Why Did Head of GRU Come to Baku?

Baku /26.11.20 / Turan: On November 21, a military delegation of the Russian Ministry of Defense headed by Minister Sergei Shoighu visited Baku. At the meeting with Ilham Aliyev, the situation in Karabakh and the implementation of the November 9 trilateral agreement were discussed.

Few paid attention to the composition of the Russian delegation, which clearly differed from the composition that had visited Yerevan a day earlier.

First of all, the chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the Russian General Staff, Admiral Kostyukov, arrived in Baku with Shoighu.

Next to him was the commander of the Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh, Rustam Muradov, who was also not in Yerevan.

Military experts in Baku found it difficult to name the purpose of the visit of the head of one of the most closed intelligence services in the world to Baku. However, the very fact speaks for the importance attached to this in Moscow.

The meeting with the Russian delegation was also attended by the heads of the Foreign Intelligence Service and the State Security Service of Azerbaijan, Generals Sultanov and Nagiyev.

Welcoming the guests, Ilham Aliyev said that a wide range of issues will be discussed with the participation of the military of the two sides. The video from the meeting also shows that in front of Sultanov and Nagiyev are folders and documents that look like folded cards.

A former high-ranking officer of the military intelligence of Azerbaijan, commenting on the topic of a possible conversation with Turan, noted that these could be issues of joint actions of the special services in neutralizing existing threats. In particular, Ilham Aliyev stressed that Azerbaijan has data on the participation of foreign citizens from many countries in hostilities. Prior to that, Aliyev said that there are many citizens from the Middle East among the foreign fighters, and their passports will be presented to the public. These are persons of Armenian origin, among whom, according to some sources, there are many citizens of Russia.

It is not excluded that it was also about the Armenian military, who will try to hide among the peaceful Armenian population under the defense of Russian peacekeepers.

Cooperation between the military and special services of Russia and Azerbaijan in these and other aspects also fits into the joint actions of the Turkish and Russian military in the conflict zone. All such issues require discussions and agreements at a high level. Thus, a number of meetings of Presidents Erdogan and Putin on Karabakh also took place with the participation of the heads of the special services of Turkey and Russia.        -02B-