partnership with Azerbaijan falls within the framework of a broad Zionist consensus.

• Azerbaijan serves as a model of Muslim-Jewish coexistence and actively facilitates Israel’s engagement with other Muslim countries. Prime Minister Netanyahu has described this as an example of “how Muslims and Jews work together to secure a better future for both.” According to recent report by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), a British nonprofit organization that analyzes schoolbooks and curricula around the world, Azerbaijan has become the first Muslim-majority country to include a definition of antisemitism in its textbooks. The report emphasized that Judaism is “highly regarded in the textbooks,” and the books also correctly portray the Holocaust as a genocide of six million Jews, highlighting antisemitic measures such as arbitrary killings and imprisonment rather than trying to downplay or deny the Nazis’ atrocities.

Current Geopolitical Clarifications

Against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the global order, Azerbaijan’s significance—both for U.S. and Israeli strategic interests—has grown even further. This is driven by key trends in Washington’s new foreign policy approach, within which Azerbaijan’s advantages and capabilities can be effectively leveraged:

• Setting the stage for the normalization of U.S.-Russia relations. It is important to consider that, under Western sanctions, Russia’s dependence on Azerbaijan for exports to Iran and the Middle East has sharply increased. A significant portion of Russian freight transport in the southern direction passes through Azerbaijan (from 2021 to 2023 alone, the capacity at the land border tripled).

• The desire to exert maximum pressure on Iran to force it to abandon its nuclear program.

• Implementation of a comprehensive plan for integrating Israel into the “Greater Middle East” through Saudi-Israeli normalization, expansion of the Abraham Accords, and inclusion of the Jewish state in regional development and defense projects. As noted in our previous material, Azerbaijan has facilitated Israel’s efforts to establish relations with the Gulf monarchies, particularly the UAE, as well as other moderate Muslim countries. Furthermore, since 2008, official Baku has served as an unofficial communication channel between Ankara and Jerusalem.

• A policy of strengthening regional alliances among U.S. allies to reduce American defense expenditures. In this context, Azerbaijan serves as a model of long-term military-strategic partnership between a Muslim-majority country and the Jewish state. The impact of this cooperation can be significantly enhanced by integrating bilateral defense projects with specific areas of military collaboration between Israel and the U.S., as well as between Israel and the UAE—and, in the longer term, with certain other Gulf monarchies.

How Israel and Pro-Israel Forces in the U.S. Can Leverage Azerbaijan in Trump’s Plans for Restructuring the “Greater Middle East”

1. In the U.S., Azerbaijan is predominantly perceived through the lens of certain lobbyists who claim to represent Armenian interests and have close ties to the Democratic Party. To advance their own agendas, they extensively exploit the memory of the tragic events of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire. At the same time, a deliberate effort is made to portray Azerbaijan as a puppet of Turkey. From this, the conclusion is drawn that Azerbaijan is allegedly seeking to repeat the genocide. This statement is completely refuted by Azerbaijan’s entirely independent stance on its partnership with Israel. In 2024, amid Israel’s war against Hamas and Hezbollah, Ankara persistently pressured official Baku to halt its cooperation with Jerusalem. However, Azerbaijan, on the contrary, intensified this partnership. Unfortunately, even those American Jews who wholeheartedly support Israel are often unaware of the unique role this Muslim country plays in the regional security architecture of the Jewish state. Therefore, it is crucial for pro-Israel forces in the U.S., both Jewish and non-Jewish, to stop viewing Azerbaijan through the narrow narratives promoted by certain factions within the Armenian diaspora. It is essential to view Azerbaijan within a broad regional perspective. This is especially important as the Trump administration works to pressure Iran and to further integrate and solidify Israel’s presence within the framework of the “Greater Middle East.” As for certain ethnic lobbyists linked to the Democratic Party, even Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan has distanced himself from their outdated positions. This suggests that their primary concern is not the well-being of modern Armenia but rather the preservation of their own status and influence in American politics. As a result, they seek to perpetuate hostility and mutual grievances between Armenians and their closest neighbors, even at the expense of Armenia’s legitimately elected leadership. Meanwhile, Yerevan and Baku are engaged in negotiations to reach a peace agreement and renounce territorial claims. Applying pressure on Azerbaijan through the lens of century-old narratives only complicates the process of normalizing Armenian-Azerbaijani relations. Of course, it is entirely legitimate that certain politicized diaspora figures have personal interests that do not necessarily align with the position of official Yerevan. Likewise, it is equally legitimate that pro-Israel forces in the U.S. have their own interests in strengthening Israel’s role in integration processes with the moderate Muslim world and in countering Iran. It is within this context that Azerbaijan’s regional significance should be understood and promoted. And there is no need to shy away from this: this stance is not anti-Armenian but rather pro-Israel. Moreover, it fully aligns with the strategic foreign policy priorities of the Trump administration.

2. The foundations of the Israel-Azerbaijan partnership were laid in the U.S. exactly 30 years ago. This took place during a meeting between the leaders of the two countries, Yitzhak Rabin and Heydar Aliyev, in New York in October 1995. However, according to a December 2024 assessment by the leadership of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Azerbaijan’s longstanding support for Israel and its contribution to regional stability have not been adequately recognized by the United States. Moreover, since 1992, the U.S. Congress has enforced “Section 907,” a legislative amendment that discriminates against Azerbaijan compared to other post-Soviet republics in terms of receiving American assistance. After September 11, 2001, the Bush administration managed to secure only a temporary suspension of this amendment due to the need for security cooperation with Azerbaijan—a collaboration that ultimately proved highly effective. However, to this day, the amendment remains an obstacle to the development of U.S.-Azerbaijan relations. This has led to an absurd situation in which the U.S. provides extensive financial and political support to Muslim countries that only agreed to recognize Israel and establish diplomatic relations in 2020 under the Abraham Accords. Meanwhile, the only Muslim country that has been a reliable strategic partner of America’s key Middle Eastern ally for three decades receives no U.S. support and has, in fact, been subject to sanctions from Washington throughout this entire period. For the U.S. and Israel to fully leverage Azerbaijan’s advantages and opportunities within the new “Greater Middle East” architecture being shaped by the Trump administration, it is essential to eliminate the existing formal obstacles. Section 907 must be repealed.

