On March 10, the next day after the talks between Sargsyan and Putin, Russian President’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov presented an explanation to the TASS referring the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, saying, “The solution to Karabakh conflict can only be found by its sides, and not by international mediators. However, Russia works consistently in international formats to facilitate such a solution. Indeed, Being a responsible participant to an ongoing international format, Russia continues to work consistently to resolve the Karabakh conflict. But the final solution, final initiatives should be brought forward only by the parties themselves. Neither international mediators nor Russia can resolve the conflict on behalf of Armenia and Azerbaijan.”
RF presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov
Referring to the abovementioned interpretations by the Kremlin spokesperson, Senior Analyst of the Center for Regional Studies, RA President’s Special Envoy (1992-1995), Head of Armenia’s National Security Service, David Shahnazaryan, in an interview to Aravot.am, said, “It is said that the settlement is in the hands of the parties rather than the mediator’s. Usually, such statements are made by the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmanship in the period when there was an emphasized passivity in the process the negotiation and the latter were almost is a deadlock. While, now, the OSCE Minsk Group has a specific plan, therefore, the Kremlin’s statement once again shows that it is against the measurements proposed by the mediators – to exercise the idea of using investigations mechanism against the cease-fire violations into life. Peskov’s next observation is more than strange when he mentioned about “the existing international formats” for the settlement of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The whole statement does not mention about the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmanship. What are we talking about the “international format” when the US, NATO, Germany also as an OSCE chairing country, countered Baku’s officially consistent efforts on changing the format of the OSCE Minsk Group, also recently High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission, Federica Mogherini, clearly emphasized that the only platform for the settlement of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmanship, which all of them fully support and in fact, no other international body for the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict exists. Peskov’s statement affirms that Russia supports the efforts of Azerbaijan aimed at dismantling the OSCE MG Co-chairs format or, at least, expanding it.”
According to David Shahnazaryan, the next remarkable moment in the RF Presidential Spokesperson’s statement is that he states that Russia is consistently working to support such a settlement in international formats. “It is obvious that now it is not realistic to speak about the original settlement. The key problem for the geopolitical and regional developments that is now laid before them by the OSCE Minsk Group and, in particular, the United States, is the control of the conflict not to allow a new tension. In other words, with this statement, RF pursues a goal to record that it is going to continue its politics which it has already adopted before that, in other words, constantly trying to resist the currently implemented efforts by the OSCE Minsk co-chairs. Such a politics led by Russia directly stems from the Azerbaijani interests,” notes Shahnazaryan.
David Shahnazaryan thinks that the “full stop” in RF Presidential Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov’s statement is the following wording, “final solution, final initiatives should be brought forward only by the parties themselves.” “This is just a statement that Russia is against the US efforts for exercising investigations mechanism in the contact line, the implementation of which stems from Armenia’s interests. Hence, we can conclude the following: certain pressures are applied against Azerbaijan for Baku to agree to the steps taken by the United States aimed at the efficiency of maintaining ceasefire regime. Under these conditions when Russia in its turn is also under heavy international pressure, Moscow is trying to take over the role of a ring buoy for Azerbaijan. Russia’s current posture, I think, is aimed at the US, the upcoming visit of Serzh Sargsyan and Ilham Aliyev, who will attend the fourth summit on nuclear security issues, in the framework of which, according to some reports, the US is seeking to organize a Sargsyan-Aliyev meeting,” said our interlocutor.
Read also
EMMA GABRIELYAN
