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The MoA Week In Review – (Not Ukraine) OT 2023-224
Last week's post on Moon of Alabama:
Ivan Katchanovski @I_Katchanovski – 0:23 UTC · Sep 24, 2023
These are photos of SS Galicia Division veteran who was given standing ovation by Canadian parliament, prime-minister of Canada and president of Ukraine. He published these photos of himself in this division during training in Germany. He is standing in the middle in 1st photo, second on the left in 2nd photo & without helmet near machine gun in 3d photo.
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Other issues:
Wokism:
Apartheit:
China:
Use as open (not Ukraine related) thread …
@ Maracatu | Sep 24 2023 13:40 utc | 2
There are several relevant points about the Armenian situation. One is, what now becomes of the 120,000 Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh (Artsakh)? Some have speculated that they will stay under Azeri rule, but I doubt that. It is just like the flight of the French colons from Algeria in 1962; it was supposed many would stay, but almost none did, out of fear of reprisals. Never mind that the Armenians are an ancient, autochthonous population while the French were settler colonizers, because the fear of the losers leading to their flight is the same. Didn’t the news say that thousands had already gathered at Stepanakert airport to leave Karabakh? Didn’t the Armenian prime minister say to Armenia, “Prepare to receive 40,000 Armenian refugee families from Artsakh”? It looks like another total defeat for Armenia, with all the baggage that that brings.
Then there is the question you raise of Armenia’s potential realignment with the US. Armenia is enraged at Russia for not saving Armenian Karabakh, but it is also very displeased with the constant US and other western tilt in favor of Turkey and Azerbaijan, and of course no one but the Armenians has ever seriously taken up the cause of Artsakh, however much there might be hand-wringing over the fate of the Armenians there. Armenia’s desire to align with the West dates back to 1991 and before, even though the West has never brought it anything but grief and even though its only savior ever was the Soviet Union. Armenia’s pro-western desire comes from the huge Armenian diaspora there, and mainly from the expectation of economic betterment through membership in the capitalist world which was also the self-deception of all the other former communist countries, including Russia. Since Armenia was never able to get that alignment, its people still have not experienced what that would really mean, mainly further impoverishment, so they continue to hope for the cargo cult of capitalism to bring them goodies from the sky.
The US, for its part, will never embrace the Armenians’ agenda about their “lost lands” all around, because US relations with the Turkic world are worth more. Nevertheless, the Armenians might think the US at least would protect the internationally-recognized borders of their existing nation-state. However, Armenia does not have much to offer, as it has very little strategic or economic value. Landlocked, it doesn’t really lead anywhere. The alignment of Georgia with Azerbaijan and Turkey means that any highway from Central Asia to Turkey can simply go through Georgia, and the route through Iran is also open. The idea that a route is needed along the Araks River at the southern border of Armenia would in reality only benefit Azerbaijan by linking it directly to its exclave of Nakhchivan, and maybe also providing a more direct link for Turkey to Azerbaijan. Conversely, because Armenia butts up against Georgia and shares no border with Russia, it does not offer any corridor for Russia to connect with Iran. So, contrary to what media usually say, Armenia has almost no strategic importance or value, neither to the US or to any other distant countries, but only, limitedly, to its immediate neighbors.
Armenia’s best option, perhaps, would be to make its peace with the Turkic world, but that would certainly be a hard sell, given the ever-fresh nationalist victimology and suffering of Armenians. To ask the Armenians to put aside their historical and current complaints is a big ask, especially when there is hardly any give from the Turkic side as well, with no acknowledgement of Armenian suffering and loss since the 1890s to now.
Posted by: Cabe | Sep 24 2023 16:33 utc | 59
@ Maracatu | Sep 24 2023 13:40 utc | 2
There are several relevant points about the Armenian situation. One is, what now becomes of the 120,000 Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh (Artsakh)? Some have speculated that they will stay under Azeri rule, but I doubt that. It is just like the flight of the French colons from Algeria in 1962; it was supposed many would stay, but almost none did, out of fear of reprisals. Never mind that the Armenians are an ancient, autochthonous population while the French were settler colonizers, because the fear of the losers leading to their flight is the same. Didn’t the news say that thousands had already gathered at Stepanakert airport to leave Karabakh? Didn’t the Armenian prime minister say to Armenia, “Prepare to receive 40,000 Armenian refugee families from Artsakh”? It looks like another total defeat for Armenia, with all the baggage that that brings.
