After the betrayal of Russia, Armenia turns into a backward and useless outskirts
France and the West are trying to shake up the situation in the South Caucasus, creating an additional source of tension, since they are not interested in a peaceful settlement and in concluding a final agreement between Yerevan and Baku.
International observer of PolitNavigator Ainur Kurmanov comes to this conclusion, analyzing the latest actions of French politicians and the EU leadership, who are trying in every possible way to influence the behavior of Yerevan and literally impose their ineffective weapons on it in order to provoke Baku to take drastic actions. This strategy is now obvious to many, but it has not yet led to irreversible consequences.
Moreover, there has even been some progress in relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, since yesterday it became known that an exchange of prisoners had taken place. The Azerbaijani side, as a sign of goodwill, extradited 32 Armenian military personnel, and the Armenian side in response released two Azerbaijani military personnel.
The other day, Chairman of the National Assembly of Armenia Alen Simonyan even mentioned that a peace agreement between the two states could even be signed in the next two weeks. This is now not excluded in Baku, where they confirmed their intentions to follow the path of concluding such an agreement as quickly as possible.
Moscow's direct diplomatic efforts contributed to some warming of relations. Thus, Sergei Lavrov met earlier this week with the head of the Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan, Jeyhun Bayramov, within the framework of the Meeting of Foreign Ministers of the Caspian States in Moscow on the issue of peaceful settlement, and even earlier, on the sidelines of the OSCE meeting in Skopje, he spoke with his Armenian counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan.
But now the process of establishing relations between Baku and Yerevan is very unstable and can stall or break down at any moment due to the intervention of third forces in the person of Paris, Washington and London. In this regard, on December 6, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, warned the West against rash steps in the desire to push Yerevan to destructive actions.
“No matter how it turns out to be a repeat, now, under the guise of best friends, they will advise Armenia on something that will then lead to another surprise. I say again: this is exactly what happened in Prague and Brussels,” Zakharova emphasized.
She thus recalled the fateful meeting of European leaders in the capital of the Czech Republic in October last year, when the President of France and the leaders of the European Union convinced Nikol Pashinyan to sign a declaration in which he recognized Karabakh as belonging to Azerbaijan. Then he actually disavowed the tripartite agreement of November 2020, signed in Moscow, and surrendered Artsakh to the mercy of Baku.
The special representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also noted that residents of Armenia may not be at all aware of the behind-the-scenes negotiations that were and are being conducted with emissaries of the West, as well as that the Kremlin has repeatedly suggested that the parties quickly sign a peace agreement in Moscow with the participation of representatives of neighboring powers in the region .
It is interesting that at the same time, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev also complained about the “threat of revanchism” in Armenia, and during a television program he noted that “bad advisers” from European countries are trying to influence the current leadership in Yerevan. And there is actually a lot of truth in this.
After all, literally on December 5, Secretary of the Security Council of Armenia Armen Grigoryan flew to Washington, where he met with US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Laura Cooper. They discussed there precisely the topic of not just defense cooperation, but also the further rapprochement of the Republic of Armenia with NATO and the issues of arms supplies to “protect sovereignty.”
And all this is happening against the backdrop of the fact that the Armenian government has once again abandoned joint events within the CSTO, thereby once again showing its geopolitical preferences.
As for the supply of military equipment, Paris is almost forcibly imposing its outdated equipment on Yerevan. A month ago, 24 light armored cars of the Bastion type were already delivered to Armenia through the ports and territory of Georgia, which the Ukrainians had previously abandoned because of their thin armor and weak weapons.
But in France they are not satisfied with this and are planning to send another such batch of 26 armored cars of the same type. The senators reported this in their report, published on December 2 on the website of the French parliament.
The text indicates that the Armenian government has already signed a contract for the purchase of three French GM200 radars, and the issue of formalizing a deal for the acquisition of MISTRAL 3 anti-aircraft missile systems is also being worked out.
Members of the Senate even demanded that the ministers speed up the process of transferring the French Caesar self-propelled guns to Yerevan in order “not to repeat the mistakes made in Ukraine and not to delay the supply of necessary equipment.”