3. Azerbaijan should be included in the “Abraham Accords Club”. The Muslim states that signed the Abraham Accords in 2020 received significant benefits in return: approval for advanced U.S. arms sales, official U.S. recognition of their territorial claims, and investments from the Abraham Fund—established by the U.S., Israel, and the UAE—to promote regional economic cooperation with the Jewish state. It is expected that countries joining this “club” during the upcoming expansion of the accords will receive similar, if not greater, dividends. It is absurd that Muslim countries that only recently recognized Israel stand to gain substantial benefits from establishing diplomatic ties, while Azerbaijan—one of the pillars of Israel’s regional security for over two decades—not only receives nothing in return but remains subject to U.S. sanctions under Section 907.

4. Azerbaijan’s unique conceptual and practical experience in Muslim-Jewish cooperation can be leveraged to expand the Abraham Accords to Muslim countries in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. Several senior officials from Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Economy have been actively engaged in bilateral relations with Israel for years and could serve as consultants for The Friedman Center for Peace Through Strength and The Abraham Fund as the accords expand. Building on Azerbaijan’s experience—and with the participation of Israel, the U.S., Azerbaijan, and other Muslim nations—new regional development projects can be launched in energy, agriculture, and healthcare. A crucial factor in this context is that the UAE, one of the architects and key participants in the Abraham Accords, is also Azerbaijan’s top partner in the Arab world (both in investment volume and frequency of high-level state visits in 2023-2024). This Azerbaijani-Emirati partnership can serve as an expert and conceptual foundation for expanding the Abraham Accords, while also providing a practical model for multilateral regional cooperation involving Israel and the U.S.

5. Israel and pro-Israel forces in the U.S. should actively advocate for Azerbaijan’s inclusion in American-Israeli regional development, investment, and technology partnerships. Israel is already advancing a trilateral partnership model for Morocco, involving American companies, and plans to extend this approach to Sunni Gulf monarchies and the U.S. in defense, AI, and cybersecurity as part of the Abraham Accords expansion. Azerbaijan’s participation in such initiatives would strengthen the Muslim component of Israel’s regional partnerships. Moreover, this fully aligns with the Trump administration’s strategy of expanding multilateral cooperation among U.S. allies to reduce Washington’s financial burden on regional development and defense projects.

6. President Trump has clearly outlined his intentions for the full-scale reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. On February 9, he stated that certain Middle Eastern and other countries might participate in the effort. Despite protests in the Muslim world, the American leader appears determined to follow through with his declared plans. If Washington ultimately manages to reach an agreement with key moderate Arab leaders regarding their participation—one way or another—in Gaza’s reconstruction, the U.S. will likely seek to involve additional Muslim countries in the project. However, if the proposed plan is adjusted to accommodate the positions of Riyadh, Cairo, and Amman, then the reconstruction—which is necessary in any case—will most likely involve the UAE, Egypt, and possibly other Arab states. In any scenario, Washington may turn to Baku with a proposal to participate on a humanitarian basis, acting as a free supplier of energy resources needed for reconstruction efforts and for the needs of the Palestinian population during the project’s active phase. Of course, Azerbaijan’s involvement would only be considered if at least several other Muslim countries also take part.

7. Between 2007 and 2024, Azerbaijan, through the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, sponsored the restoration of at least two dozen world-renowned cultural and historical monuments and religious sites in France, Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, and the Vatican. For example, the foundation contributed to the restoration of the Notre-Dame Church in Strasbourg, the Basilica of Saint Paul, and the Catacombs of Saints Marcellinus and Peter in the Vatican. Despite Azerbaijan investing millions of dollars in these projects, European countries have not publicly highlighted its role in preserving key symbols of Christian civilization. Meanwhile, in the Middle East and North Africa, there are numerous historical sites revered in Islamic, Jewish, and Christian traditions, as well as 26 Jewish and Christian sites in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, some of which are in a state of partial ruin. In this context, an initiative could be proposed—aligned with the spirit of the Abraham Accords—to establish a joint fund with the participation of Azerbaijan, the UAE, and ideally Turkey (which, notably, has shown particular care at the state level in preserving religious sites of all three faiths). This fund could take on the role of restoring, preserving, and promoting these monuments internationally. Such an initiative would be especially relevant for countries in the region that have been affected by military conflicts in recent years. The project would benefit all three major monotheistic religions, as well as the states where these historical sites are located. In the long run, it could lay the groundwork for an international interfaith tourism program, which in turn could become a key avenue for the broader development of the Middle Eastern region.

The considerations presented here are advisory in nature. They can be further refined and adapted to specific projects and initiatives. Our goal was to provide a set of practical ideas that can now be utilized by consultants and officials in Israel, the U.S., and Azerbaijan who are interested in enhancing the Israel-Azerbaijan partnership and expanding their cooperation. By leveraging this experience, they can contribute to Israel’s deeper integration into the Greater Middle East and to the strengthening of regional stability.

The Trump administration, which begins its work on January 20th, places the security of Israel, its primary ally in the Middle East, at the forefront. Statements from Trump’s close associates clearly indicate that his doctrine includes provisions for expanding the Abraham Accords. In this context, the Israeli leadership and national diplomacy—both governmental and public—should judiciously direct Washington’s attention to those actors in the geopolitical landscape of the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia who have long-established strategic partnerships with Jerusalem and can positively impact the role of the Jewish state in Trump’s envisioned “new Middle East”.

Azerbaijan deserves special attention as it holds the longest and most comprehensive partnership with Israel among Muslim nations. During a December 2024 meeting with the President of Azerbaijan, leaders of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) acknowledged that the U.S. had not fully appreciated Azerbaijan’s longstanding support for Israel and contributions to regional stability. “For the Trump administration and the State of Israel, Azerbaijan holds significant value,” noted the Maariv, covering the meeting.

As Mark Fish acknowledges in The Jerusalem Post: “The arrival in Baku of both the current and incoming leaders of AIPAC demonstrates a clear recognition of Azerbaijan’s pivotal role in regional stability and its unwavering support for Israel. It also reflects an acknowledgment that past U.S. administrations did not fully appreciate the value of engaging with Azerbaijan”.

In its turn, Maariv emphasized that, against the backdrop of the weakening of Iranian influence in the Middle East, “the leader of Azerbaijan is capable of contributing to a reduction in tensions in a region that the American administration views as being of high strategic importance“.

Indeed, as Songer Cagatay of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) noted in 2005: “Washington has many reasons to further improve its relationship with Azerbaijan and to support that country in the international arena. In this context, it should applaud the Azerbaijani friendship with Israel”. Given the changed geopolitical realities, there are now more reasons to “improve relations with Azerbaijan”. Therefore, when shaping its policy in the South Caucasus, the Trump administration should consider the following factors:

1. Azerbaijan is the only country in the world that has maintained a 30-year-long military-strategic partnership with the U.S.’s key ally in the Middle East while bordering two of America’s geopolitical rivals—Russia and Iran.

