Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in the Azerbaijani capital Baku on Sunday for a two-day state visit, according to Russian news agencies.
Russian television broadcast images of the Russian president’s plane as it arrived in Baku in the evening.
His visit to the Caucasus country, a close partner of both Moscow and Turkey, as well as a major energy supplier to the West, comes against the backdrop of an unprecedented Ukrainian military invasion of Russian soil.
The Kremlin said Putin would hold talks with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev on bilateral relations and “international and regional problems.”
The two leaders will dine at the official residence of the Azerbaijani president on Sunday evening, local state news agency Asertaq reported.
On Monday, Aliyev and Putin will sign joint documents and make statements to the press, Russian agency RIA Novosti reported.
Putin will also lay a wreath at the grave of the current leader’s father, Heydar Aliyev, who was president from 1993 to 2003.
Earlier the Kremlin said they would also discuss “the question of resolving (the conflict) between Azerbaijan and Armenia.”
Azerbaijan will recapture the mountainous region in September 2023 from Armenian separatists, who had occupied it for three decades.
Armenia accuses Russia of insufficient support in its conflict with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Since then, Armenia has been trying to deepen its ties with Western countries, especially the United States, much to the chagrin of Moscow, which considers both former Soviet republics to be within its sphere of influence.
Azerbaijan is a major producer of natural gas, which many European countries turned to to make up for severe shortfalls in Russian supplies after the conflict in Ukraine began in February 2022.
It is also hosting the COP29 climate conference in November.
Putin’s last visit to Azerbaijan took place in September 2018.
Putin faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court effective March 2023 for sending Ukrainian children to Russia, a charge the Kremlin denies.
Although the threat of arrest has limited Putin’s foreign trips, Azerbaijan is not a signatory to the Treaty of Rome, under which the ICC was established.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