Then there is the question you raise of Armenia’s potential realignment with the US. Armenia is enraged at Russia for not saving Armenian Karabakh, but it is also very displeased with the constant US and other western tilt in favor of Turkey and Azerbaijan, and of course no one but the Armenians has ever seriously taken up the cause of Artsakh, however much there might be hand-wringing over the fate of the Armenians there. Armenia’s desire to align with the West dates back to 1991 and before, even though the West has never brought it anything but grief and even though its only savior ever was the Soviet Union. Armenia’s pro-western desire comes from the huge Armenian diaspora there, and mainly from the expectation of economic betterment through membership in the capitalist world which was also the self-deception of all the other former communist countries, including Russia. Since Armenia was never able to get that alignment, its people still have not experienced what that would really mean, mainly further impoverishment, so they continue to hope for the cargo cult of capitalism to bring them goodies from the sky.
The US, for its part, will never embrace the Armenians’ agenda about their “lost lands” all around, because US relations with the Turkic world are worth more. Nevertheless, the Armenians might think the US at least would protect the internationally-recognized borders of their existing nation-state. However, Armenia does not have much to offer, as it has very little strategic or economic value. Landlocked, it doesn’t really lead anywhere. The alignment of Georgia with Azerbaijan and Turkey means that any highway from Central Asia to Turkey can simply go through Georgia, and the route through Iran is also open. The idea that a route is needed along the Araks River at the southern border of Armenia would in reality only benefit Azerbaijan by linking it directly to its exclave of Nakhchivan, and maybe also providing a more direct link for Turkey to Azerbaijan. Conversely, because Armenia butts up against Georgia and shares no border with Russia, it does not offer any corridor for Russia to connect with Iran. So, contrary to what media usually say, Armenia has almost no strategic importance or value, neither to the US or to any other distant countries, but only, limitedly, to its immediate neighbors.
Armenia’s best option, perhaps, would be to make its peace with the Turkic world, but that would certainly be a hard sell, given the ever-fresh nationalist victimology and suffering of Armenians. To ask the Armenians to put aside their historical and current complaints is a big ask, especially when there is hardly any give from the Turkic side as well, with no acknowledgement of Armenian suffering and loss since the 1890s to now.
Posted by: Cabe | Sep 24 2023 16:33 utc | 60
Third, a long piece by Russian Armenian political scientist Gevorg Mirzayan:
Karabakh suicide: Armenia violated the rules of survival for small states (Regnum, Gevorg Mirzayan, September 21, 2023 — in Russian)
On September 21, Armenia celebrates Independence Day. And, by coincidence, on this day the Armenians are surrendering Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan, having lost in the last, one-day war.
On the morning of September 21, the delegates of the Armenian population of Karabakh (meaning, the leaders of the unrecognized Republic of Artsakh) arrived in the Azerbaijani city of Yevlakh to meet with representatives of Baku, TASS reported.
According to the Azerbaijani news agency Trend, Karabakh representatives arrived accompanied by Russian military personnel from the peacekeeping force. The Azerbaijani side sent an invitation to the meeting in Yevlakh to the Stepanakert authorities at the height of the one-day war.
On September 20, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s assistant on foreign policy issues, Hikmet Hajiyev, said that Baku has prepared a plan for the socio-economic reintegration of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The plan was the result of the fact that the authorities of the unrecognized Artsakh (another name is the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, NKR) accepted the conditions of Azerbaijan on the morning of the same day. Units of the Armed Forces of Armenia (whose presence is denied by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan) will be withdrawn from the Russian peacekeepers deployment zone, the Artsakh Defense Army will be disbanded and disarmed, and its military equipment will be being disposed of.
Thus ends the history of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, which was proclaimed even before the collapse of the USSR, in September 1991, which won, with support from Armenia, the First Karabakh War of 1992–94, but was never recognized by any country in the world, including Armenia itself.
Breaking the rules
The NKR delegation in Yevlakh is negotiating with the Azerbaijani side on the terms of surrender and “reintegration” into Azerbaijan, however, with a high degree of probability, there will be no reintegration. There will be an exodus of tens of thousands of Armenians from their lands—of course, if Azerbaijan releases them.
“For many decades since the beginning of the 90s, there have been wars, surges of tension, clashes—but there have also been attempts to resolve the Karabakh issue diplomatically. The issue was discussed at length within various associations, the UN, the OSCE. Debates were held in the capitals of the countries participating in the Minsk Group on Nagorno-Karabakh. As always, military force and political cunning, demonstrated by Azerbaijan, and not Armenia, won,” international political scientist and expert at the Russian International Affairs Council Yelena Suponina told Regnum.
