Azerbaijan’s leader Ilham Aliyev has shown that one big diss deserves another. As a result, the Kremlin, on a day it celebrated the Red Army’s triumph over Nazi Germany 80 years ago, now finds itself locked in another war of words with Baku. 

Aliyev, who had previously indicated that he would attend the Red Square Victory Day parade on May 9, ignited the latest bout of bilateral sparring with a last-minute announcement that he would not be flying to Moscow after all. The timing seemed designed to maximize the displeasure and embarrassment felt by Russian leader Vladimir Putin. It also did not seem like a spur-of-the-moment decision.

Instead of going to Moscow, Aliyev spent much of May 9 in territories recently reconquered from Armenia during the Second Karabakh War, attending ribbon-cutting and groundbreaking ceremonies at a farm, a residential complex, a wellness center and a mosque. 

The level of coordination involved in such a whirlwind visit to locations outside the capital Baku suggest the trip was planned well in advance, possibly as a contingency plan that ended up being implemented.

The root cause of Aliyev’s discontent seems clear: Russia does not show Azerbaijan enough respect. The list of Azerbaijani grievances is long, but it centers on Russia’s ongoing refusal to take responsibility for the accidental shoot-down of an Azerbaijani civilian jetliner last December. The incident, and Russia’s refusal to accept blame, led to weeks of rancorous exchanges between the two countries. But the dispute had seemingly been in a dormant phase until a few days ago.

“Aliyev's decision not to go was a logical consequence of everything that has happened in the relations between Baku and Moscow in recent months, and reflects the principled and balanced position of the Azerbaijani leadership on key issues on the bilateral agenda,” read a commentary published by state-connected 1news.az outlet. “There are quite a few unresolved problems.” 

An array of Russian media outlets responded to Aliyev’s obvious slight with a fusillade of derision. One ultra-conservative website, Tsargrad, wrote that Aliyev is an “a boor who has gone too far” and that “with such ‘friends’ who needs enemies,” before going on to present a long list of the Azerbaijani leader’s faults.  

Konstantin Zatulin, the first deputy chairman of Duma’s Committee on the CIS, gave an interview to an Armenian media outlet, saying Russia does not consider Azerbaijan to be an ally, while also questioning the legitimacy of Azerbaijan’s control over Nagorno-Karabakh.

The tightly controlled Azerbaijani press unleashed a broadside of its own May 9, with various outlets pointing out that Azerbaijani oil was responsible for the Red Army’s defeat of the invading Nazis, adding that Azerbaijan has never received the credit it deserves for its key role in winning World War II. One site, Zerkalo, tweaked the Kremlin by saying that Baku gives more generous welfare benefits to its World War II veterans than does Russia.

The Caliber.az site, meanwhile, trolled Russia by giving prominent display to a news item in which US Vice President J.D. Vance derides the Kremlin’s position in the Ukraine war, quoting him as saying; “Russia cannot expect to be given territories that it has not been able to capture.”

How this spat ends is hard to see at this point, but the two states remain economically entangled by the Northern Corridor trade route. Some in Russia are already trying to inject an element of calm into the heated atmosphere. The Lenta.ru outlet, for example, posted excerpts of an interview with a Russian MP, Svetlana Zhurova, who sought to downplay Aliyev’s decision, saying that it was not necessarily unfriendly.