2. Azerbaijan shares a 765 km border with Iran, with Tehran just 365 km away, and ethnic Azerbaijanis, Iran’s largest minority, comprise approximately 20% of Iran’s population (17.7 million).

3. Azerbaijan is vital to Europe’s energy security, supplying oil and gas to 17 EU countries as a key alternative to Russian supplies.

4. Azerbaijan is an important hub for regional transit trade. In November 2024, the Israeli ambassador to Baku stated: “Israeli companies are now recognizing the strategic importance of Azerbaijan, not only as a partner but also as a crossroads between East and West – the Middle Corridor – serving as a gateway to Central Asia”.

5. Azerbaijan is the largest country in the South Caucasus in terms of territory, population, economy, and military power.

Since the 1990s, Azerbaijan, a secular, Muslim-majority state, has been a discreet pillar of Israel’s regional security, key to U.S. interests.

According to Globes, these relations “have flourished since 1992” and are “the most stable” among all that the Jewish state maintains in the Muslim world. As reported by Haaretz, in 1998 Azerbaijan was already designated as a “key state” in internal documents of Israel’s MFA. In 2009, Deputy Director-General of the MFA, Pinhas Avivi, declared: “Relations between Israel and Azerbaijan are of a strategic nature“. In 2011, Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau remarked: “Israel needs a strong Azerbaijan”. In 2013, the Globes emphasized: “Israel views Azerbaijan as an important ally and a true friend…“. In 2022, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid stated: “Azerbaijan is an important partner for Israel”, while former Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, noted: “Azerbaijan is one of our most important allies in Asia…“.

In December 2023, Ynet  noted that “Azerbaijan is the only Muslim country in the world supporting Israel in the war” (against Hamas and Hezbollah). In February 2024, INN  reported, citing government sources in Jerusalem and leaders of the Jewish diaspora, that despite pressure from other Muslim countries, President Aliyev unequivocally stands with the Jewish state amid the war. Around the same time, Srugim referred to Azerbaijani leader as a “friend of Israel“, emphasizing his special role in advancing bilateral relations. In July, representatives of both countries’ leadership, including Azerbaijan’s Minister of Defense, held talks on “strengthening regional cooperation”. Ynet highlighted that despite pressure on Baku, the intensification of the partnership occurred precisely during the height of the war (while all moderate Muslim countries distanced themselves from the Jewish state).

Even when most of the Western airlines suspended flights to Israel, Azerbaijan’s state-owned airline continued operating flights with only brief interruptions, and Israeli tourist flow to Azerbaijan increased by 50%. In October, Foreign Minister Eli Cohen once again reaffirmed that relations with this Muslim-majority country are “of strategic importance“. In November, Ynet noted that, against the backdrop of Yerevan’s anti-Israel stance and its ties with Tehran, Jerusalem intends to further strengthen its ties with Baku.

Azerbaijan holds the longest and most comprehensive partnership with Israel among Muslim nations. “Here is an example of how Muslims and Jews work together to ensure a better future for both,” PM Netanyahu stated in 2016.

The following facts demonstrate Azerbaijan’s special importance for the national security and regional defense capabilities of the Jewish state:

Since the 1990s, Azerbaijan has been key to Israel’s energy security. A senior Israeli intelligence source told Israel Hayom that Azerbaijani supplies were crucial even before Arab relations normalized (1994) and Israel discovered major gas fields (1999–2009). Azerbaijan’s energy bolstered Israel’s economy in the 1990s and 2000s, remaining its sole reliable partner in the Muslim world during the Second Intifada (2000–2004). The Israeli ambassador to Baku noted: “We believe that true friendship is tested in times of need, and I think this friendship between our countries has been proven in those critical times”. Israel Hayom reported in 2019 that Azerbaijan is the source of over 60% of the gasoline that Israelis consume. In 2021, Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi stated: “Azerbaijan is an ally, a friend, and the largest supplier of energy resources to Israel“. In 2022, the Zman.co.il stated: “Most of the fuel in Israel comes from Azerbaijan — from gasoline for private cars to jet fuel for the Air Force’s fighter jets“. As Ynet noted in 2024, during the height of the war (when Israel’s armed forces particularly needed uninterrupted fuel supplies), Azerbaijan increased its oil exports to the Jewish state by 55%.

 Since the late 2000s, Azerbaijan has been a top importer of Israeli military products, with Israeli supplies comprising 60–69% of its military imports in the 2010s. A new agreement was signed in September 2024. These deals generate billions, supporting Israeli jobs, funding new military developments, and contributing to joint Israeli-U.S. projects critical to Israel’s security.

Azerbaijan is a key Israeli partner against Iran, with both viewing the Ayatollah regime as an existential threat and cooperating for many years. “We share a common dangerous enemy—the Iranian tyranny that threatens the destruction of both our peoples”, Knesset members stated in 2023 in a collective message to their Azerbaijani counterparts.

It is symbolic that the foundation of this partnership to counter the Iranian threat was laid 30 years ago in the U.S. In October 1995, during a meeting in New York with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, President Heydar Aliyev emphasized that his “country has a very long and tense border with Iran” and requested assistance in the field of security[1]. In 1997, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Azerbaijan, where he held talks with Heydar Aliyev. This meeting gave a significant impetus to the strategic partnership between the two countries.

“Particularly since Ilham Aliyev became Azerbaijan’s president in October 2003, Iran has engaged in a campaign of intimidation toward the country. A group of high-level Iranian military officers visited Baku in August 2004, urging Azerbaijan to cease security cooperation with Israel and stop receiving Israeli military and intelligence officers…” noted WINEP. In June 2006, Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer stated: “Azerbaijan is a Muslim country with a large Shia population, bordering Iran. The location of this country is of great interest to us“. Government sources in Jerusalem clarified this statement in the context of the potential use of Azerbaijani territory in the event of an American or U.S.-Israeli operation against Iran. In December 2006, Brigadier General (Res.) Oded Tira emphasized: “We should also coordinate with Azerbaijan the use of airbases in its territory and also enlist the support of the Azeri minority in Iran“. In 2008, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni stated: “There are very close ties between Israel and Azerbaijan in strategically important areas such as security and intelligence sharing“. In 2009, U.S. Deputy Ambassador to Baku Donald Lu, describing the security cooperation between Israel and Azerbaijan, quoted Aliyev in a document sent to the State Department. In a private conversation, Aliyev stated that these relations resemble an iceberg: “Nine-tenths of it is below the surface“.

