Mnatsakanyan-Mamedyarov meeting, apart from being remarkable for being the first, is also interesting in the light of another reality that can be described as “Baku fever”. The point is that Azerbaijan was in darkness a few days ago due to the Mingechaur Hydroelectric Power Plant failure. The capital city Baku and a number of other large settlements had lost electricity. Azerbaijan’s so-called power, which was demonstrated on June 26 at the military parade, exploded in a moment. Later there was an assassination attempt against the Mayor of Ganja. The fact that Aliyev took this case under his own control indicates the significance of what had happened in Baku. A few days later, it was officially announced through a joint statement by law enforcement bodies that the assassination attempt against the Mayor of Ganja was a wider coup attempt and an attempt to establish Islamic extremism in Azerbaijan.
It was obvious that Baku, noticing the immense advantage of Armenia’s new government in terms of international credit and political weight, essentially intensified its military rhetoric in the last two or three months, for receiving its “intensive negotiations” from Armenia. It is also obvious that Baku does not rush in making political contacts in that sense, demonstrating more and more aggressiveness in its military-muscle display, new missiles from Belarus, Israel, aggravation, intensive movements, “provocation” in Nakhichevan, at the same time intensively working to convince the Kremlin that anti-Russian power has been formed in Armenia, which should not be trusted.
However, Azerbaijan’s efforts did not yield results, Nikol Pashinyan succeeded in forming a minimal atmosphere of mutual trust during the two meetings with Putin and to proceed to the construction of new relations with the West, based on some very important grounds. At the same time, Pashinyan announced that Yerevan will not start a war, but Azerbaijan will receive a response if it starts a war. Moscow did not accept Baku’s blackmail either: the tension in the situation and the resumption of hostilities are not profitable for Russia for a number of reasons either.
Aram AMATUNI