Azerbaijan is Ukraine's strategic partner, along with Georgia, Lithuania, Poland, and Turkey. The strategic partnership means that Ukraine and Azerbaijan have common long-term goals, Irina Vereshchuk, member of Ukraine's Supreme Rada and head of the subcommittee for state security and defense issues, has said.
According to Report, she noted that Azerbaijan and Ukraine had similar problems in terms of separatism and involvement in local armed conflicts:
"But our situation is more difficult since we are directly opposing Russia, which is conducting intensive hybrid war against us. But we are fast learners. As a member of the Parliament's profile committee, I am leading the workgroup on resisting hybrid challenges. We are gradually gaining experience in the right neutralization of the hybrid threats. But, anyway, we need targeted and accelerated army modernization with the focus on the military and technical cooperation with the United States, Great Britain, and Turkey. We understand that Azerbaijan's military success in Karabakh is a result, among other things, of the years of the well-oriented modernization of the army. Here, I mean not only technical re-equipment but also the education of part of the officers abroad," Vereshchuk said.
Speaking about Ukraine's defense cooperation with Azerbaijan, the MP listed military and technical cooperation and the exchange of experience in terms of modernizing armed forces, as promising directions. "It is promoted by the fact that over the past two years, our relations with Azerbaijan have strengthened geopolitically. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has stressed this fact."