To some, the ending of the Karabakh drama will seem strange, even unfair. However, it is quite natural, experts say. The denouement was a completely logical consequence of the mistakes that Armenia has made over the past 30 years, and especially over the last five of them.
Exactly 32 years ago, on September 21, 1991, 99.5% of the population of the Armenian SSR voted in a referendum to secede from the Soviet Union and form an independent state. In 1994, for the first time in many centuries, the Armenians managed to expand the territory under their control—the residents of Nagorno-Karabakh, with the support of the Armenian army, were able to oust Azerbaijani troops from their lands, as well as from the territories surrounding Karabakh.
But the rules of geopolitics were still in force. Armenia was and remained a small state, which by all indicators of power (population, territory, natural resources) was inferior even to Azerbaijan, which was dreaming of revanche, not to mention its ally Turkey. And this meant that in order to preserve statehood, Armenia had to follow a clear set of rules developed by the Israelis (who found themselves in approximately the same situation in 1949).
The rules are very simple and can be listed briefly.
Total mobilization of society. Focus on economic growth. Search for sectors of the economy where big money can be made in restricted conditions (in the case of Armenia, a logistics semi-blockade was in effect).
Concentration of the diaspora on the development of the state. Demographic growth (including by stimulating the resettlement of compatriots). Technological development of the armed forces up to the creation of nuclear weapons as an absolute means of deterrence.
And, finally, complete, unconditional, unquestioning loyalty to the great power that provides security.
In reality, everything was different.
Armenia was never able to build an economic system—instead of a stable, developing model, a real oligarchy emerged. The republic was unable to overcome large-scale corruption, due to which representatives of the diaspora very quickly lost interest in investing in this country. And they began to spend money on the senseless and even to some extent humiliating lobbying of Western officials for their recognition of the fact of the 1915 Armenian Genocide.
These “investments” did not contribute in any way to the development of Armenia, nor to the influx of citizens there (the country was experiencing depopulation—the population decreased by 17% from 1991 to 2019), nor to strengthening the defense capability of Karabakh. The people of Karabakh met the Second Karabakh War in 2020 wearing the helmets they wore in the first.
Fighting with the ally
The only rule that was observed was not to spoil relations with the ally, Russia. And even that was enough to ensure safety.
But in 2018, as a result of the coup of the year, Nikol Pashinyan came to power. The new Armenian prime minister began to purposefully purge power of pro-Russian figures and set a course for a geopolitical divorce from Moscow.
Actually, this is why a campaign was launched in Armenia to discredit Russia, which “did not help defend Karabakh in 2020” (despite the fact that Armenia itself then refused to fight for the region), as well as the CSTO, “which did not protect Armenia in 2021–2022 during military conflicts with Azerbaijan” (despite the fact that Armenia did not even announce mobilization, refusing to fight with the Azerbaijanis who invaded the territory).
And this anti-Russian propaganda resonated with the Armenian society, part of which wanted to throw off the “Karabakh burden,” but at the same time blame someone else for it.
“Armenia, in principle, abandoned Karabakh a long time ago. Pashinyan was not going to provide assistance to Karabakh in 2020, and the population as a whole was not eager to do that. There are even sentiments like ‘serves you right, Artsakhians,’ ” writes Dmitriy Ofitserov-Belskiy, senior researcher at the Primakov Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The first reason, according to him, was that “people grew tired of the Karabakh clan, which had been dominating Armenian politics for many years.” And that’s true—for almost 20 years (from 1998 to 2018), the country was ruled by people from Karabakh, Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan.
The second reason, according to Ofitserov-Belskiy, is that “the Karabakh people themselves are people with a slightly different mentality—tough, more prone to crime and, by the way, very pro-Russian.”
The point about crime is, of course, a myth—however, in general, it was true that the “Karabakh people” were very different in mentality from, let’s call them, the “Yerevan people.” For example, it is believed that they are more hardworking and persistent (hence the half-offensive, half-respectful expression “Karabakh donkey”—that is, a stubborn, hardworking, persistent person).
“Moscow’s guilt” and Tehran’s worries
During the current conflict, they are again trying to cast Russia as guilty—simply because there were Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh who “didn’t stop it.” And this despite the fact that Pashinyan directly stated his refusal to protect the Karabakh Armenians, and also made it clear that he was not interested in their fate at all.
