Azerbaijan’s victory in the 44-day war with Armenia thrusts Turkey into the spotlight as an increasingly muscular regional player

Azerbaijan’s victory in the 44-day war with Armenia thrusts Turkey into the spotlight as an increasingly muscular regional player, Taras Kuzio, a Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Professor, writing for the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies. “Ukraine and Azerbaijan are longstanding pro-NATO and pro-Western former Soviet states in a contested region which Russia demands the West recognises as its exclusive sphere of influence,” he writes for the venerable London think tank. “While the Azerbaijani–Turkish alliance has passed an important test of endurance, Turkey’s development of a new strategic alliance with Ukraine is in its embryonic days.”