By Ruzanna Stepanian
YEREVAN (RFE/RL) — An Azerbaijani cargo plane has carried out another flight to and from a military airfield in southern Israel in a sign of continuing Israeli arms supplies to Azerbaijan.
Data available on Flight Radar24, a website tracking international flights, shows that the plane belonging to the Azerbaijani Silk Way Airlines returned to Baku on September 4, from the Israeli Air Force’s Ovda base. As always, the carrier did not reveal what it transported to Azerbaijan.
Ovda is the only airfield through which explosives can be flown into and out of Israel. It is believed to be a key conduit for Israeli exports of weapons and ammunition to Azerbaijan. They have totaled billions of dollars in the last two decades, making the Jewish state one of Azerbaijan’s main arms suppliers.
Those supplies continued even during the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijani forces heavily used Israeli-made attack drones and multiple-launch rocket systems throughout the six-week hostilities. Visiting Israel in March 2023, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov thanked the Israeli government for that support.
The Israeli daily Haaretz reported last year that Azerbaijani cargo planes landed at the Ovda air base for at least 92 times from 2016-2023. According to the paper, the frequency of such flights spiked in the run-up to Azerbaijan’s September 2023 military offensive that restored its full control over Karabakh.