Instead of following the trilateral Russian–Armenian–Azerbaijani plan to resolve the situation (and as a result of the stopped Second Karabakh War, Yerevan actually had a road map for settlement in its hands), Pashinyan ran to the West and at its negotiating platforms twice confirmed in writing that he recognizes Karabakh as the territory of Azerbaijan without any conditions.
This, in particular, was pointed out by the representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Mariya Zakharova.
“There is not a word in the text about the need to ensure the rights and safety of the inhabitants of the region… This became Yerevan’s final solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. Why did Nikol Pashinyan and the Armenian authorities do it in this way, why did Paris and Brussels push official Yerevan to do this?” Zakharova asks rhetorical questions.
Now is the time to diplomatically formalize the new status quo in the region. “The status of the new regions needs to be recorded on paper, a peace agreement must be achieved between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and security guarantees must be accepted for the population of Nagorno-Karabakh,” reminds Yelena Suponina.
A number of external players will pursue their own interests. The Americans want to oust Russia, the Turks want to oust all external players from the region. And the Iranians want to prevent Turkish domination of the region.
“There is an opinion in the Iranian expert community (it sounds quite strong) that the Islamic Republic may ultimately turn out to be the losing side. An anti-Iranian alliance will strengthen near its borders, and its goal will be the Zangezur corridor. Let me remind you that this project, which presupposes the claims of Baku and Turkey to the Armenian Syunik (Zangezur), was called a ‘red line’ by Tehran many times,” international affairs expert Abbas Djuma explained to Regnum.
Russian humanitarian protection
Now that the end of the Karabakh conflict in favor of Azerbaijan has become an obvious fact that is changing the political alignment in Transcaucasia, Russia faces new challenges in this region, experts note.
In a situation where Pashinyan continues to be in power in Yerevan, Moscow does not have many tools to protect its interests (to ensure a stable South Caucasus and the presence of a Russian bridgehead in Armenia there).
It will not be possible to outbid Pashinyan or change his mind—and not only because he is strongly indoctrinated.
As Dmitriy Ofitserov-Belskiy reminds, Pashinyan is personally dependent on the West, because he understands that he will have to emigrate there in the future. Explaining to Armenians that abandoning Moscow will lead to the seizure of their country by the Turks is also not easy due to the fact that Moscow is bad at defending its interests using “soft power” tools.
“Our military diplomats work very well, as do peacekeepers. What we lack is ‘soft power.’ We didn’t have enough of it in the Ukraine, in Azerbaijan—everywhere,” reminds Yelena Suponina.
However, the tools still exist, experts believe. Both at the highest political level and at the humanitarian level.
First of all, we need to take care of the Karabakh refugees, if only because by bringing peacekeepers into Karabakh, Moscow assumed moral obligations. “Against the background of rumors about Pashinyan’s reluctance to accept refugees from Karabakh, I think it would be fair to provide refugees with the opportunity to obtain Russian citizenship in a simplified manner,” wrote State Duma deputy Yevgeniy Popov.
With this step, Moscow, according to experts, might solve several problems at once.
First, Russia will effectively shield itself from any accusations that it has “abandoned the Armenians it pledged to protect.” Secondly, it will demonstrate that it does not abandon its own. Yes, its own—Nagorno-Karabakh (along with Transnistria) is one of the most pro-Russian regions of the post-Soviet space. Thirdly, it will acquire several tens of thousands of new hardworking Christian citizens.
Posted by: S | Sep 24 2023 18:38 utc | 93
Third, a long piece by Russian Armenian political scientist Gevorg Mirzayan:
Karabakh suicide: Armenia violated the rules of survival for small states (Regnum, Gevorg Mirzayan, September 21, 2023 — in Russian)
On September 21, Armenia celebrates Independence Day. And, by coincidence, on this day the Armenians are surrendering Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan, having lost in the last, one-day war.
On the morning of September 21, the delegates of the Armenian population of Karabakh (meaning, the leaders of the unrecognized Republic of Artsakh) arrived in the Azerbaijani city of Yevlakh to meet with representatives of Baku, TASS reported.
According to the Azerbaijani news agency Trend, Karabakh representatives arrived accompanied by Russian military personnel from the peacekeeping force. The Azerbaijani side sent an invitation to the meeting in Yevlakh to the Stepanakert authorities at the height of the one-day war.
On September 20, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s assistant on foreign policy issues, Hikmet Hajiyev, said that Baku has prepared a plan for the socio-economic reintegration of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The plan was the result of the fact that the authorities of the unrecognized Artsakh (another name is the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, NKR) accepted the conditions of Azerbaijan on the morning of the same day. Units of the Armed Forces of Armenia (whose presence is denied by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan) will be withdrawn from the Russian peacekeepers deployment zone, the Artsakh Defense Army will be disbanded and disarmed, and its military equipment will be being disposed of.
