When NATO military exercises kick off in Georgia next week, they will include troops from the United States, Germany, Turkey, Ukraine, and Armenia. But they won't include Azerbaijan, an unexpected, last-minute dropout, editor at EurasiaNet.org, and author of The Bug Pit blog, analyst Joshua Kucera noted.
According to him, Azerbaijan also didn't participate in another set of recently concluded NATO-affiliated drills in Romania. Azerbaijan also didn't take part in U.S./Ukraine-hosted naval exercises in the Black Sea, called Sea Breeze, in spite of earlier promises that they would.
“It's not clear why Azerbaijan dropped out of the exercises in Georgia and the Black Sea. There has been no official explanation, and neither the Ministry of Defense nor the Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded to The Bug Pit's request for comment,” the analyst wrote.
The exercises are all part of a huge series of NATO drills around the Black Sea this summer in which about 40,000 troops are participating. This, naturally, has aroused Russia's ire.
"All these deployments, including the incessant series of exercises, create an absolutely new configuration of forces near our borders, which in a substantial way not only worsen the security situation but also present a danger, a threat to Russia," said Russia's ambassador to NATO, Alexander Grushkov.
He stressed that Armenia usually sends small units to NATO exercises, and otherwise cooperate in limited ways with NATO. But what happened with Azerbaijan is rather curious, as Baku also cooperates with NATO; just last month Azerbaijani Defense Minister visited Brussels to discuss cooperation with the alliance.
According to him, “the story of these exercise dropouts has been more or less ignored by the major Azerbaijani press, but one website quoted military analyst Uzeir Jafarov as saying that Armenia's presence at Noble Partner would justify Azerbaijan staying away. It's worth noting, though, that Armenia wasn't in the Sea Breeze exercises which Azerbaijan also dropped out of, and both Armenia and Azerbaijan took part, without incident, in the NATO Saber Guardian exercises last year."
