Azerbaijan is actually discrediting the format of the OSCE Minsk Group.
Head of the Caucasus Department of the Institute of CIS Countries, Director of the Center for Public Policy Research and military expert Vladimir Yevseyev told the aforementioned to Armenian News – NEWS.am.
Referring to Friday's violation of ceasefire by the Azerbaijani armed forces at the contact line in the Karabakh conflict zone, he noted: ''The current actions of the Azerbaijani side are conditioned by the following circumstance: they think that the politics of biting territories, which they conducted last April, is a success. Regardless of how many people die, the most important thing to them is to return at least a small part of the territories. Very strong PR is carried out within the country in order to strengthen the personal power of Ilham Aliyev and his wife Mehriban.''
According to Yevseyev, the statements of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs are not of a great significance for Azerbaijan. ''If they had significance, Azerbaijan would have implemented the decisions adopted within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group, in particular, regarding the expansion of the observation mission in the conflict zone and development of an international incident investigation mechanism. Thus, I can suppose that this is most likely in no way related with the recent targeted statements of the co-chairs, being more conditioned by the inter-Azerbaijani reasons,'' he added.
Asked whether practical steps will be taken by the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairing states, the military expert stressed: ''I think the stance of the co-chairing states— first of all, Russia and US—on Azerbaijan will become harsh, since the latter fails to implement the decisions adopted at the level of the OSCE Minsk Group. This will force Moscow and Washington to strengthen the pressure on Baku in order to make it implement the previously adopted decisions.''
As reported earlier, three Armenian soldiers were killed as a result of the firing by the Azerbaijani armed forces on Friday. Defense Army servicemen Arayik Matinyan (born in 1997), Vigen Petrosyan (born in 1997) and Vardan Sargsyan (born in 1997) were fatally wounded.
On Saturday morning Karabakh army said Azerbaijan resorted to a new provocation as a result of which a 20-year-old soldier was killed in the morning. Two soldiers were wounded.