Thus ends the history of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, which was proclaimed even before the collapse of the USSR, in September 1991, which won, with support from Armenia, the First Karabakh War of 1992–94, but was never recognized by any country in the world, including Armenia itself.
Breaking the rules
The NKR delegation in Yevlakh is negotiating with the Azerbaijani side on the terms of surrender and “reintegration” into Azerbaijan, however, with a high degree of probability, there will be no reintegration. There will be an exodus of tens of thousands of Armenians from their lands—of course, if Azerbaijan releases them.
“For many decades since the beginning of the 90s, there have been wars, surges of tension, clashes—but there have also been attempts to resolve the Karabakh issue diplomatically. The issue was discussed at length within various associations, the UN, the OSCE. Debates were held in the capitals of the countries participating in the Minsk Group on Nagorno-Karabakh. As always, military force and political cunning, demonstrated by Azerbaijan, and not Armenia, won,” international political scientist and expert at the Russian International Affairs Council Yelena Suponina told Regnum.
To some, the ending of the Karabakh drama will seem strange, even unfair. However, it is quite natural, experts say. The denouement was a completely logical consequence of the mistakes that Armenia has made over the past 30 years, and especially over the last five of them.
Exactly 32 years ago, on September 21, 1991, 99.5% of the population of the Armenian SSR voted in a referendum to secede from the Soviet Union and form an independent state. In 1994, for the first time in many centuries, the Armenians managed to expand the territory under their control—the residents of Nagorno-Karabakh, with the support of the Armenian army, were able to oust Azerbaijani troops from their lands, as well as from the territories surrounding Karabakh.
But the rules of geopolitics were still in force. Armenia was and remained a small state, which by all indicators of power (population, territory, natural resources) was inferior even to Azerbaijan, which was dreaming of revanche, not to mention its ally Turkey. And this meant that in order to preserve statehood, Armenia had to follow a clear set of rules developed by the Israelis (who found themselves in approximately the same situation in 1949).
The rules are very simple and can be listed briefly.
Total mobilization of society. Focus on economic growth. Search for sectors of the economy where big money can be made in restricted conditions (in the case of Armenia, a logistics semi-blockade was in effect).
Concentration of the diaspora on the development of the state. Demographic growth (including by stimulating the resettlement of compatriots). Technological development of the armed forces up to the creation of nuclear weapons as an absolute means of deterrence.
And, finally, complete, unconditional, unquestioning loyalty to the great power that provides security.
In reality, everything was different.
Armenia was never able to build an economic system—instead of a stable, developing model, a real oligarchy emerged. The republic was unable to overcome large-scale corruption, due to which representatives of the diaspora very quickly lost interest in investing in this country. And they began to spend money on the senseless and even to some extent humiliating lobbying of Western officials for their recognition of the fact of the 1915 Armenian Genocide.
These “investments” did not contribute in any way to the development of Armenia, nor to the influx of citizens there (the country was experiencing depopulation—the population decreased by 17% from 1991 to 2019), nor to strengthening the defense capability of Karabakh. The people of Karabakh met the Second Karabakh War in 2020 wearing the helmets they wore in the first.
Fighting with the ally
The only rule that was observed was not to spoil relations with the ally, Russia. And even that was enough to ensure safety.
But in 2018, as a result of the coup of the year, Nikol Pashinyan came to power. The new Armenian prime minister began to purposefully purge power of pro-Russian figures and set a course for a geopolitical divorce from Moscow.
Actually, this is why a campaign was launched in Armenia to discredit Russia, which “did not help defend Karabakh in 2020” (despite the fact that Armenia itself then refused to fight for the region), as well as the CSTO, “which did not protect Armenia in 2021–2022 during military conflicts with Azerbaijan” (despite the fact that Armenia did not even announce mobilization, refusing to fight with the Azerbaijanis who invaded the territory).
And this anti-Russian propaganda resonated with the Armenian society, part of which wanted to throw off the “Karabakh burden,” but at the same time blame someone else for it.
“Armenia, in principle, abandoned Karabakh a long time ago. Pashinyan was not going to provide assistance to Karabakh in 2020, and the population as a whole was not eager to do that. There are even sentiments like ‘serves you right, Artsakhians,’ ” writes Dmitriy Ofitserov-Belskiy, senior researcher at the Primakov Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The first reason, according to him, was that “people grew tired of the Karabakh clan, which had been dominating Armenian politics for many years.” And that’s true—for almost 20 years (from 1998 to 2018), the country was ruled by people from Karabakh, Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan.
