Fight for the region intensifies
If the West accepted Moscow’s offer, the NK conflict would have been settled long ago, Sergei Lavrov mentioned during the meeting with students of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. Lavrov first noted that Russia is a responsible country, which is strictly committed to the declarations adopted in the last 20 years in the OSCE and the RF-NATO Council. These declarations contain the desire of the parties to form an equal security space in the Euro-Atlantic and Eurasia, as well as assuring that none of us wants to strengthen their security at the expense of others’ security violation” he mentioned. Lavrov expressed regret that the declarations “remained on paper”.
All our attempts to make them lawfully binding have been denied by our western partners. I am sure that if equal and indivisible security truly accepted a legally binding form, many conflicts in Europe would have long been resolved”, said Lavrov. In his opinion, this also applies to the conflicts of Nagorno Karabakh and Transnistria. “And the Ukrainian crisis would not happen at all”.
Then another remarkable statement was made by the RF President. If the US supplies weapons to Ukraine, Russians controlling Donbass can turn their weapons into other zones”, said Vladimir Putin at a press conference in China. “It’s the sovereign decision of the US whom to sell arms or provide free supplies… We cannot influence this process in any way”, said Putin. According to him, “there are international rules and approaches: supplying weapons to the conflict zone does not speak in favour of reconciliation, but only aggravates the situation”.
Putin had the same position in case of Georgia. In 2008, he, as the then prime minister of Russia, was openly complaining that Ukraine supplied weapons to Georgia. Putin called Ukraine’s actions a crime in the conflict with Georgia, underlining that the person who decided to supply Tbilisi with arms was a criminal: “The supply of armament can still be understood: it is a commercial matter. However, when people and combat units are used for the murder of soldiers in the conflict zone, in this case, the murder of Russian soldiers, it is a signal for us”.
The fact that it’s specific to states to be guided by double standards in this or that issue, is not new to anyone. Simply, the effective co-operation of the mediators in the Karabakh conflict settlement process, the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group Russia and the United States, even amid geopolitical disagreements, as an example of successful cooperation has always been pointed out for others. The crisis in Russia-US relations, apparently, will have a more pronounced effect on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Moscow will become more and more demanding on the way of fully establishing its influence in the region.
“If the West accepted Moscow’s proposal”, the conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh and Transnistria would be resolved – by such estimations Moscow again reminds who controls in the post-Soviet area. On the one hand, it notes that the West has become much stronger in the post-Soviet states, on the other hand it is almost a threat that conflicts should be settled by a decisive word of Russia.
What did Moscow ascertain 20 days after the April war? On the eve of her visit to Yerevan the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova said that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov would propose versions of the NKR conflict settlement during his visit to Yerevan on April 21-22: “Sergei Lavrov never visits empty-handed”, noted Maria Zakharova commenting on the information that Lavrov was leaving for Yerevan with the Karabakh conflict settlement project. She had added that it was wrong to call it a program, a document or a proposal. “Most likely it is about certain developments, discussion of different ideas concerning the settlement of the conflict”.
After the April war, the talks that the Russian Federation has submitted a revised or amended version of the Kazan document, which is supposed to yield some territories, perhaps deploy Russian peacekeepers, intensified. No matter how official Yerevan denied the existence of the “Lavrov Plan” and even Lavrov himself announced in March this year that there is no “Lavrov plan”, and the ideas under discussion are based on the proposals developed by the co-chair countries, no one will deny that Moscow has its own approaches, interests and position, and is guided by them.
Emma GABRIELYAN
