Russia wants to resume its role as principal negotiator in Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, Russian political expert says

Political scientist Denis Denisov commented to Alpha News on Russia’s proposal to host negotiations between Baku and Yerevan.

“I think it is completely logical that Russia wants to resume its role as a principal negotiator in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. The fact is that over the past year we could observe a fairly large number of attempts from various entities that tried to take Russia’s place in the negotiation process and, in fact, to withdraw Russia from the negotiation process or at least become a key factor instead of Russia.

This applies to both the United States and the European Union. Yes, we could go on and on, but these are the main players. And Russia will now, of course, make efforts to get back its leading role in this process,” Denisov said.

At the same time, the expert believes that the Armenian authorities will not want this.

“For the Armenian authorities, this format can only be a forced move, especially since we have seen over the past few months that the Armenian authorities are demonstrating a rather sharp, tough, often not entirely thought-out position, which can be characterized as anti-Russian.

And thus, I think it is unlikely that there could be an attempt on the Armenian part to involve or return Russia to this negotiation process. That is, this can only be a forced move for the official Yerevan,” the political scientist said.

According to him, there is a significant distance in Russian-Armenian relations.

“I don’t want to blame or sharply criticize one of the parties, but we can state the fact that there is no political will for a constructive, normal, and honest dialogue between countries. And in this regard, the position of the Armenian authorities often looks somewhat comical when, fully understanding that Russia was and is one of the key partners in the world for them, they take steps that cause alienation. Moreover, those steps are demonstrative. This is a rather strange position, which is unlikely to lead to the restoration of this relationship,” Denisov concluded.