When assessing the current state in Russian-Armenian relations, we must consider the different visions of Yerevan and Moscow
The specifics of Armenian national policy
The fundamental basis of Armenia’s foreign policy, both under the leadership of Kocharyan-Sargsyan and in the Pashinyan ...
Russia can rest assured that all formal and informal agreements with Azerbaijan
will be honored
An epilogue for Karabakh
On September 20, 2023, a historic event took place. Its scale and impact on the future of South Caucasus and Russia’s policy ...
... Azerbaijanians were developing through a struggle over this tiny piece of land. But, at different times, conflicts between the two peoples or ethnicities would flare up in Baku, Zangezur, Nakhichevan, and even in the territory of modern Georgia, i.e., outside Nagorno-Karabakh. This was the case in the Russian Empire, in the late Soviet times, and after the collapse of the USSR [
2
]. Just to remind: the trigger for the second Karabakh war
was
the clashes in July 2020 on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border about 200 km off the hotbed of the conflict in ...
... Caspian” has been further emboldened by
unconditional support from Ankara
in its consistent efforts to undermine Moscow’s strategic interests in the Caucasus.
From Provocation to Blockade
Sergey Markedonov:
Turkey in the Black Sea Region: Risks for Russia?
Tensions over Nagorno-Karabakh have been exacerbated by the greatly diminished territorial size of the region as a result of the 2020 Karabakh War and its subsequent November 2020 statement. The Pashinyan government’s cession of the strategic districts of Kelbajar ...
... strategic ally in the region (Armenia) and thus Moscow’s regional standing generally. Overall, a combination of NATO military tactics,
Turkish Bayraktars
, and Armenian incompetence proved to be fatally decisive factors in Karabakh.
Nevertheless, Russia was able to prevent the full takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijan through the
10 November 2020 trilateral statement
, which saw the deployment of its peacekeepers in what remained of the Armenian Karabakh. However, this outcome has been tenuously unstable. The Russian peacekeepers face ...
Exploiting the region’s own potential could yield more tentative results
The recent arrival of Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh has underlined the difficulties for a number of international institutions–the United Nations (UN), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the European Union (EU) and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU)–to ...
... Karabakh and, at the end of the 1820s, Yerevan, Etchmiadzin, Nakhichevan, and the Talysh region. To the north, in a long-running campaign that lasted throughout the 19th century, Russia absorbed the North Caucasus.
The Path Forward
Michael Lambert:
Russia and the Judgment of Solomon in Nagorno-Karabakh
Like Kartli-Kakheti over 200 years ago, Karabakh provides Russia with a platform to solidify its position as the ultimate power broker in the Caucasus. It also presents Moscow with both new opportunities and dilemmas. Now that it has ...
... the enclave of the Azerbaijani Nakhchivan region through the territory of Armenia. Nonetheless, this part of the agreement, in particular, remains incomplete, with the continued closure of the land borders between Armenia and Turkey.
Michael Lambert:
Russia and the Judgment of Solomon in Nagorno-Karabakh
Nikol Pashinyan, Prime Minister of Armenia, believes that abolishing the ban on transport links will completely change the logic of development in the region. In an interview with the Russian TASS agency, he said, commenting on the tripartite ...
... neighborhood. Some of Moscow’s new rules include:
Russia first: Russia’s principal interest in the world is Russia itself. As Putin mentioned in connection with a different subject: we are not interested in a world without Russia. Faced with the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, Russia preferred to maintain stability at home, given the existence of large Armenian and Azeri diasporas in Russia (2 million strong each); to keep an important
relationship with Azerbaijan
intact; and to avoid a collision with regional power Turkey....
... the attack of its Mi-24 helicopter over Armenia, thus putting an end to more than six weeks of intense fighting and several decades of skirmishes between the pro-Armenian separatists of Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan.
Michael Lambert:
Who’s Who in Nagorno-Karabakh
Russia's choice is resembling that of the Judgment of Solomon in which King Solomon of Israel ruled between two women both claiming to be the mother of a child. Solomon revealed their true feelings and relationship to the child by suggesting the baby ...