Azerbaijan and Armenia can provoke an escalation of the situation on the threshold of signing a peace treaty. Andrey Bystritskiy, Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club, said this in an interview with TASS.

"It is possible that now these countries are exchanging quite serious statements on the threshold of a peace treaty or some kind of agreement. At the same time, these statements are followed by statements about the principled readiness for the agreement. So, it is not always easy to distinguish political rhetoric from the real situation," he said.

Bystritskiy noted that even in previous years, when there was talk of signing a more or less fundamental agreement, the parties made provocative statements against each other in order to strengthen their negotiating positions.

"I would not speak so directly about the possibility of a new conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. There are always risks; we saw it in 2020. But at the same time, both sides understand that military actions are an extreme case," he said.

Earlier, American Foreign Policy experts expressed the opinion that a possible new war between Azerbaijan and Armenia will be short-lived, but no less dramatic than the 44-day war of 2020.