Political Analyst: Azerbaijan escalates situation and waits for Russia's reaction (video)
Since 2012, Azerbaijan has been pursuing a policy of pre-conditions, political analyst Stepan Grigoryan said on Monday speaking about the latest tensions on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. He says Azerbaijan is not ready for consensus. Mr Grigoryan calls attention to three factors to explain Azerbaijan’s current behaviour. “In the past Azerbaijan relied on Turkey and believed that the latter will help them resolve the Karabakh conflict. It was a naive approach, but Azerbaijan truly believed that Turkey with its sound policy, powerful army was able to delude Russia and could support it [Azerbaijan] in the Karabakh process. At present, the Azerbaijani leadership is in a desperate state. The next factor is the situation with democracy in Azerbaijan." The European Parliament adopted this month a resolution calling on targeted sanctions against Azerbaijani authorities, demanding an immediate end to the crackdown on civil society, human rights activists and release of political prisoners. Russia is another faction, says the political analyst. “Azerbaijan may be waiting for Russia to give its consent to start a war [with Armenia] but I do not think that Russia wants that war. Russia is now busy with Syria and Ukraine and it may not be so much concerned over the destabilization in the Karabakh conflict zone. Russia can only benefit from the destabilized situation,” Mr Grigoryan said. The political analyst says Azerbaijan clearly understood that it can only rely on Russia as its savoir as the OSCE Minsk Group will not support it. “Azerbaijan escalates the situation and waits for Russia’s reaction to resume hostilities. Eventually, it is not Azerbaijan that decides. If Russia's interests coincide with those of Azerbaijan, they will send a message to Aliyev to start a war. But I think this cannot happen as Russia has serious conflicts with Syria and Ukraine which are destabilizing centers and Russia has its interests there. Besides, let us not forget that Russia is a country where all decisions are made by one person: everything can change.”
