“The actions of the European Union and the United States are clearly one-sided, biased and based on a double standard approach,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Aykhan Hajizade said, describing the EU’s intention to organize a meeting in the EU-Armenia-US format in Brussels on April 5. Undoubtedly, this is the position of official Baku, which stems from the fact that the upcoming conference will not meet the “conditions of full transparency” and will lack “regional inclusivity”.
Nevertheless, the planned meeting is likely to happen, even though, apart from Azerbaijan, Russia is also against discussing complex regional issues in this format. Minval.az asked political scientist Rasim Musabekov to comment on the incomprehensible persistence with which the European Union and the United States interfere in the relations between the countries of the South Caucasus region.
Answering the question on whether the upcoming meeting in Brussels in the EU-Armenia-US format itself carries more threats to Azerbaijan or Armenia, the expert recalled that it would be organized on the initiative of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. “It is Armenia that claims to be experiencing threats to its security and has turned to the US and the EU for support. For Azerbaijan, this meeting does not pose any additional threats, unless the Armenians, encouraged by the support of Brussels and Washington, start sabotaging the peace talks,” he said. At the same time, Musabekov believes that a greater threat to Armenia will emerge from Russia, as Pashinyan, relying on the acquired support, may announce his withdrawal from the CSTO.
The political scientist also advised not to look for a link between the upcoming April meeting and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s recent visit to the South Caucasus region. “I wouldn’t make a connection between them,” he said. “In Brussels, ‘high’ officials from the US and the European Union will hold talks with the Armenian Prime Minister. NATO is not involved in it. The guarantees to Armenia are not supposed to be in military, but in diplomatic and financial form.”
However, one cannot help but note the annoyance that the actions of official Yerevan have caused in Russia. For example, once the Brussels meeting in the EU-Armenia-US format was announced, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that “the EU monitoring mission in Armenia is spying on Russia, Iran and Azerbaijan, which increases tension in the region.” In an interview with Russian AiF, Press Secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov called the current period in relations with Armenia “challenging”. At the same time, there was a certain hidden threat lurking in the quotes “more Armenians live in Russia than in Armenia” and “the economic activity of Armenian citizens of the Russian Federation still accounts for a very large percentage of Armenia’s total budget.” That is, it is already more or less clear how Russia could hit Armenia, and in the beginning the pressure may be of purely economic nature. And if we also consider a certain kind of “liberties” that Armenia allows in the issue of membership in the CSTO, which is also very painful for Russia, then, based on all this, the issue of the red line that Yerevan can cross in its relations with Moscow should also be regarded as relevant.
Answering the question about that red line with respect to these countries, Musabekov noted that a CSTO member country’s independent actions in the military and political domain contradict the CSTO Charter.
“It (Russia—Ed.) has to react to this somehow. Pashinyan is essentially pushing the CSTO to exclude Armenia from it. But this will not be the end of it for the Armenians. They have not participated in the activities of the CSTO for a whole year now. Repressions will follow in various forms. As usual, it will begin with an information attack. I would not be surprised if Russian state-owned TV channels have long prepared a film about Pashinyan’s team being Western agents embedded in the government to destroy the Russian-Armenian alliance. Financial and economic restrictions will probably follow. The list of repressions is large, we can recall similar cases in Georgia and Ukraine,” the political scientist said.
And since the issue of Armenia’s red line with respect to Russia has been brought up, the reaction of another major regional player, Iran, to the upcoming meeting in Brussels automatically becomes relevant as well.
Can we expect that Armenia, in its desire to bring extra-regional players into the region, will carried away to such an extent that Iran, for example, will pull up troops to the border with this country under the guise of military exercises? Answering this question, Musabekov said that he did not think that Tehran would really start pulling up troops to Armenia’s border.
“As long as FSB border guards are there, there is no need for that. But if they start forcing the Russian military out of Armenia, replacing them with French or even Greek military, even in small numbers, a negative reaction from Tehran will follow,” the expert said.
