“Stepanakert’s airport will be put into operation, it is a different matter when. I don’t doubt it a bit,” military expert Davit Jamalyan said in response to a question of www.aravot.am that one could understand when the Azerbaijani side speculates about the issue of operating Artsakh’s airport, but what the statement of Vladimir Dorokhin, the Russian Ambassador to Azerbaijan, that the plans to open the airport “can cause serious tensions in the region” meant.
Mr. Jamalyan called the ambassador’s statement “pro-Azerbaijani” and went into detail, “Russia is Armenia’s ally, but along with that, the Russian Federation is not interested in losing Azerbaijan as a partner. Certainly, the level of relations with Azerbaijan is
substantially different, but the Russian Federation tries to keep Azerbaijan in its zone of influence as much as possible. I consider the ambassador’s statement as an attempt to make a difficult maneuver, an ultimate goal of maintaining the level of relations with both parties to the conflict as allies, which perhaps wasn’t that successful. However, I wouldn’t be inclined to consider the statement of the Russian Ambassador to Azerbaijan as the official position of the Russian side. It is perhaps a gesture to the Azerbaijani government, however, not the Russian Ambassador to Azerbaijan, but his superiors decide the policy of the Russian Federation. The Russian side maybe makes a pro-Azerbaijani statement in Azerbaijan, which I don’t think will cause a change in the prospect of exploiting the airport.”
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