At yesterday's government session, RA Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced the need to deploy an international observation mission on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, and today Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced that the possibility of deploying CSTO observers is being discussed.

Commenting on these two statements, political scientist Davit Stepanyan mentioned in a conversation with Radar Armenia. "Lavrov's statement shows that Russia does not want to lose its monopoly on regulating or not regulating Armenian-Azerbaijani relations."

In his opinion, Russia is trying to replace the real observation mission with the CSTO observation mission. "Russia is not in any way interested in the arrival of people from abroad, including military personnel, at the Armenian-Azerbaijani border."

According to Stepanyan, we must understand that it is not very beneficial for Armenia to have Russians, Kazakhs, or Kyrgyz deployed on the border. In such a scenario, what is happening today will continue. "Azerbaijan will continue to shoot; the CSTO will continue to show a toothless attitude. And he will continue to make statements aimed at both sides. And we will not get a clear response."

According to Stepanyan, it is in Armenia's interest that the observers be from the UN Security Council or the OSCE member states.

Hayk Magoyan