Despite the Azerbaijani arms race, it has not resulted in a significant change of the military and technical balance in the Karabakh conflict zone, Armenian political expert, Sergey Minasyan, told Arminfo correspondent.
"This may be explained by an important peculiarity of the regional arms race in the Karabakh conflict zone, its parity supported by the fact that Armenia purchases chiefly counterweapon, or Russia delivers weapon to Armenia within the frames of the CSTO. For this reason, Azerbaijan takes part in the arms race using the profits from sale of the energy resources. With the USA's and EU's sanction, Armenia and Nagornyy Karabakh get the parity armament from Russia or within the CSTO. In other words, what Azerbaijan buys from Russia, Armenia often gets almost free of change", - he emphasized.
In such a way, the Armenian republics increase their military and technical potential of deterrence and preserving fragile truce in the Karabakh conflict zone, he said. At the same time, Moscow earning money from sale of weapon to Azerbaijan, the enemy of its only ally in the South Caucasus, Armenia, is forced to preserve balance of forces stemming from its own interests. Minasyan thinks that Russia does it, as it is not interested in the global prospect in resumption of the battle actions in Nagornyy Karabakh and its involvement in them. "Russia's participation will result in final breaking of relations with Azerbaijan. And if Russia does not fulfill its duties on showing military aid to Armenia within the frames of the bilateral agreement and the CSTO treaty, it will finally lose the reputation of a reliable partner, and will discredit further functioning of the CSTO", - he said.
"In the context of the above mentioned, Russia is simply doomed to promote keeping of status-quo through preserving of the military balance that hinders resumption of the battle actions between the parties to the Karabakh conflict. For its part, in this context, Azerbaijan is forced to develop arms race, at the same time paying for rearming of the Armenian army. Taking into consideration the fact that Azerbaijan pays billion of the oil dollars to the key weapon exporter Russia, in fact, it conducts an arms race not with Armenia, but Russia", - Minasyan concluded.