“Aliyev was unsuccessful at getting the OSCE and the U.S. to agree to excluding the leaders of Karabagh from the negotiating table. Prompted by Erdogan, seemingly to take away attention from the yearly Armenian Genocide commemorations on April 24 just around the corner, Aliyev took the bait. This is a complete rebuke to the Vice President and Secretary of State of the U.S. by Azerbaijan. It’s time Obama used the G word this month to show Erdogan who’s boss,” he wrote.
“First, as just noted, renewed armed conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia causes a new headache for Turkish President Erdogan, which Putin has been keen to do since Turkey shot down a Russian military aircraft on November 24 that was violating Turkish airspace. Second, the violence erupted just one day after Presidents Aliyev and Sargsyan met separately with U.S. Vice President Biden in a meeting many observers hoped would reenergize the Minsk Group. Instead, the worst clashes since the war in the early 1990’s occur simultaneously with this promising meeting in the White House on the margins of a larger gathering hosted by President Obama, whose invitation Russian President Putin refused to accept. “
“Turkey also tries to divert the international community, as it yet has problems linked to Syria, the USA and Kurds. This has even been touched upon in Russian press, that Turkey’s special services, through their agents of influence in Azerbaijan, have set an issue of initiating provocations and diverting from them.”
“I don’t think Azerbaijan is ready to withdraw its aggressive behavior, which is apparent in the recent period. However, there is no background for it. Likewise behavior of Azerbaijan pursues a strategic purpose. It tries to change the status quo condition, which throughout years is existent around Karabakh issue settlement, i.e. this is not only simple aggressive policy, pursuing some domestic policy goal, but has strategic purposes within Azerbaijan as well,”
“Russia is ready to implement its allied liabilities before Armenia, what it currently does, and if Azerbaijan reduces purchase of military equipment against this background, then for us the issue of restoring balance in NKR conflict becomes much easier. As a military expert, I highlight military balance especially in case of equipment like TOS-1 “Solntsepyok” and “Uragan” complexes. These are complexes, in which balance is needed,” Yevseev mentioned.
The Syrian army captured a terrorist of the notorious Turkish nationalist organization, the Grey Wolves, who had played a role in the killing of one of the pilots of Russia’s Su-24 bomber which was downed by Turkey’s Air Force on November 24, 2015.
Membership of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) in itself is not an obstacle for Armenia’s cooperation with the EU. Let me recall that the EU and Armenia have completed a scoping exercise prior to the launching of negotiations to see how far our cooperation can go in this new context.
Columnist Paul A.Goble, special adviser on Soviet nationality issues and Baltic affairs to Secretary of State, editor of numerous volumes on ethnic issues in the former Soviet Union, currently Professor at the Institute of World Politics, is the interviewee of 168.am. -Mr Goble, recently head of the Director of National Intelligence of the USA stated on possibility of […]
