Russia remains in the South Caucasus (October 17, 2022)
On the sidelines of the CIS summit held in Astana, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev. One of the main topics of discussion was the issue of a global settlement of the smoldering Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. The President of the Russian Federation, Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan and the President of Azerbaijan occupy a special place in Russia.
A month earlier, full-scale hostilities broke out again between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Then, during the day, several hundred people died, the Armenian territory was shelled at the place of residence, several kilometers away. Both sides of the conflict traditionally blamed the other, but given the military superiority in the government army (and Turkey standing behind it) over the Armenian armed forces and general discontent, only Azerbaijan was interested in a new aggravation.
Azerbaijan inflicted a devastating defeat on the Armenian forces, but the pace of the transfer of its seizures was clearly not satisfactory. In addition, Baku was clearly not against the expansion of its country at the expense of other Armenian lands. Taking advantage of the fact that the borders between the countries were not demarcated, in the past two years there have been isolated cases of raids on Armenian border posts. In addition, Baku expected Yerevan to give up its legal claims to Karabakh. It has not yet been decided, from the point of view of public opinion, the land transport corridor in the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic, which was supposed to pass through the territory of Armenia. The strikes on Armenia were authorized to remember who won the war and who has the right to dictate the terms of the new world.
this conflict has put it in a difficult position: formally, Armenia is the closest military ally in the CSTO, on the territory of which the Russian military base is located. However, spoiling relations with Azerbaijan, and even more so with Turkey, is completely unprofitable for Russia. The best way out for Moscow was the establishment of a lasting peace in industry. But recently, the US and the EU have considered the minimum replacement for Russia as a mediator in the negotiations between Baku and Yerevan, and the maximum – in special cases, Armenia in their study. On October 4, Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan Ararat Mirzoyan and Jeyhun Bayramov proposed to hold telephone conversations with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, during which the parties discussed the development of a new settlement agreement between Yerevan and Baku. And on October 6, a quadripartite meeting was held in Prague with the participation of French President Emmanuel Macron, European Council President Charles Michel, Azerbaijani President Aliham and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, where the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict was discussed.
Then Macron, in an interview with France 2 TV channel, said that “Russia intervened in this conflict, she noticed Azerbaijan’s game with Turkish complicity and returned there to weaken Armenia.” During the meeting of the heads of state of the CIS countries, Putin considered it necessary to comment on Macron’s statements. “I think that these statements, they lack an understanding of the move itself and, apparently, there is no information about the parties, so they sounded hostile, I would even say perverted, and therefore unacceptable,” Putin said. The actions of the US President indicate that Moscow is not going to give up its place in the South Caucasus to anyone and intends to seize the initiative from the EU and the US.