In February 2012, the Associated Press noted that Azerbaijan had become an important base for Israeli intelligence. At the same time, The Times, citing a Mossad operative in Baku, reported that dozens of Israeli intelligence operatives were active in Azerbaijan. “Last year, we increased our presence, and this has brought us much closer to Iran,” the operative told the publication. In March 2012, Foreign Policy Magazine reported: “If Israeli jets want to land in Azerbaijan after an attack, they’d probably be allowed to do so. Israel is deeply embedded in Azerbaijan, and has been for the last two decades“.

The visit of Israel’s Defense Minister to Baku in 2014 “served as proof of the high level of military coordination between the two countries“. At the time, he confirmed that Azerbaijan and Israel are “engaged in broad-based strategic cooperation“. In 2015, The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) emphasized that the Iranian threat serves as a unifying factor, as both countries view it as an “existential threat“. “Mossad has a large and significant presence in Azerbaijan,” reported a prominent Israeli intelligence analyst in 2016. “Intelligence cooperation between the two countries makes it very difficult for the ayatollahs’ regime,” stated Israel Hayom in 2021.

The Second Karabakh War (2020) solidified Israel’s regional position
In the war, Azerbaijan reclaimed much of its territory—which had been occupied for 30 years with the tacit support of Iran, extending its border with Iran by 100 km. “During the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, Israel sided with Azerbaijan, while Iran supported Armenia,” reported Globes. “The Iranians’ aspirations to ensure the success of the Armenians and to maintain the minimum length of the common border with Azerbaijan were effectively countered by Baku, which is relying on Israeli weapons on a large scale…,” noted Israel Hayom. “The Iranians did not like what happened during this war because it complicated their situation,” stated in February 2021 the former head of the AMAN Military Intelligence Analysis Directorate, Yossi Kuperwasser. “The effectiveness of the deep friendship between the two countries became evident to the entire world during the Second Karabakh War, in which Azerbaijan achieved a brilliant victory through Israeli arms,” emphasized Israel Hayom. The Azerbaijani Foreign Minister added: “During the war, Azerbaijan received genuine support from its Israeli friend“.

The members of the Azerbaijani parliament noted in a collective address to the Members of the Knesset: “The Azerbaijani people appreciate and will never forget Israel’s consistent support for Azerbaijan’s justified position during the 44-day patriotic war“. “The outcomes of the Second Karabakh War heightened tensions between Iran and Azerbaijan”, observed INSS. The Ayatollah regime attempted to pressure Baku. In 2021-2022, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps held two drills near Azerbaijan’s border simulating troop deployment, while Tehran and its proxies ran intimidation propaganda campaigns aimed at Azerbaijan’s leadership. They claimed that “Aliyev is a puppet of the Zionist regime” and that “the government has been in the hands of Zionists for 30 years“.

The deputy speaker of the Iranian parliament issued a clear warning to Azerbaijan’s leader: “Read some modern history to learn about the fate of leaders who trusted America and Zionism“. Blatantly antisemitic propaganda was also employed: Aliyev was depicted in a grotesque image as a religious Jew. Against this backdrop, in October 2022, Defense Minister Benny Gantz visited Baku and emphasized the “importance of the strategic relationship” between the two countries. A month later, Azerbaijan announced the opening of its embassy in Israel. In 2023-2024, Iranian provocations, subversive activities, and attempts to intimidate Azerbaijan continued, including those aimed at its relations with Israel.

Azerbaijan works to normalize Turkey-Israel relations and mediates during crises between them
“President Aliyev, who has previously proved his mediation capabilities between Turkey and Israel, is likely to play a similar role again in the coming years (under the Trump administration),” Maariv reported in December 2024. During the 2008-2010 Turkey-Israel crisis, Azerbaijan worked to restore dialogue. In June 2012, the IzRus website, focused on Israeli foreign policy in the former Soviet Union, reported, referring to “diplomatic sources in Jerusalem“: “Officials in Baku are trying hard to reconcile the opposing sides“.[2] That same year, INSS noted: “As Israeli-Turkish relations worsened, Turkey tried to pressure Azerbaijan to cool relations with Israel. President Aliyev’s regime has so far refused Turkey’s entreaties”.In 2018, the leader of Azerbaijan mediated between Ankara and Jerusalem, increasing efforts after the 2020 Karabakh War, when Azerbaijan relied on both partners’ support.

“Armenia’s military actions are supported by Iran and Russia, while Azerbaijan is supported by Israel and Turkey,” emphasized Globes in 2020. “Azerbaijan is one of the few arenas where Israel and Turkey have a common strategic interest…” In December 2020, NewsWalla cited governmental sources in Jerusalem, reporting that Aliyev, in his communication with Erdogan, was making efforts to normalize relations between Turkey and Israel. In 2021, the Assistant to the  Azerbaijani President confirmed: “We are interested in ensuring that our allies also maintain friendly relations with each other”.

The attempted normalization between Turkey and Israel in November 2021 – March 2022 took place with the tacit participation of Azerbaijan, namely its Foreign Intelligence Service (XKX), which maintains close ties with Mossad and MİT. “The fact that both Ankara and Jerusalem are perceived as important allies of Baku and that Azerbaijan’s victory in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War is attributed in part to the assistance received from these two countries were among the factors that contributed to the warmer relations between Turkey and Israel over the past year”, noted INSS in the fall of 2022. In October 2022, during Benny Gantz’s Baku visit, Azerbaijan urged renewing Israel-Turkey military ties, leading to the first Israeli Defense Minister’s Ankara visit in 12 years.

Azerbaijan exemplifies Muslim-Jewish symbiosis and fosters Israel-Muslim ties
A century before the Abraham Accords, Azerbaijan became the first modern Muslim state to showcase such cooperation, evident in Jewish representation in its parliament[3], senior government[4] roles, and leadership of state institutions[5] during the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (1918–1920). Azerbaijan is the only Muslim country with a large Jewish settlement (over 3,000 residents). It is also the only place in the Muslim world where street names are displayed in Hebrew. As it was reported by Israel Hayom, “Azerbaijan is the only Muslim country in the world where, during celebrations and marches commemorating military victories, local residents display Israeli flags”. In December 2024, AIPAC leaders reminded that after Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023, Azerbaijani citizens brought flowers and lit candles outside the Israeli embassy to honor the victims. Expressions of sympathy and solidarity with Israelis were even voiced by members of Azerbaijan’s parliament.

