Baku’s decision to lift restrictions on cargo transit to Armenia has a clearly pronounced geopolitical dimension.
With this step, Azerbaijan demonstrates that it is possible to form a diversified transport-logistics system on the South Caucasus—more precisely, one independent of Russian influence.
In particular, transporting wheat along the Kazakhstan–Azerbaijan–Georgia–Armenia route fully fits into the Middle Corridor strategy, whose main goal is to create a bypass route within the Europe–Caucasus–Asia communication framework, circumventing Russia. The initiators of the project have never hidden this objective.
Why did Baku and Yerevan agree specifically on transit and wheat imports from Kazakhstan, rather than, say, from Russia, given that in 2024, Russian supplies covered 99.9% of Armenia’s grain needs and about 50% of its wheat needs?
First and foremost, Kazakhstan is a key participant in the Middle Corridor, serving as an important logistics hub in the Europe–Caucasus–Asia system. At the same time, this project is a direct antagonist to the Russian-Iranian-Indian North–South initiative.
In August of this year, Kazakhstan resumed wheat and flour exports to Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Iran after a five-year hiatus. Likely against this backdrop, an agreement was reached between Yerevan and Astana on supplies, to which Baku responded based on its own geo-economic calculations.
These calculations are extremely transparent: maximally stimulate the development and diversification of the Middle Corridor in the region and thereby increase its own weight in Europe.
Europe, in turn, views Armenia as a potential participant in the Global Gateway initiative—that is, as part of the same Middle Corridor, capable of ensuring connectivity through Syunik for the unimpeded export of hydrocarbons from the Caspian to Europe (within the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline project). This will allow Azerbaijan to fulfill its obligations to the EU—doubling natural gas supplies starting in 2027.
In the PR dimension, all of this will be presented as a project aimed at ensuring Armenia’s transport connectivity with Europe and Asia.
A fine pretext for an election campaign.
Political scientist Vage Davtyan