“The fact that the meeting took place is a positive fact and suggests that there is a willingness to talk. Dialogue reduces the grounds for escalation. On the other hand, I think that the meeting is a disappointment for the Armenian side because for a long time they were talking in Yerevan that they expect concrete results,” referring to the results of the Nikol Pashinyan-Ilham Aliyev meeting held with the mediation of the chairman of the European Council, Charles Michel, on August 31 in Brussels, Olesya Vardanyan, an expert on South Caucasus issues of the International Crisis Group, expressed this opinion during a virtual meeting with journalists at the Article 3 press club.
According to her, since the Armenian side announced after the meeting that an agreement was reached to continue substantive negotiations at the level of foreign ministers on the drafting of a peace treaty, this is a message: as long as there is no agreement on the peace process, concrete steps are not possible in the rest of the issues. Referring to the possible aggravation of the situation, the expert noted, “At the moment, any war in the South Caucasus will not be beneficial to Russia. It is mostly focused on Ukraine, and the headache is big. No war would be beneficial. It doesn’t matter if it’s in Georgia or Artsakh, so Russia doesn’t need discussions about opening a “second front.” No one is going to replace the Russian peacekeepers.”
Luiza Sukiasyan
