Negotiations involving West have poor results, says political scientist

Vladimir Shapovalov, Associate Professor of the Department of Comparative Political Science at Moscow State Institute of International Relations, commented to Alpha News on the prospect of negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Washington.

“We need to emphasize that not everything is so simple here, since we know that the Azerbaijani side does not support the idea of actively including the West, that is, the United States, the European Union, France, and other countries, in the negotiation process, since Azerbaijan does not see objectivity and impartiality in the position of Western countries. We have already seen more than once a situation in which negotiations with the participation of the West were announced, but the result was not satisfactory. That is, either these negotiations fail or they do not achieve any result. So, in this case, I would not dare to assume that the issue of the Washington negotiations has been finally resolved,” the expert said.

According to Shapovalov, the actions of the West are counterproductive and have nothing to do with the real peace process.

“The West pursues two goals in the South Caucasus region. The first is the consolidation of their positions, expansion, and subordination of a given territory to Western influence. The collective West is actively working in this direction. It is enough to recall a series of visits to Yerevan and negotiations between representatives of the West and the Armenian side. The second goal is anti-Russian actions in this very important region of the world.

At the same time, I would like to emphasize that the actions of the West are absolutely counterproductive and have nothing to do with the real peace process. Of course, priority should be given to the countries of the region and the three states that are historically and geographically connected with the Caucasus: Russia, Turkiye and Iran. It is these countries that are most directly related to ensuring the security of the Caucasus. We see that at present it is not the West but Russia that is the main guarantor of the security of the South Caucasus,” Shapovalov concluded.