On April 18, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that the flag of Azerbaijan was “flying” in Nagorno-Karabakh and urged Armenian authorities to officially recognize the region as part of the country.
Armenia, who said, “Karabakh is Armenia, this is all”, Aliyev said, should repeat our words today: “Karabakh is Azerbaijan, this is all.”
And it offered the Armenians living in the region the option of obtaining an Azerbaijani passport or leaving their home.
These statements seem to be a logical continuation of Baku’s line that has remained unchanged since its victory in the Second Karabakh War in 2020. Then the country received the support of the regional leader Turkey. and victory brought Bayraktar TB2 is not drones, it is the behavior line of the country’s top military-political leadership. It was built long before the start of the conflict.
Things are not going well for Yerevan at the moment. A country with limited financial resources cannot create a functionally complete modern army – Baku has such an opportunity, given its political proximity to Ankara. As for the military formations of Nagorno-Karabakh, despite all their desires, they will never go beyond the line of semi-partisan detachments.
Among other things, Armenia today is in a kind of geopolitical mousetrap. The republic has almost no means of communication with the outside world, regardless of the will of neighboring countries, both land (mainly railways) and air, not to mention the sea. Armenia’s population (which is already too small for an independent state) tends to decline further. The country’s economy is also not showing impressive growth rates.
As for Azerbaijan, its military-economic potential significantly exceeds that of the corresponding Armenia, and this gap continues to grow rapidly.
And the military strength of the Azerbaijan Armed Forces in the near future just get stronger. This will be facilitated both by the possibilities of the country’s own economic complex and by the ultimately established military-political alliance with Turkey.
The extremely advantageous geographical location of Azerbaijan will greatly facilitate the processes of strengthening Baku’s position. In the figurative expression of the American political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski, Azerbaijan can be called a vital “cork” that controls access to the “bottle” with the wealth of the Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia. Gas and oil pipelines run through the territory of Azerbaijan, which then extends to ethnically related Turkey.
Military-technical cooperation between Baku and Ankara will progress in an especially increasing trajectory. And if the air force and army aviation did not actually take part in the armed conflict of the Second Karabakh War, then there is every reason to believe that Baku today will have such opportunities in the very near future.
As for Armenia, it seems not worth counting on someone’s disinterested aid to Yerevan.
The West is far from Armenia and currently generating nothing but concern, especially since a significant part of the collective West’s economic and purely military efforts is now focused on providing military assistance to Ukraine.
However, Russia’s full and complete involvement in this story on the Yerevan side is completely out of hand. Firstly, Moscow is completely engaged in a special military operation in Ukraine, and it is completely unrealistic for the Kremlin to open a second front now. In addition, the Russian leadership has repeatedly stated that both Armenia and Azerbaijan are partners to it at the same time. Among other things, at the present stage Moscow is not strong enough economically, financially or even militarily to re-establish unconditional dominance in this region. Domestic strategists and analysts should also take this fact into account.
The Azerbaijani army enjoyed the victory during the Second Karabakh War. The importance of this fact cannot be overestimated. Now Baku categorically does not intend to discuss the status of Nagorno-Karabakh. In addition, Ilham Aliyev stated that “status issue should be removed from the agenda in general”.
At the beginning of 2021, Aliyev addressed the Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan about a tripartite statement on Nagorno-Karabakh: “Well, Pashinyan? Where is your status? There is not a word in this article about the status of Nagorno-Karabakh. Your situation went to hell, it was shattered. There is no status, and there won’t be as long as I’m president. This is part of Azerbaijan!”
While evaluating the current situation in the region, the following words of Ilham Aliyev should be kept in mind. In fact, it was not the president’s statement made in February 2021, but the action program of the Azerbaijani political leadership for the near future that we are observing today.
We must not forget that Nagorno-Karabakh is legally part of Azerbaijan and the borders of the state are recognized and not discussed by the international community. In any scenario for the development of the military-strategic situation, hypothetical military operations will be conducted on the territory of Azerbaijan and will fight for the territorial integrity of the Baku country. It should be noted that this is an absolutely untouchable position in terms of legal and international legal norms.
So far, two thousand Russian peacekeepers stand in the way of worsening the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh once again. The duration of Moscow’s peacekeeping unit in the conflict zone is five years, with the possibility of automatically extending it for the next five years if there is no objection from any of the three parties (Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia).
How long this task will actually last after the last statements of Ilham Aliyev – no one can say today.
Finally, it cannot be overlooked that the Azerbaijani President’s program of action on Nagorno-Karabakh (and indeed his recent actions) may serve as an example for Moldovan President Maia Sandu to follow. restoring the territorial integrity of the country.
However, here a lot depends on the situation in the region of Russian special operations, and the steps of the military-political leadership of Moldova will probably largely depend on the results of the combat operations of the opposing sides at the front. . But the fact that the geostrategic situation for the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic has a clearly expressed trend of worsening and worsening is beyond doubt today. Aliyev’s example will clearly inspire both Sandu and the entire political class of Moldova.
The opinion of the author may not coincide with the opinion of the editors.