It is too early to make final judgments on yesterday’s Putin-Pashinyan-Aliyev meeting. As always, the results are clear in future developments, although in this case there is clearly no reason for optimism. The adopted tripartite statement, in fact, consists of two points. 1) The parties will lead the process towards the demarcation and later the establishment of an Armenian-Azerbaijani commission on demarcation with the “consultative assistance” of Russia. But it is not clear why they should be created in the conditions when, as the Prime Minister of Armenia himself says, Azerbaijan has invaded the sovereign territory of Armenia. Isn’t it logical that the Azerbaijani army should withdraw from that area before that process begins? 2) The tripartite commission on unblocking has worked well, it is desirable to start the implementation of specific projects. It is not clear what projects are in question, and there is always doubt that they are Turkish-Azerbaijani projects.
Now about what is not in that statement. There is nothing that Pashinyan was talking about during that meeting, at least in front of the cameras: 1) Nothing is said about the prisoners of war, 2) nothing is said about the fact that the Artsakh issue must be resolved within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group. Since the statement was signed by three people, it must be assumed that, with the exception of Pashinyan, the other two, to put it mildly, were not interested in having such points. In his closing remarks, Putin spoke of “humanitarian issues” and made progress, adding that the principles of demarcation and delimitation would be agreed upon by the end of the year and that the deputy prime ministers would meet in Moscow in a week to make a statement.
Why does Putin need that meeting? It seems to me that his main goal was to once again emphasize who owns this region. The trilateral meeting in Sochi is conditioned by the fact that the parties had earlier announced that they would meet in Brussels. Russia can not allow any initiative aimed at normalizing relations between the two countries to be “beyond itself,” no matter how much Putin claims that he “welcomes” the Brussels meeting. It is known that the Kremlin’s attitude towards the EU Eastern Partnership programs in particular is very negative. So, now we can say that “Sochi” has neutralized and made “Brussels” meaningless.
Armenia has not gained anything from this meeting. Moreover, Aliyev hinted that he would be smart in Artsakh because there are Russian peacekeepers there, and he will do whatever he wants on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, because there are no Russian peacekeepers there. Armenia has no way to gain anything because the negotiations are led by the defeated prime minister.
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Aram Abrahamyan
