Sunday, April 3 2016 09:27

 The decision to launch a military provocation in the zone of Karabakh-Azerbaijani conflict was most likely agreed with Turkey, editor – in-chief of the journal “Problems of National Strategy” of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies Adjar Kurtov told “Izvestiya”. According to him, Azerbaijan's leadership has never denied that it can use armed forces for settling the conflict. Now Baku has decided that the time has come if not for a wide scale war than at least for a check of forces by a military provocation.   “Not so long ago Aliyev has visited Turkey. Azerbaijan copies its political ally's experience acting the same way as Turkey, which ignores international law, prior agreements and prior unions as well as violates other countries' sovereignty and territorial integrity. During the hot phase of Karabakh war in 1990ies Turkey was actively supporting Azerbaijan particularly, by strengthening its armed forces on the border with Armenia. Currently Turkish leadership's all the bellicosity testifies to the fact that the plans of military provocation were agreed between Baku and Ankara”, the expert thinks. 

According to him, in such situation Russia's stand remains unchanged: «We have bilateral relations with Armenia in military sector. There is a Russian military base on the territory of Armenia. Besides, Armenia and Russia have obligations within CSTO. In this case if Armenia is attacked all these mechanisms will work. The issue is other in case of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is an unrecognized state; Russia does not have any treaty obligations with it either in economy or in policy or military field. However, Russia is concerned over the fact that a war may launch close to its southern border. Besides, no one can guarantee that in case of large scale operations bombs will not fall on the territory of Armenia.  

“In other words if a wide scale war is unleashed with using all kinds of weapons Moscow will certainly find a juridical ground to consider it an attack on Armenia. And Baku realizes this, this is why I think that the current escalation of the situation in the conflict zone is most likely a provocation and not a large scale war”, the expert is assured, “Russia should influence all the sides of the conflict. Nagorno-Karabakh Republic should participate in negotiations for the conflict settlement as a full member. The Russian side should activate diplomatic efforts and more actively to attract UN, European institutions and CSTO structures”, Kurtov summarized.