This Time Again—Azerbaijani Army
Again—surprise by Russia. This time, not only for us, but for everybody. Putin commanded to withdraw air forces for Syria. Just about all day long mass media and politicians weren’t commenting this unexpected decision. Immense time was needed to find any explanation for it. They are quite different, and what is more important—rather contrastive. One speaks of the secret accord with the USA regarding Ukrainian issue. The other explains the occurred by Russia’s habit of taking imprudent steps and betraying its ally at the last moment.
It resembles remote Caribbean crisis, when Nikita Khruschev convinced Fidel Castro to permit deploying nuclear missiles in Cuba. Then, under impression of the USA, Khruschev withdrew the missiles ignoring accord with Castro. Allegedly, negotiations on settlement of Syrian conflict have been launched in Geneva. Russia again left its ally—Assad, alone against the opposition. The third group of analysts considers reason for withdrawing Russian air force only economic sanctions. They claim that Russia doesn’t possess financial means to conduct wide-scale military actions.
Upon softest calculations, one day of war costs Russia USD 2.5 million, and it couldn’t have lasted long against the background of fall in price for oil and Gas. However, apart from international issues, Russia found another way to “surprise” us. Russian “Military-Industrial Courier” in its weekly publication introduces Azerbaijani army and its weaponry. Author of the article was the very Alexander Khramchikhin. Note, in previous weeks armies of Turkey and Armenia have been introduced in separate articles. In the former publication our armed forces were described as the poorest equipped army in the Caucasus, however, the most efficient one. Assessment to Azerbaijani army may be noticed from the title: Army for One War.
Parallel to description of structure and equipment of Azerbaijani army, comparison of armament of our and neighboring countries is brought in a comparative figure. After introduction of Azerbaijani army structure, the author mentions that Azerbaijani navy is the weakest in the Caribbean Sea. Accordingly, supposition is made that the country is implementing military expenditures only for getting ready for Karabakh war. According to the author, in recent years Azerbaijan has purchased weaponry from the following countries: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Israel, Turkey and South African Republic. This is known to all field specialists.
Moreover, even non-specialists know that our main military-political ally Russia continues arming Azerbaijan, which has never been a member of Collective Security Treaty. Simply the image has changed now. It has been “unexpectedly” uncovered for Russia that it’s been selling weaponry to Turkey’s most loyal ally for years. Speaking of Armenia-Azerbaijan possible war resumption the author generalizes, “In this case Russia will appear in a subtle situation, it was the supplier of all types of attacking armament to Azerbaijan.
It’s difficult to presuppose that Moscow didn’t realize what purpose it served, and that it’s against our closest member country of CSTO. The situation is more than complicated, as strange games with Ankara (i.e. main ally of Baku) have predictably failed.” Then all possible variants of war are analyzed in the article, as a result of which, even a conclusion is drawn that, “Probably, Iran won’t be satisfied with “sympathizing” Russian-Armenian coalition and will participate in the war as an ally.” In short, regional Apocalypses has been analyzed and introduced.
However, it’s not clear why Russian politician so persistently analyzes armed forces of countries in the region and tries to analyze implications of his anticipated war. “There exists non-zero possibility that weaponry of domestic production (i.e. Russian) sold to Baku will be applied not only against our close ally, but against Russian army as well,” Khramchikhin concludes.
In his analysis the expert is sure that Armenian army, with its comparatively modest armament, is completely able to prevent possible attack, if Turkey isn’t engaged in it. In all analyses, in the end, a conclusion is drawn that implications of possible war will be disastrous for Azerbaijan. Concluding sentence of the article is the following, “Azerbaijan had better forget Karabakh, at least for ten years, and for more—forever.”
By Ara Galoyan
