Moscow cannot enforce its will in the parties, de Waal thinks

Thomas de Waal wrote this in “Losing Control in Caucasus” article for Politico online magazine.

According to the expert, by selling weapons to each side, Russia is destabilizing the situation in the conflict zone.

Touching upon the recent ceasefire violations in the Nagorno Karabakh and Armenia-Azerbaijan border, the expert has noted that sniper fire is now replaced with mortars.

“It is still premature to talk about a return to the kind of full-scale war that raged here for three years in the 1990s. But the leaders in both Baku and Yerevan are digging themselves into warlike positions that they will find hard to give up. This is not about the “hand of Russia” - although Russia’s behavior is not helping. The danger of the Caucasus is that no one is fully in charge and that Karabakh is becoming another link in a chain of disorder stretching from Ukraine to Syria, in which Russia meddles but is not fully in charge”, wrote Thomas de Waal.

According to the expert, Russia tries to shape this dangerous situation, but does not pull the strings. Overall, according to him, Moscow has a strategic interest in resolving the conflict and has sometimes played the role of responsible peacemaker to win tactical advantages over both Armenia and Azerbaijan and to keep a foothold in the South Caucasus.

“The quarrel between Russia and the West over Ukraine has further enervated the peace process and darkened the mood. As in Syria, they may share several goals but evidently have different ideas about how to achieve them - and very little trust in one another”, wrote the author.

According to him, the Caucasus looks more unstable and predictable than it has for many years. The latest Armenian-Azerbaijani fighting raises the risk that a serious incident will precipitate, by miscalculation, a new small war that no one wants but from which neither side is prepared to back away.

“Russia’s behavior makes it hard to stop that occurring - but no one else currently has much capacity to stop that nightmare scenario either”, concluded Thomas de Waal.