Putin ‘personally deals’ with Karabakh conflict - Russian analyst sketches roadmap in Moscow-Baku-Yerevan triangle

A Moscow-based political analyst specializing in Middle East and Caucasus affairs has shared his forecasts on the future peace prospects over Nagorno-Karabakh, focusing on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s personal contribution to the process.

Stanislav Tarasov, who is also an eastern news section editor at REGNUM, has published an extensive article on the agency’s website, addressing the Armenian and Azerbaijani top leaders’ first official meeting in Vienna (held on March 29 under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs) and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s subsequent telephone conversation with Putin (to share views on the outcomes).

“In the context of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the intensified telephone conversations within the Moscow-Baku-Yerevan triangle (after the Vienna meeting) are not perceived as a random occurrence. That conspicuously catches eye also because the Russian president, unlike the heads of the countries co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group, is exploring chances for the most active contribution to the peaceful settlement of the conflict. That leads us to the idea that the settlement process is, in a way, entering into a new round though no specific scenario is being sketched at the moment,” he says.

Tarasov further highlights Putin’s personal intervention that helped end the hostilities in April 2016. He also cites the verbal arrangements reached between Pashinyan and the Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev, in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, back in October.

“The mediator between Baku and Yerevan has, to all appearances, always existed and still exists. All the pointers go to the Russian president, though the riddles here are really numberless. There isn’t any desire to believe in the conspiracy theory, yet the question why Aliyev reached arrangements with Pashinyan from the very outset – and did so in the run-up to the snap National Assembly elections slated for December - still remains open,” the analyst says, noting that the meeting took place in a period when many Azerbaijani experts forecast the decline of the “Pashinyan regime” in Armenia.  

Tarasov also refers to US President Donald Trump’s congratulatory address, issued to the two countries' leaders on the occasion of their republics' 100th anniversary, highlighting the predicted opportunities for reaching a settlement ''in the nearest future''.

''Many were confident that Washington had decided to intensify its policies towards Karabakh, but Moscow started pushing itself to the forefront. Baku and Yerevan turn out to treat Moscow as the closest mediator, which has enough political will to change the status-quo and bring the peacekeeping initiatives to life,'' he says, admitting that Russia, which always had the necessary potential, might have stepped up its efforts only now against the backdrop of the developments in Ukraine.

According to Tarasov, Putin is silently pushing Pashinyan and Aliyev to a dialogue ''driven by a desire to record a serious progress'' in an attempt to reach mutual concessions.

''The specific format to achieve that – whether under the mediation of the Minsk Group or through a dialogue between Pashinyan and Aliyev (without the OSCE Minsk Group) – isn't fundamentally significant for now ... The developing impression though is that a 'road map' is currently coming into existence in the best interests of the two sides,'' he adds.