Alexey Anpilogov: Azerbaijan feels it can get away with its actions

Russian political expert Alexey Anpilogov commented to Alpha News on the aggravation on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.

“Why is Azerbaijan now trying to get away from those negotiations that began after the end of the last Karabakh war, and is trying to solve it all by military means? We should understand that the Sotk deposit is quite interestingly located, i.e. about 30% of the deposit is located on the territory of Armenia and another 70% is on the territory of the Kelbajar region of Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani Armed Forces targeted the internationally recognized borders of Armenia, but in fact did not start delimiting the border according to Soviet cartography.

Azerbaijan is not interested in making a civilized division of this deposit and exploiting its own, more significant part of the the deposit. Apparently, the Azerbaijani leadership has taken a course to revise the internationally recognized borders of Armenia. For Azerbaijan, the possession of such a deposit is also of great interest,” the political expert said.

According to Anpilogov, the conflict has every chance to spread to Artsakh and other parts of the border with Armenia.

“In my opinion, Azerbaijan now feels it can get away with its actions in terms of bilateral relations and Baku has no brakes that could bring the situation around the Sotk deposit to some kind of civilized framework.

We see that Baku has taken a course towards a military resolution of the conflict, which indicates that we will most likely see a similar picture for Artsakh and other disputed territories of the Azerbaijani-Armenian border, since Baku is out of international external control now,” the expert said.