West demands Armenia not bring negotiations back to Russian platform – Karen Igityan

 
Regional issues expert Karen Igityan believes that Russia seeks to bring the Armenian-Azerbaijani talks back to the Russian platform to avoid losing its influence in the region.

“Russia sees that it is being pushed out of the region and is trying to somehow stay until the Ukrainian issues are resolved and it can return in a more serious form. How can this be done? Today, Azerbaijan is a much stronger country than Armenia, it even managed to drive Russian troops out of Artakh. However, Russia wants to stay in the South Caucasus, and Armenia is very suitable for this, even though Pashinyan’s government is participating in the withdrawal of Russian troops from Armenia.

At the same time, Azerbaijan tells the Russians that it is not against Russian control over communications, as envisaged in the November 9 declaration. Azerbaijan is playing a smart game; first, it went to the West, fulfilled its demands, and now it asks Russians what they want. Azerbaijanis compare their interests with the interests of other countries to have an ally at the moment and get what they want.

This happened in the Artsakh issue as well, when Pashinyan recognized Artsakh as part of Azerbaijan on the Western platform. The issue of the ‘Zangezur corridor’ can also be agreed upon with Russia; although it does not need this corridor, Russia needs some place for its troops,” says Karen Igityan.

Karen Igityan finds it difficult to say whether it is possible to resume Armenian-Azerbaijani talks on the Russian platform, stressing that this depends on the Armenian side.

“Today, Russia has no political or military leverage in the South Caucasus, but economically, it does have it, and it periodically demonstrates it. Since Russia’s influence has weakened, Armenia is trying to resolve all issues as the West dictates. That is, Armenia does not want to bring negotiations back to the Russian platform, because that is what the West says,” Karen Igityan notes.

Earlier, during the state visit to Baku on August 18–19, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Moscow is ready to participate in the normalization of relations between the two countries.

Aliyev did not react to this statement, but later, in an interview with the Russian Izvestia, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov said that the Russian platform is acceptable for Baku, while Yerevan, according to him, recently expressed its disagreement with this platform.