This uniquely positive attitude towards the Jewish state, unparalleled in the Muslim world, reflects Azerbaijan’s exceptional relationship with Israel.As early as 2009, the Israeli ambassador in Baku noted that Azerbaijan could serve as a model for other Muslim countries in terms of relations with Israel[6]. In 2012, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman stated that Azerbaijan could act as a mediator between Israel and the Arab world. In 2020, Dr. Baram from the Truman Research Institute at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem emphasized that: “…Azerbaijan has played a behind-the-scenes role in facilitating Israel’s relations with Gulf states and moderate Muslim countries. I myself witnessed meetings in Baku between Israelis and senior figures from the Arab world years before they became official in Israel”. Immediately after the signing of the Abraham Accords, Baku became one of the first venues for establishing contacts between Israeli and UAE diplomats. In 2023, President Herzog, addressing President Aliyev, stated: “It is no secret that your country is a Muslim nation, with the majority of its population being Shia. Despite this, the love and affection between our peoples is an example of how we can change the world and move forward”. As Maariv underlined in December 2024, Azerbaijan serves as a “successful model of coexistence” between Muslims and Jews.

[1] Maariv 24.10.95 (saved in the printed version).
[2] Publication of the Israeli Russian-language site IzRus (saved in the printed version)
[3] Address-calendar of the Republic of Azerbaijan for 1920. Baku, 1920. Part IV. pp. 2, 45; Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (1918-1920). Baku, 1998. p. 55;
[4] Address-calendar of the Republic of Azerbaijan for 1920. Baku, 1920. Part IV. pp. 3,13.
[5] Address-calendar of the Republic of Azerbaijan for 1920. Baku, 1920. Part IV. pp. 17.
[6] Haaretz, 28.06.09 (saved in the printed version)

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 107 (Dec 28, 2024)

From the first days of the Russian full-scale invasion into Ukraine in February 2022, there were confusions, misunderstandings, and fears spread within the Russian-speaking Jewish (RSJ) community in the United States. One of the goals of the invasion declared by Russia was the “denazification” of Ukraine. It created a big deal of uncertainty among Russian-Jewish immigrants here. For those elderly people who remember a wide-spread antisemitism in Ukraine during the Soviet period and who remembered atrocities committed by the Nazis in Ukraine, the notion of “denazification” resonated. Some of the pre-war reports suggested that Ukrainian nationalists use Nazi symbols and slogans, rename streets in Ukrainian cities to glorify Nazi collaborators like Bandera or Shushkevich, march over streets to celebrate Bandera’s birthday, adding to confusion and fear.

RSJ immigrants in the US have memories of World War II when Nazis did numerous terrible criminal acts. They buy the notion because they have the memory of the atrocities of the World War II. On the other hand, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy is himself of Jewish descent, and part of his family was killed during the Holocaust.

Identity issues also contributed to the confusion. Russian-speaking Jews in the U.S. and in New York mostly used to identify themselves as “Russian Jews” regardless of their place of origin, though more than 40% of them originated from Ukraine and less than 35% from Russia itself. Russian is a commonly spoken first language in the community, and it is the mother tongue of President Zelensky. In recent years, many Jewish New Yorkers who spoke Russian did not object to being described as “Russian Jews,” even if they were from Ukraine.  But since Russia’s conflict with Ukraine, which first began in 2014, people started to feel that they have a special Ukrainian identity in addition to their Jewish one, so they started saying they were Ukrainian Jews and didn’t want to call them “Russian” Jews anymore.

During the first few months of the war in Ukraine, spontaneous protests against anything “Russian” were also noticeable in the RSJ communities in the US and around the globe. Some businesses have changed their names (voluntarily or under pressure). Russian cultural events like concerts and exhibitions were also canceled or indefinitely postponed. As Liam Stack explained it, “following the Russian invasion of Ukraine… Western institutions have been quick to sever ties with anyone deemed insufficiently disapproving of Putin or even facially connected to Russian culture. New York City’s Metropolitan Opera and Carnegie Hall said they would not allow people to perform who have supported Putin in the past.”

 Some Russians however protested. Thus, a Russian-Jewish immigrant was quoted by Al Jazeera: “We should not give in to this hysteria, where Tchaikovsky isn’t being played, where Russian performers are being made to speak up against Putin, even though they’re Russian citizens and their careers and families back home are at stake…”

Similarly, Julia Barinova, an insurance broker from neighboring Sheepshead Bay, said she was “insulted” by the cultural boycott of all things Russian. “Cancelling things like the cultural wealth of the nation, the history – it’s basically destruction.” (Ibid). Another Russian-Jewish immigrant and former refusenik from Boston published an article in the Tablet Magazine describing his and his family’s personal experience in the days and weeks following the Russian invasion into Ukraine. He testified : “Never before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine have, I observed such an omnipresent, pervasive urge to place an identity (Russian identity) under the yoke of collective responsibility… When Russian identity is targeted for vilification, it falls to Russian expatriates and students of Russian culture and history to explain to the world why wholesale rejection of ‘Russinness’ does not help to stop the carnage in Ukraine”.

The U.S. State Department was also concerned by the wave of anti-Russian rhetoric and cancellation of Russian culture callings. In 2022, it organized two special zoom conferences with the leaders of the Russian-speaking community, which I also attended. The officials assured leaders of the community that the U.S. government does not support any accusations or hostilities against the Russian-speaking community.

There are considerable divisions within the community regarding the war in Ukraine. It started back in 2014 during the Maidan revolution in Kyiv and the following Russian annexation of Crimea and the creation of self-proclaimed independence of Donetsk and Lugansk republics. While no special surveys among Russian immigrants have been conducted at that time, my observation, social media analysis, and focus group discussions undertaken in April-June 2022 indicate the following:

In 2014, about half of Russian-speaking immigrants in New York have acknowledged that Russia have had some legitimate historic claims for Crimea and that its annexation is somehow validated. They argued Crimea would be mostly populated by ethnic Russians, Russia would have historic ties to Crimea, and the annexation would have been done peaceful and somehow validated by referendum. Most of those who expressed these views were elderly people who originated from Russia, and, interestingly, from Azerbaijan (Mountain Jews) and Uzbekistan (Bukharian Jews). Another 30%, mostly younger people from Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova, strongly opposed the annexation, while the rest 20% did not have a particular position on the issue. As for the self-proclaimed independence of Donbass republics, its support shrank to about 35%, with about the same number strongly opposing this turn. In any case, the situation in Ukraine was not a factor in political behavior of Russian-speaking immigrants at that time.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the divide within the community deepened and became even more complicated.  In the spring and summer of 2022, based on our observations, private conversations, and on two focus group interviews in April-June 2022, about two-third in the community has supported Ukraine. Among them, three opinions could be derived: about half support Ukraine unconditionally; another 30% support with some reservations.

