Hostilities are unlikely to resume in Nagorno-Karabakh, Alexey Vlasov, Director of the Information-Analysis  Center for CIS, Moscow State University, told RFE/RL. According to him, Moscow, Washington and Brussels will do their best to prevent another war.

“The Russian-Georgian war in August 2008 showed that any conflict can be very short now. The prospective winner-country must have sufficient strength to complete military operations in a couple of days,” the expert said. Neither Armenia nor Azerbaijan is capable of doing it now.

The expert is sure that the “ball is in the mediator’s court in the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process now.”

“Yerevan has obviously taken a pause. Americans have informally walked out of the process, but seem to the trying to come back. Baku has lately been following a very hard line, which, however, does not fully show Azerbaijan’s readiness to go to the end in resolving the problem,” Vlasov said. Besides, both Stepanakert and the Armenian Diaspora influence the Armenian authorities.