... blocking Azerbaijan’s maximalist aspirations.
Jens Stoltenberg’s visit to Baku, Yerevan and Tbilisi in March 2024 was quite revealing in this regard. Brussels believes now is the time for geopolitical homogenization of the region. The crisis in Russian-Armenian relations, Georgia’s desire to monetize its status as a NATO “aspirant” as soon as possible, the bolstered cooperation between Baku and Ankara (NATO’s second largest army) – all these factors work to promote the West’s agenda. However, the mosaic in the Caucasus is multicolored. And the Alliance ...
... also led to total abandonment of those ties that previously existed. The newly formed pro-Western elites were mainly focused on what they perceived as “historical goal” of the nation – to become member of the Western world, meaning integration to NATO and EU. Thus, Tbilisi experienced a move from the post-Soviet space to an area politically and economically dominated by the West; for example, USA, EU member states and Ukraine. The same changes took place at Georgian universities and academia. Armenia as a strategic ally of Russia as well as other states, for example, in the Central Asia simply fell out. This detachment from non-West-oriented states/regions grew over the years and caused a significant gap between Georgian elites and the rest ...
... Who Wins?
When future historians reflect on the events currently taking place, they will trace the origins of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine to several historical turning points. Undoubtedly, this will include, first and foremost, their
first sin: NATO expansion
. However, for an Armenian, the current global crisis did not begin on February 24, 2022, but on September 27, 2020, with the beginning of the second full-scale war over Nagorno-Karabakh. In its support for Azerbaijan, NATO member Turkey sought
to expand its geopolitical ...
A path forward would be to strengthen the strategic alliance between Russia and Armenia, with the aim of preventing Turkey, and by extension NATO, from establishing any domination in the post-Soviet Transcaucasia
This July will mark the 300th anniversary of
Peter the Great’s
Caspian campaign. The campaign proved costly for the Russian emperor in terms of lives and resources, and the ...
... News
Second, the news of Russia’s loss of influence in the post-Soviet space is very dated. The Baltic states have been in NATO for sixteen years; Ukraine has been pro-Western and anti-Russian since the Maidan revolution; so has Georgia, only for a ... ... Turkey; Uzbekistan is vociferously independent; and Turkmenistan is reclusive, shunning foreign connections. That leaves only Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan—five out of fourteen ex-republics—as Moscow’s formal allies and ...
... Abkhazia and South Ossetia is not confined to the rhetoric of public officials. What is far more critical is that Georgia is building up its military and political cooperation with NATO, the US and the EU, and even without Georgia’s official accession to NATO, this cooperation creates additional security risks in the region.
The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Karabakh has, for many years, been swinging like a pendulum. Armed incidents alternate with rounds of talks between just Erevan and Baku, or talks with the participation of international intermediaries. The result is the same: ...
... Nagorno-Karabakh region. Favourable gestures with preferential relations of Kazakhstan and Belarus towards Azerbaijan over Armenia within the EEU have also had broader repercussions for Armenia's foreign policy in the context of relations with the EU. This is why, Armenia also tries to foster its military ties by virtue of cooperation with NATO, while being a member of the CSTO. After the April escalation in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, the CSTO indeed proved to be a cosmetic image of Russia-Armenia defence and security relations.
EPA/DMITRY LOVETSKY/Vostock Photo
Murad Gassanly:
Azerbaijan ...
... legal successor to the USSR. Of the 15 former republics of the Soviet Union, four have no diplomatic relations with one another (Armenia and Azerbaijan, Russia and Georgia). Unregulated border disputes are the bane of practically all Central Asian states.... ... European Union (and individual European countries), the People’s Republic of China, Japan, Turkey, Iran, integration structures (NATO) and transnational corporations have indicated that they have interests in the former USSR. Their presence is prompted not ...