About a third of the respondents expressed their support for Russia.  Yet, only a small portion of them supported Russia unconditionally. There are small groups, whose members believe Russia has a legitimate claim to invade Ukraine, although without as much military aggression, and an even smaller group that supports the military invasion. But the divide is more along political beliefs than support for one’s home country. Interestingly, that among the supporters there are some elderly individuals from Ukraine who arrived in the U.S. in the 1970s and remember robust antisemitism in Ukraine. Some of them expressed reservations, while generally supporting Russia.

However, there are some reasons to believe that the proportion of those who supported Russia is even higher.  One of the reasons is that many people in private conversations confessed to me they have some sympathy for Russia but are not willing (or are afraid) to share their views publicly, including on the social media platforms. Any support for Russia, even mild and carefully expressed, was and is extremely unpopular.

During the focus group discussion, a question was asked, whether a candidate position on Ukraine in 2024 presidential elections would be important for them. There was a variety of opinions. Most of the focus group participants (70%) agree that they would vote along the party lines regardless of candidate’s position on the war in Ukraine. Also, a majority of 60% was thinking that the war will end by then. About the same number indicated that a candidate’s position on Israel would be of significant matter for them when considering voting. Thus, we may conclude that the war in Ukraine was not a considerable factor in the 2024 election cycle.

Intensive discussion in the focus groups was related to the issue of to what extend Israel should be involved in helping Ukraine. As well as in what way the pressure on Israel to provide more military and financial help to Ukraine, that continues from the beginning of the war and as the war goes on, is legitimate. The variety of opinions expressed could be narrowed to two, somehow contradicting each other.

The first position: Israel should not interfere in the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Israel could probably provide some humanitarian assistance, as it did, for example, in the beginning of the war when Israel unfolded a first field hospital in Western Ukraine. But by no means Israel should sent any military equipment, be it defensive or offensive, because Israel has its own political interests of retaining good relations with both Russia (Iranian and Hezbollah threats were mentioned) and Ukraine. Any pressure on Israel from Ukraine, or any other country for that matter, should be decisively dismissed, and Israel must seek for the peaceful resolution of the conflict.

The second position: Because Ukraine is a victim of Russian aggression, Israel has a moral right to help Ukraine to defend itself. While supplying Ukraine with weapons could be counterproductive and would lead to unpredictable and dangerous consequences, some defensive equipment like anti-drone systems could be given to Ukraine. However, any pressure on Israel regarding this issue should be rejected.

The first option was shared by majority of participants in both focus groups. Interesting results were drawn when we discussed the issue of whether the U.S. should help Ukraine and to what extent. As many Russians share views of Republican party, they are listening intensively to Tucker Carlson, a popular conservative former Fox News anchor, who argues that instead of spending billions in military assistance to Ukraine, more attention should be paid to the dangerous situation at the American-Mexican border, to combat high-level inflation, to improve the schools, and to support American businesses.

Similar views are expressed recently by Florida governor Ron DeSantis who was gaining popularity as a rising star on the U.S. political horizon and was a candidate of the Republican party in 2024 presidential election. Echoing him was Kevin McCarty, then the Speaker of the House in the U.S. Congress. Responding to a recent Tucker Carlson’s question: “Is opposing Russia in Ukraine a vital American strategic interest?”, Ron DeSantis replied: “While the U.S. has many vital national interests… becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.” Former President Trump said: “No, but it is for Europe.”  While many Republicans leaders agree, yet many, like former vice president Pence and Nikki Haley, disagree with Carlson and DeSantis. Similarly, there were many nuanced opinions in the Russian-speaking Jewish community indicating the extremely complicated nature of the issue. I tried to narrow them down to three vectors.

One position was that the Russian aggression in Ukraine is a threatening precedent, but it is not a major American strategic interest, and the U.S. should not be too much involved in providing Ukraine with sophisticated weapons that would escalate the conflict further. Moreover, the sanctions imposed by the U.S. on Russia did not work. The longer this confrontation continues, the more Russia is pushed toward China to comprise the Russian-Chinese political block, which is dangerous to America.

Another (opposite) position was that the U.S. must provide Ukraine with all means necessary to win the war, to regain all Ukrainian territory, and to defeat the Russian army. And only then could a peace agreement be achieved.

A third position was that the U.S. should continue its support for Ukraine – military, economically, and politically. However, given the corruption reports, all aid should be transparent, and it should not be unlimited. Also, the war is more of a European issue rather than an American one. The Ukrainian objective of regaining all its territory, including Crimea, is unrealistic. Peace negotiations should start as soon as possible.

Most participants agreed that a further escalation of the war would be very dangerous and could trigger a military conflict between Russia and NATO that may result with a nuclear war. The notion on the necessity of peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine strengthened among Russian immigrants, especially after October 7, 2023, with the horrific terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas and the subsequent war in Gaza.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 106 (Dec 21, 2024)

Donald Trump’s second term as U.S. president begins in a month. High on his priority list, as per his statements, is initiating a ceasefire in Ukraine followed by peace talks to end the war triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022. Trump has stated his intention to address this issue within the first days of his presidency.

How to “Sell” a (Still Non-Existent) Peace Plan

Despite Trump’s ambitious goals, insiders suggest the details of a peace plan to end the 33-month-long conflict, the largest in Europe since World War II, remain unclear. Following a trilateral meeting on December 7, 2024, in Paris between Zelensky, Trump, and Emmanuel Macron, Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office, remarked: “No (American) plan exists yet, and we certainly haven’t seen one.”.

Currently, the peace framework under discussion includes three key principles:

1. Freezing the Conflict: Ceasefire lines would reflect the battlefield situation at the time, effectively leaving Russia in control of Crimea, 80% of Donbas, over 70% of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, and parts of Mykolaiv and Kharkiv provinces. While Ukraine would not legally recognize these territories as Russian, per Zelensky’s interview with CBN News, Western allies might accept this as part of a broader agreement.

