Russia and Azerbaijan: new military-technical programme and Pantsir-S1 sales push after Aliyev’s absence from Ankara

Russia and Azerbaijan have signed a military-technical cooperation programme for building and modernising repair facilities for the Azerbaijani army’s armoured vehicles, while Moscow makes no secret of wanting to sell Baku Pantsir-S1 air-defence systems too. The agreement was made public by Dmitry Shugayev, head of Russia’s Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation, in an interview with state TV channel Zvezda broadcast on Sunday, November 1, just two days after the Organization of Turkic States summit in Ankara, which Ilham Aliyev did not attend.

“We no longer offer only finished products, but also take part in military-technical cooperation,” Shugayev said. “A whole programme has been signed providing for the modernisation and construction of repair facilities for the armoured vehicles of the Azerbaijani army.” Russian specialists will take part in building new maintenance facilities and upgrading existing ones. Both areas of cooperation, the repair programme and the Pantsir-S1, are being discussed on the sidelines of the ADEX-2026 defence exhibition in Baku, Ukraine’s Militarnyi writes.

The Pantsir-S1 sale

On the Pantsir-S1, a short-range system with missiles and guns against aircraft, helicopters, cruise missiles and drones, the Russian official sounded optimistic that a deal will eventually be reached. “The product is in great demand among our customers and I believe that in time we will agree with Azerbaijan and they will accept it,” he said. No contract has been announced, and the number of systems, cost and delivery schedule remain unknown.

Azerbaijan’s air defence already has Russian Tor-M2 systems, but Baku also buys Chinese systems such as the FD-2000B (HQ-9B) shown at a military parade. The Pantsir also has a political dimension for Baku: Azerbaijani experts found a fragment of a Pantsir-S1 missile in the wreckage of the Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer ERJ-190 that crashed in December 2024 after being hit by Russian air defences. The Pantsir has also suffered dozens of losses in Ukraine, documented with photographic evidence by Oryx.

Baku has for years bought Russian weapons, such as T-90S tanks, BMP-3 and BTR-82A armoured vehicles and artillery. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimates that Russian arms accounted for about 60 per cent of Azerbaijan’s imports of major weapons in 2011-2020. After the invasion of Ukraine deliveries were delayed, as Aliyev himself admitted in December 2024.

Coolness with Ankara and domestic reactions

The move comes at a time of tension between Baku and Ankara. Aliyev did not go to the Organization of Turkic States summit despite a personal invitation from Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and was represented by Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov, Times of Central Asia writes. An Azerbaijani news agency attributed his absence to a prior commitment, and Baku has not officially linked it to the dispute. In October a row broke out between Baku and Ankara over school dress rules restricting the hijab in Azerbaijani schools. Turkish reactions were seen as interference in internal affairs and Baku banned 31 Turkish citizens from entering the country. For that dispute, see our report on the Turkey-Azerbaijan rift.

There is no shortage of reactions in Azerbaijan. Isa Sadigov, a former deputy defence minister and retired colonel, told the Kyiv Post that the country already has its own armour maintenance units. He fears the programme could serve as a pretext for sending Azerbaijani equipment to Russia, though neither Moscow nor Baku has announced anything of the kind. For him the question is simple: “Russia itself needs weapons. Will it put aside its own equipment to repair Azerbaijan’s?” He also doubts that Moscow would eventually deliver the Pantsirs, citing Armenia, which prepaid for Russian weapons and complained of delays.