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The expert argues that Moscow encouraged its allies in Yerevan to belatedly resolve its regional disputes through the recent Kremlin-mediated negotiations with Baku over their border issue and that country’s appointment of an envoy for normalizing ties with Ankara. He continues by explaining what led to this peaceful development.
Axar.az reports that Moscow-based American political analyst Andrew Korybko published a piece on Wednesday titled “Russia Is Responsible For Armenia’s Rapprochements With Azerbaijan & Turkey”.
In his assessment, Azerbaijan’s victory in last year’s Patriotic War humbled Armenia’s leadership, which in turn enabled Russia to exert positive influence over it in order to finally stabilize the region. That country’s loss led to it having to reconsider its entire policy towards the region. President Aliyev’s subsequent proposal for a six-country regional integration platform promises to unlock the South Caucasus’ potential to become one of Eurasia’s most pivotal connectivity nodes, which aligns with Russia’s Greater Eurasian Partnership.
It was therefore only a matter of time before the Kremlin convinced Armenia of the need to facilitate these mutually beneficial and complementary visions. In other words, Azerbaijan set the geostrategic stage through its victory in last year’s war, after which Russia followed up diplomatically in order to encourage Armenia to finally explore peaceful resolutions to its disputes with Baku and Ankara. The end result is that observers have a reason to be cautiously optimistic about the region’s prospects even if it takes time for anything tangible to emerge from these impending talks.
What’s most important, according to Korybko, is that the peacemaking process finally started. This observation speaks to Armenia’s gradually changing regional strategic calculus whereby its leadership is finally realizing how counterproductive it is for that country to continue behaving as a regional spoiler. Its loss in last year’s war taught it an important lesson and inspired it to listen to Russia’s advice. Armenia had hitherto been the only obstacle to the South Caucasus becoming one of Eurasia’s most pivotal connectivity nodes, but that’s now changing due to Russia’s positive influence over its ally.
Date
2021.12.15 / 18:20
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Author
Axar.az
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