No, Russia and Azerbaijan are not included in the eligible area of the programme. In order to be eligible for a grant, Applicants and partners must comply with the eligibility rules presented under Section 2.1 from Guidelines for Grant Applicants, including the ones referring to the eligible area of the programme.
The first meeting of the Joint Programming Committee – body responsible for the preparation of the Interreg NEXT (Neighbourhood External) Black Sea Basin Programme 2021-2027 – was held on the 29th of January 2020 in Brussels, Belgium. The eligible participating countries of the new Programme involves ten states from the Black Sea Basin: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, Turkey and Ukraine.