Tom de Waal: “The Azerbaijani government is even more cynical than before”

South Caucasus expert  Thomas de Waal: a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment, Washington, comments on the latest incidents on the Armenian-Azerbaijani front-line.

“It seems to me that the upsurge of violence we have seen all summer on the Armenian-Azerbaijani front-line, and in some places which normally have not experienced ceasefire violations, is due to a few factors. One is the season: the summer is always the hottest time on the Line of Contact in all senses. A second is the fact that conflict in other regions such as Ukraine and Syria means that the parties believe there is a lower cost in escalating the situation—whoever starts the fighting will get less criticism for it. A third factor is that, although the Minsk Group co-chair format continues, the conflict between Moscow and Washington over Ukraine has cast a shadow over it.

The Azerbaijani government is even more cynical than before about the Minsk Group and the two sides are waiting till the end of the summer to decide on their next step in the negotiations and to see what the “landscape” of US-European-Russian relations looks like with latest developments in the Ukraine crisis.

However, this “wait and see attitude” means that I also do not expect to see an escalation of this low-level violence into full-scale war”, de Waal said in an interview with “168 Zham”.
The Azerbaijani side violated the ceasefire yet again on July 25 in the evening, firing several villages in Tavush region, including Movses, Aygepare, Nerqin Karmiraghbyure and Chinari. The Armenian side responded to the Azerbaijanis’ shots. The same situation was repeated in the evening of July 28.

By Aram Sargsyan