2. Security Guarantees Without NATO Membership: Ukraine would forego NATO membership in exchange for substantial Western security guarantees. A 40,000-strong European peacekeeping mission could oversee a buffer zone between Ukrainian and Russian forces, though U.S. troops would not participate. Trump has advocated for a “strong and well-armed Ukraine”.

3. Pressure on Both Sides: Washington may pressure Putin and Zelensky by threatening to reduce military and financial support for Ukraine if it refuses negotiations, or to increase assistance significantly should Russia reject the terms.

Resistance from Both Kyiv and Moscow

Reaching consensus remains a monumental challenge. Kyiv insists on implementing Zelensky’s “peace formula,” which demands NATO membership and a return to Ukraine’s 1991 borders, including the full de-occupation of territories annexed by Russia since 2014. Conversely, Moscow opposes all elements of Zelensky’s plan and sees time as a strategic advantage.

In Kyiv, there is significant resistance to negotiating without securing advanced Western weapons first. Analysts like Steven Pifer, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, warn against pressuring Kyiv to negotiate while Russia shows no intent for genuine talks. Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia, has suggested a compromise: Ukraine could nominally cede some territories to Russia while receiving NATO membership and accelerated military aid.

Would Elections Bring a Solution?

Adopting Trump’s “take it or leave it” approach to diplomacy would mark a dramatic shift from the long-standing policy of allowing Kyiv to dictate peace terms. Such a shift could damage Zelensky’s reputation, both domestically and internationally. With 88% of Ukrainians believing in a victory over Russia as of September 2024, “selling” a peace deal based on territorial compromises would be nearly impossible.

Polling by Carnegie Endowment and Rating Group in May 2024 indicated that while many Ukrainians support negotiations, 70% would demand new leadership if they disagreed with the terms of a peace deal. Speculation about elections, delayed under martial law, has intensified. Some suggest Zelensky might not run, preserving his legacy as a unifier during wartime.

Legal and Logistical Challenges

Elections during wartime would face significant legal, logistical, and financial hurdles, including amendments to martial law, a $240 million election budget, and provisions for voting by soldiers and displaced citizens. As of now, Ukraine’s Central Election Commission is merely updating voter rolls, and no budget for elections has been allocated. Furthermore, public opinion remains divided: in February 2024, 69% of Ukrainians believed Zelensky should serve until martial law ends.

Conclusion

The Biden administration will face immense challenges in convincing Zelensky to adopt a peace plan requiring significant concessions. Simultaneously, Zelensky must navigate domestic opposition, maintain international support, and possibly prepare for elections under the shadow of ongoing war.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 104 (Dec 16, 2024)

There is still a little over a month to go before Donald Trump, elected to a second term on November 5, 2024, returns to the White House, but the outlines of the first “100 days” of his policy, albeit at the declarative level, are already quite clear. In addition to mass deportation of illegal immigrants, abolishing the education policy of the outgoing administration, “streamlining” the executive branch by cutting thousands of federal government positions, pardoning those who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and other ambitious measures, there are also steps to implement one of the main campaign promises. Namely, to end as quickly as possible the “hot phase” of regional armed conflicts that could trigger political and economic instability in the world at large.

Trump’s promise to bring the war in Ukraine to an end through diplomatic measures is not the lowest on this list. Although the campaign promise to bring Putin and Zelensky to the negotiating table and end the conflict within 24 hours has already disappeared from the Trump team’s rhetoric, they remain confident that after January 20, 2024, the White House and the US State Department will have enough political and material resources to bring the hostilities to a relatively quick halt. And to convince Ukrainian and Russian leaders to accept Washington’s proposed roadmap, if not for a peaceful settlement, then for a long-term ceasefire (i.e., freezing the conflict). Donald Trump reaffirmed his commitment to an immediate ceasefire and negotiations to end the war during his December 7 meeting in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Possible offer for Russia

According to observers, the compromise arrangements that Trump intends to offer to both sides do not satisfy either Kyiv or Moscow so far. Thus, Putin, although showing glimmers of interest in ending the conflict, continues to insist that peace is possible only if, as a result of the negotiations, Kyiv officially refuses to join NATO and if Ukraine and the West agree to Russia’s annexation of five Ukrainian regions. Specifically, Crimea, officially annexed back in 2014, and four regions – Donetsk, Luhansk (the former self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics”), Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts. Moreover, Moscow wants to receive these regions in their entirety within their administrative boundaries, not only those parts that are already occupied by Russian troops.

Although according to Reuters sources in Moscow, “Russia may also be open to withdrawing from the relatively small patches of territory it holds in the Kharkiv and Mykolaiv regions, in the north and south of Ukraine.” Basically, Putin is in no hurry. Western sanctions against the Russian economy have not yet had the expected effect, internal opposition to the regime is weak, and Russian troops continue to push through the AFU defenses in the east of the country, albeit slowly. And to him, observers believe, dragging out does make sense in order to gain more by pursuing further land grabs. Finally, the level of public support for the SMO (“Special Military Operation,” as Russia officially calls the war with Ukraine) is still quite high. For example, at the end of November, according to the Moscow-based sociological Levada Center,  the level of this support was 77% — despite the fact that a third of respondents confirmed that the country was still experiencing difficulties related to the SMO, and about 40% believed that real difficulties lay ahead. This may be why, judging by the same survey, support for the idea of peace talks in November 2024 stood at 57%, while support for continued military action fell to 35%. However, these figures hardly mean anything more than passive readiness of Russians to agree with any decision of the country’s leadership — to continue or end the SMO, but the latter, most likely, on the terms officially announced by the authorities.

Trump’s team seems to recognize this reality, which probably explains why the three options for a plan to end the war offered by his team to Putin, according to media reports, appear to contain more “carrots” than “sticks” for Russia. According to the first option, which was presented by Trump’s incoming Russia-Ukraine envoy, retired Army Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg together with former National Security Council official Fred Fleitz, as an analytical report by The America First Policy Institute, a think tank close to Trump, calls for freezing the current battle lines.

The second and third scenarios, presented respectively by Vice President-elect JD Vance, and by Richard Grenell, Trump’s former acting intelligence chief and ambassador to Germany, are essentially very close to the Kellogg/Fleitz ideas, except for some technical additions of varying degrees of importance. The Vance project also envisages the creation of a demilitarized zone at the existing front lines that would be “heavily fortified” to prevent further Russian incursions. The Grenell plan suggests the creation of “autonomous zones” in eastern Ukraine, without much detail as to what exactly is meant. (Purely theoretically, one can assume that it could be a territorial autonomy within Ukraine with expanded sovereignty; a quasi-state like the “Palestinian autonomy” under a de facto Russian protectorate, or a Russian-Ukrainian condominium with the participation of some external forces; or some third option).