The second reason, according to Ofitserov-Belskiy, is that “the Karabakh people themselves are people with a slightly different mentality—tough, more prone to crime and, by the way, very pro-Russian.”
The point about crime is, of course, a myth—however, in general, it was true that the “Karabakh people” were very different in mentality from, let’s call them, the “Yerevan people.” For example, it is believed that they are more hardworking and persistent (hence the half-offensive, half-respectful expression “Karabakh donkey”—that is, a stubborn, hardworking, persistent person).
“Moscow’s guilt” and Tehran’s worries
During the current conflict, they are again trying to cast Russia as guilty—simply because there were Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh who “didn’t stop it.” And this despite the fact that Pashinyan directly stated his refusal to protect the Karabakh Armenians, and also made it clear that he was not interested in their fate at all.
Instead of following the trilateral Russian–Armenian–Azerbaijani plan to resolve the situation (and as a result of the stopped Second Karabakh War, Yerevan actually had a road map for settlement in its hands), Pashinyan ran to the West and at its negotiating platforms twice confirmed in writing that he recognizes Karabakh as the territory of Azerbaijan without any conditions.
This, in particular, was pointed out by the representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Mariya Zakharova.
“There is not a word in the text about the need to ensure the rights and safety of the inhabitants of the region… This became Yerevan’s final solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. Why did Nikol Pashinyan and the Armenian authorities do it in this way, why did Paris and Brussels push official Yerevan to do this?” Zakharova asks rhetorical questions.
Now is the time to diplomatically formalize the new status quo in the region. “The status of the new regions needs to be recorded on paper, a peace agreement must be achieved between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and security guarantees must be accepted for the population of Nagorno-Karabakh,” reminds Yelena Suponina.
A number of external players will pursue their own interests. The Americans want to oust Russia, the Turks want to oust all external players from the region. And the Iranians want to prevent Turkish domination of the region.
“There is an opinion in the Iranian expert community (it sounds quite strong) that the Islamic Republic may ultimately turn out to be the losing side. An anti-Iranian alliance will strengthen near its borders, and its goal will be the Zangezur corridor. Let me remind you that this project, which presupposes the claims of Baku and Turkey to the Armenian Syunik (Zangezur), was called a ‘red line’ by Tehran many times,” international affairs expert Abbas Djuma explained to Regnum.
Russian humanitarian protection
Now that the end of the Karabakh conflict in favor of Azerbaijan has become an obvious fact that is changing the political alignment in Transcaucasia, Russia faces new challenges in this region, experts note.
In a situation where Pashinyan continues to be in power in Yerevan, Moscow does not have many tools to protect its interests (to ensure a stable South Caucasus and the presence of a Russian bridgehead in Armenia there).
It will not be possible to outbid Pashinyan or change his mind—and not only because he is strongly indoctrinated.
As Dmitriy Ofitserov-Belskiy reminds, Pashinyan is personally dependent on the West, because he understands that he will have to emigrate there in the future. Explaining to Armenians that abandoning Moscow will lead to the seizure of their country by the Turks is also not easy due to the fact that Moscow is bad at defending its interests using “soft power” tools.
“Our military diplomats work very well, as do peacekeepers. What we lack is ‘soft power.’ We didn’t have enough of it in the Ukraine, in Azerbaijan—everywhere,” reminds Yelena Suponina.
However, the tools still exist, experts believe. Both at the highest political level and at the humanitarian level.
First of all, we need to take care of the Karabakh refugees, if only because by bringing peacekeepers into Karabakh, Moscow assumed moral obligations. “Against the background of rumors about Pashinyan’s reluctance to accept refugees from Karabakh, I think it would be fair to provide refugees with the opportunity to obtain Russian citizenship in a simplified manner,” wrote State Duma deputy Yevgeniy Popov.
With this step, Moscow, according to experts, might solve several problems at once.
First, Russia will effectively shield itself from any accusations that it has “abandoned the Armenians it pledged to protect.” Secondly, it will demonstrate that it does not abandon its own. Yes, its own—Nagorno-Karabakh (along with Transnistria) is one of the most pro-Russian regions of the post-Soviet space. Thirdly, it will acquire several tens of thousands of new hardworking Christian citizens.
Posted by: S | Sep 24 2023 18:38 utc | 94
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