Russia refused to extend the lease of the Gabala early warning radar station. Will Azerbaijan gain anything in this situation? It is unlikely that Baku will lease the station to Americans or Turkey. The departing Russian officers will not leave the station’s software behind for Azerbaijan or potential new leaseholders. Besides, Azerbaijan is unlikely to receive any foreign policy or military concessions from Russia now.

       Russia has notified the Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan of its decision to stop using the early warning radar station at Gabala. The 1992 agreement, under which Russia leased the station for 20 years at $7 million annually, expired on December 9, 2012. It is rumored that the parties failed to agree on the lease price and the legal status of the station’s Russian military personnel.

       The Daryal-class radar station was built on the southern slope of the North Caucasus range near Gabala in Azerbaijan (then part of the Soviet Union) and became operational in 1985. The ceremony was attended by the republic’s leader, Heydar Aliyev. The station was designed to detect missile launches at a range of 6,000 kilometers, covering the whole of the Middle East, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, the Persian Gulf region, Afghanistan, and all the way to the Indian Ocean.

       Following the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Gabala station became the property of Azerbaijan and was renamed the Information and Analysis Center. Since Azerbaijan could not use it for a number of reasons, it agreed to lease it to Russia for $7 million annually plus utilities, such as electricity provided to the station and the nearby town from the Mingechaur hydropower plant, water supplied from the Mingechaur reservoir for cooling the station equipment, as well as heat, sewage facilities, etc. Several hundred local residents worked at the station. Russian officers’ wives worked at the only school and hospital in the town along with local specialists.

       There were about a dozen such radar stations in the Soviet Union. Russia inherited only four; the other stations were located outside its territory. The radar station in Belarus remained the property of Russia, whereas the other countries assumed ownership of their stations after gaining sovereignty. Two radar stations in Skrunde, Latvia, have been destroyed, and the two stations in Ukraine (one in Nikolaev outside Sevastopol and the other in Beregov near Mukachev) have been turned over to Ukraine’s Space Agency, which refused to put them on combat alert or to provide information from them to Russia’s Aerospace Defense Forces. Later Ukraine agreed to supply such information at a sky-high price, but Russia refused to buy it because it was unstable and unreliable.

       The Ukrainian government offered the stations to NATO and the United States, which refused to buy because they did not need to monitor the Northern and Central Atlantic or Europe.

       Kazakhstan agreed to lease its radar station, located on the west coast of Lake Balkhash near the Sary Shagan test site, to Russia.

       Seeking to avoid unnecessary risks, Moscow decided to establish its own radar stations. The first Voronezh-M radar station working in the meter range (VHF) was built in Lehtusi near St. Petersburg in 2005, and was later complemented with Voronezh-DM stations, which work in the decimeter range (UHF), near Armavir, Kaliningrad and in Usolye-Sibirskoye outside Irkutsk. There are plans to build other such stations, including a Voronezh-VP radar station outside Barnaul in the Altai.

       The Voronezh-DM radar station outside Armavir will cover the area previously assigned to the Gabala station. It is more cost-efficient and can “see” more, better and at a longer range than the Gabala station. Why then did Moscow continue to discuss the extension of its lease after Azerbaijan raised the price from $7 million to $300 million?

       Colonel General Oleg Ostapenko, then commander of the Aerospace Defense Forces and currently Deputy Defense Minister of Russia, said the reason is simple: two is better than one. If one station is shut down for technical maintenance or for some other reason, the other station can take over. In addition, Russia will now have to find employment and residence for the officers and their families who have been working at Gabala.

       The talks on extending the Gabala lease never looked promising. In the summer of 2012, then Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov ordered that the outpatient clinic and the school at Gabala be closed and the officers’ families relocated to Russia, with officers working there in shifts until December 10. Russian generals say that the termination of the lease will not damage Russia’s security. But “we’re still left with a bad taste in our mouths”.

       Will Azerbaijan gain anything in this situation? The Azerbaijani and Russian media are reporting that it is unlikely that Baku will lease the station to Americans or Turkey. The departing Russian officers will not leave the station’s software behind for Azerbaijan or potential new leaseholders, and without it the station is only a very large pile of very expensive scrap. Besides, Azerbaijan, which is a major oil producing country, is unlikely to receive any foreign policy or military concessions from Russia now.

       Azerbaijan probably gamed out all possible consequences of their decision. If they miscalculated, that’s their problem.

       This article was originally published in Russian in Nezavisimaya Gazeta .

       Views expressed are of individual Members and Contributors, rather than the Club's, unless explicitly stated otherwise.