The stick in all these scenarios is a threat to Moscow to dramatically increase military and other aid to Kyiv should it refuse to accept U.S. proposals.

Incentives and warnings for Ukraine

In fact, this is what the outgoing administration of Joe Biden intends to do: according to media reports, it has developed a “last-minute” program that provides for an “avalanche” of military aid. In any case, this is what Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak. He said that by mid-January 2025, the USA intends to supply the Ukrainian Armed Forces with hundreds of thousands of additional artillery shells and a large number of missiles and armored vehicles, as well as to train new Ukrainian troops at sites outside Ukrainian territory.

And all of this comes in a package with a promise to transfer roughly $9 billion in military aid to Kyiv through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) and defense packages under the president’s authority. As well as a new set of sanctions against Russia, which, according to the same reports, are called to complicate “Russia’s ability to sustain its war effort and boosting Ukraine’s bargaining power at the negotiation table that could lay the groundwork for a future settlement.” However, there are doubts in American media and political circles that the outgoing administration has enough time to utilize these resources. Just as it is clear that all this large-scale and, from the point of view of many in Ukraine, very late influx of weapons cannot be carried out in a matter of weeks, so it will have to be implemented — or abandoned — mostly by the new administration.

This scenario may be convenient for Trump’s team as a “stick” for Moscow. However, judging by what is being reported from the president-elect’s inner circle, so far they would prefer, in response to Kremlin, to start with incentives rather than intimidation. It is indicative, for example, that all three scenarios of completing the war in Ukraine that were produced by Trump’s inner circle, denied the NATO membership for Ukraine in the foreseeable future. The difference is that while in the plans of Vance and Kellogg/Fleitz this looks like an inevitable concession to Putin in exchange for his agreement to end or freeze the conflict on terms more or less satisfactory to all parties involved, the plan of Grenell, who was one of the few people at a September meeting in New York between Trump and Zelensky, presents Ukraine’s non-participation in NATO as a conceptual judgment (“NATO membership for Ukraine was not in America’s interest”).

Yet, this is precisely what Kyiv is not ready to accept by definition. Ukraine’s joining, or initiating the process of joining NATO, was a critical element of the “Victory Plan” presented by Volodymyr Zelensky in September 2024, amid a perceived decline in Western interest in Ukraine and accumulated war fatigue in Eastern Europe. Key points of the plan included recognizing Ukraine’s absolute right to be a member of any alliance, regardless of the opinion of “third countries” on the matter; large-scale investments in military production facilities in Ukraine; auditing and expanding anti-Russian sanctions; and diplomatic pressure on Moscow.

This plan, presented in the Verkhovna Rada and at various high-profile international events, as well as Zelensky’s earlier proposed “peace formula,” did not evoke much enthusiasm among Ukraine’s allies. Therefore, at this stage Kyiv is ready for a minimal alternative — to be “invited” to the alliance, and to receive some “guarantees of Ukraine’s security” from American and European leaders, and to have a “deterrence potential”, including an arsenal of conventional weapons sufficient to deliver a sensitive blow to the Russian Federation in case it violates the ceasefire regime. And at this stage — to obtain weapons and other resources capable of turning the situation on the front line and creating conditions for negotiations.

Kyiv would clearly be satisfied with such an arrangement if it became a fundamental element of Ukraine’s obtaining the status of “major U.S. ally outside NATO,” which would at least partially raise the level of relations to that which binds the U.S., for example, with Israel, Japan, or Australia. However, Ukraine rejected such a partnership back in 2021, and although the question seems to have returned to the agenda after February 24, 2022, the chances of its implementation are slim. As a result, the position of the Ukrainian leadership in relations with the incoming U.S. administration is rather weak.

Unlike Russian leaders, who still have a considerable amount of time and room for maneuver, Zelensky’s team has significantly less of these two resources. Ukraine experiences manpower shortages, growing territorial losses, a drop in public morale due to accumulated war fatigue, lack of prospects, and the feeling that Western allies are “preventing Ukraine from winning” by rationing aid. There is also outrage at corruption at all levels and a sense of injustice regarding the distribution of the war burden within Ukrainian society. Therefore, Zelensky has to be open to negotiations to find diplomatic solutions, especially since it is quite obvious that the public has such a demand.

Under these circumstances, Trump has much more leverage over Zelensky than over Putin, and it is possible that at some point the balance of “carrots and sticks” in Ukrainian politics will shift in favor of the latter. So far, the more or less openly articulated position of the Trump team fits into a simple formula: Kyiv should agree to negotiations with Moscow based on the White House and the U.S. State Department’s understanding of the optimal arrangement for a diplomatic solution under the threat of halting military aid, but boosting assistance if Russian President Vladimir Putin refuses.

In a sense, such an approach stymies Ukraine’s president, who signed a decree in 2022 forbidding Ukraine from negotiating with Russia as long as Putin is in power. Theoretically, Ukraine could formally cede some of its territory if such a move is approved in a national referendum, which, judging by opinion polls, is unlikely. In other words, there is obviously a built-in contradiction in the vision of the Ukrainian political establishment: a clear understanding of the lack of prospects for defeating Russia on the battlefield and the need to seek a diplomatic solution, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the impossibility of removing from the official discourse the declared goal of resisting Russian aggression, that is the restoration of Kyiv’s sovereignty over the entire territory of Ukraine within the 1991 borders.

Today, Zelensky’s team does not have many other options. One of them is to continue to insist on inviting Ukraine to NATO with the help of the so-called contact group consisting of France, Poland, Great Britain and Germany, which was launched on December 9, 2024 by Friedrich Merz, candidate to the German chancellor from the CDU party, to develop a common position on ending the war. The Ukrainian presidential administration pitched the initiative as a group of countries that have long-range weapons, that are investing the most in Ukrainian defense production, and on which Ukraine’s accession to NATO depends.

***

Nevertheless, it is clear that eventually everything will depend on the U.S. position. And it is still unclear whether Kyiv and Moscow are impressed enough by Trump’s reputation as a “hard pragmatist” on foreign policy issues, and by the set of “carrots and sticks” voiced by his men for each side of the conflict, to soften their unyielding positions.