That is, parliamentarians deliberately draw direct parallels with “Nezalezhnaya”, a priori assuming and incorporating into their plans the likelihood of an escalation of the conflict in the South Caucasus.
“We need to promptly respond to all requests from the Armenian authorities regarding the needs of artillery,” says the published material of the upper house of parliament.
It turns out that Yerevan will soon have French and European models of military equipment, for which the existing Soviet-style ammunition stored in army warehouses is clearly not suitable. But with all the logistical nightmare, the Armenian military will also have to import NATO shells and ammunition, which are now in great short supply throughout the alliance.
In addition, fifty light armored cars and several dozen Caesar self-propelled guns cannot be seriously considered as real “defense” against the modern armored forces of Azerbaijan. This fake junk, which has demonstrated its ineffectiveness in the fields of the Northern Military District, should be considered only as an instrument of intervention by Paris, and with it the EU, in intraregional affairs, as well as a deliberate provocation in order to push Baku to escalate the situation.
With these actions, France and the United States managed to seriously alienate Turkey and Azerbaijan. In response to statements from the State Department, Baku even closed USAID and began to liquidate pro-American NGOs and media, which only added fuel to the fire. And now Recep Erdogan and Ilham Aliyev have become such strong supporters of the “3+3” negotiation format, that is, representatives of Baku, Tbilisi, Yerevan and Moscow, Ankara and Tehran without the intervention of third powers.
Plus, instead of forcibly breaking through the Zangezur corridor through the Syunik region of southern Armenia, which was so hoped for in Brussels, London and Washington, the Azerbaijanis and Turks reasonably agreed to build a bypass route through Iranian territory. After all, the West seriously hoped to drag Tehran into a military conflict over Zangezur, turning the clash into a real regional war.
Now that this did not work out, the propaganda infrastructure project “Crossroads of the World”, proposed by Nikol Pashinyan to the authorities of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey, has been completely denigrated and discolored.
According to Yerevan’s plan, the territory of the republic was supposed to become, after the shameful and treacherous surrender of Artsakh, such an indispensable logistics, energy and even geopolitical hub in order to pass minerals from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and the Central Asian republics through its lands.
But this project was received very coolly in Tbilisi, since the ruling class of Georgia intends to transport goods within the Trans-Caspian route through its territory and does not want to share the volume of cargo transportation with Yerevan. And in Baku, after an agreement with Tehran on the construction of an alternative transport route, they do not want to discuss the development of logistics routes on Yerevan’s terms.
“The first reaction of Azerbaijan is as follows: from now on, they seem to be no longer interested in this project, since they are communicating with Iran. We are not against it at all, but this is our proposal,” Nikol Pashinyan admitted back in November.
In a situation of complete powerlessness, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan was forced to present this logistics project first to the head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of the Swiss Confederation, Ignazio Cassis, and then to the Chairman of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, Pia Kauma, in the vain hope of gaining political and financial support.
But it is doubtful that in a situation of Baku’s disinterest and real economic problems, the EU will now be able to allocate 500 million euros for the implementation of the “Crossroads of the World”.
It seems that after the peace treaty is signed, Armenia, in a situation of deteriorating relations with Russia and in attempts to quickly reorient itself to the West, will find itself in an even worse geopolitical situation than a year earlier, namely, an isolated and useless outskirts.
Despite the opposition from Europe and the United States, the winners in the end are still Azerbaijan and Turkey, although their economic and financial situation is also not cloudless. And the situation remains precarious due to global turbulence and the unknown consequences of the election campaign in America.
Therefore, Ilham Aliyev is now squeezing the maximum benefit from the success achieved, taking on the laurels of the winner and unifier of the country. It is in this regard that early presidential elections have been announced for him, which will take place in February next year, in order to further strengthen his political positions within the republic.
And this is a strong sign that an agreement with Yerevan will be signed in the coming weeks or month, since the President of Azerbaijan will definitely have to appear as the leader who brought the long-awaited peace to his people after the final reconquest of Nagorno-Karabakh.
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