The meeting in St. Petersburg has returned the Karabakh conflict to the situation of 2008, Stepan Safaryan, Head of the Armenian Institute of International and Security Affairs (AIISA), said at a press conference in Yerevan on June 22.
He said that the April war opened new realities in the Karabakh peace process and dictated a new course of the peace process with introduction of investigative mechanisms on the line of contact of the Artsakh and Azerbaijani armed forces. However, given that Russia is not interested in introduction of investigative mechanisms, because it levels the arms deals, the expert thinks the conflict will enter a new stage of "freezing".
"However, such developments are not favorable to France or the United States as the co-chair countries of the OSCE Minsk Group. Probably, Russia will take advantage of the pre-electoral situation in the United States and will let Azerbaijan start hostilities to demonstrate its domineering position in the OSCE MG and to keep its promises given to Baku," the expert said.
At the same time, he noted that Moscow is not going to give Artsakh to Azerbaijan. "It is obvious that Russia has promised to give the so-called adjacent territories to Baku, but Artsakh itself will remain without a status and peacekeeping forces will be deployed there, according to the Russian plan," he stressed.
Safaryan thinks that as long as Russia plays the domineering role among the co-chair countries of the OSCE Minsk Group, Artsakh's participation in the peace talks is ruled out, "because the Russian- Azerbaijani cooperation implies no such a thing". The expert added that the Armenian authorities should display a tough stance and should insist on Artsakh's involvement in the talks. "France and the US are interested in it, and the French and US co-chairs have repeatedly hinted at it in their statements," he said.