Russia’s statement on that Kаrabakh conflict has no military solution strongly reminds demagogy, while the western politically correct bleating on the “necessity to restore confidence between the sides” is so foolish that it doesn’t even deserve to be commented on,” Deputy Director of Russia’s Institute of Political and Military Analysis, Alexander Khramchikhin writes.
“The mutual hatred between the Armenians and Azeris not only doesn’t reduce, but grows further, this being a very “national” hatred indeed. And it is quite impossible to understand how the compromise might look. Karabakh is not going to again become part of Azerbaijan, even as a maximally wide autonomy, which Azerbaijan is not at all going to provide it. Returning of the Armenian regions surrounding the Nаgornno-Karabakh Republic (NKR/Artsakh) - which is often considered as a possible transitional compromise - would instantly turn the current very firm and stable strategic position of Karabakh into a hopelessly catastrophic one, even if the Lachin corridor remains with the Armenian side. Therefore, the Armenian side can go for this only in case of an unambiguous legal recognition of the NKR independence, but Baku will not even consider such a possibility. The return of the Azerbaijani refugees to Karabakh and their residence there is only possible under the control of the Azerbaijani troops, which Stepanakert will apparently not agree to under any circumstances. Speaking about the solution of the Karabakh conflict in the framework of the “international law” was senseless even before, while the Kosovo principle actually eliminated this “right”.
Thus, the only way to the peaceful solution is the voluntary unconditional surrender of one of the sides. Currently, apparently neither the Armenians nor Azeris are going to surrender, and why should they? Everyone is happy with the present status quo but for Azerbaijan: the status-quo records its defeat. Since it is completely impossible to change the status quo by peaceful means – and nobody is going to do this – Baku wants to break it by military means, for which it buys enormous quantity of modern technology from Russia, Israel and Turkey.
The issue is when Azeris will decide that they have gained decisive advantage not only over the NKR, but also the entire armed force of NKR and Armenia, ensuring the breaking of the Armenian defense and full return of all their lost territories.
The April events showed that such a decisive advantage of Azerbaijan is still far away. Why did Baku decide to wage a war? The Azerbaijani leadership might simply have wrongly assessed the situation. Or it consciously carried out reconnaissance by a battle, without hoping to plant a flag above Stepanakert. Most probably, Baku was induced to war by its main strategic ally, Ankara. Erdoğan decided to answer Moscow symmetrically: it created very great problems in Syria, and decided to cause other problems in the Caucasus. And it should be said that it managed to do that in a lot if ways. And it couldn’t fail, since Moscow itself significantly placed itself under these problems. Russia didn’t suffer any military or economic loss from the April war, but the political loss is obvious,” the analyst writes.
