Azerbaijan Raising Price for Russian Radar Station?

Russian and Azerbaijani officials are meeting soon to discuss terms of Russia's use of the Gabala radar station after the current contract expires next year. And Azerbaijan is signaling that it intends to up its demands from Moscow. News.az quotes an unnamed military source:

“Azerbaijan wants to prepare the new contract. Baku has got a number of proposals concerning it,” said the source and added that the proposals include increase of the lease payment, extra assistance of Russia for eliminating the ecological impacts of the radar, increase of the number of Azerbaijanis in the staff of the radar station, joint use of the radar, non-passage of information to the third state without the consent of Baku etc.

News.az also interviews a military analyst and former top air defense officer, Vladimir Timoshenko, who says that if Russia doesn't want it any longer (a possibility, since it has set up a newer radar in Armavir, in the North Caucasus), it will probably be dismantled:

[I]t is profitable to earn a lot of money for lease of the facility.... So we are interested in extending the contract. If, however, Russia says that the station is no longer needed, the radar will be dismantled for scrap, because we do not need it.

Timoshenko also raises the possibility (but then dismisses it) that even if Russia didn't need it, it might continue to lease it just so that the U.S. doesn't have the chance to use it:

Russia may extend it even to its own economic detriment so that Azerbaijan will not lend it to Americans later. But I am sure that if Russia refuses to extend the lease, no one will use this station any more because everything valuable there will be destroyed.

Either way, that would seem to preclude the possibility of joint U.S.-Russian cooperation over the use of the radar, which U.S. officials have lately been mooting.

Azerbaijan has two big advantages in negotiations like this: 1. oil and 2. its multi-vector foreign policy. Georgia and Armenia have thrown in their strategic lot almost entirely with the U.S. and Russia, respectively, which limits their bargaining power. Azerbaijan, however, is doing enough to keep both the U.S. and Russia feeling like they are getting good cooperation, but not the carte blanche that would allow them to be taken for granted. But we'll see what comes out of the negotiations.