Radar Armenia spoke with Artashes Khalatyan, an associate expert of the National Institute of Foreign Studies jurist, about the latest geopolitical developments.

- What is the purpose of the statement of the Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, Sergey Lavrov, that Armenia had previously occupied seven regions of Azerbaijan?

- Russia is preparing Armenia for another painful concession. And for this, it opens all the playing cards. It makes public the details of the negotiation process, which the political elite has kept hidden from the people for decades or tried to manipulate public opinion. After 2018, when Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan talked about getting a problematic negotiation legacy, it was about these defeatist agreements. However, for nearly 20 years, the former authorities, both Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan, agreed to these arrangements. Lavrov sees the service of Russia's geopolitical interests in the further rapprochement of relations with the Turkish-Azerbaijani tandem. Today Armenia does not represent strategic importance for itself and is more of a bargaining chip with the Turks and Azerbaijanis. With this "shot," Lavrov is also trying to confuse the internal political situation in Armenia. But that is not the important thing but preparing public opinion to extract further concessions from Armenia. Lavrov tries to present Armenia as a non-existent political unit, a loser, a defeated party from which anything can be removed, especially after the war. By carrying out such actions on behalf of the top leadership of the Russian Federation, Lavrov demonstrates Russia's non-allied and unfriendly behavior towards Armenia.

- The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation also said that the CSTO is ready to help Armenia and Azerbaijan find ways to stabilize the situation in the Caucasus. In your opinion, is CSTO, as a structure, still able to regulate Armenian-Azerbaijani relations?

- It is evident that Russia has only one option to deploy the CSTO peacekeeping forces in Armenia: to provoke a new Armenian-Azerbaijani war, in which Armenia will be defeated according to Russia's calculations, and, as the defeated party, to "wrap around the neck" of the presence of the CSTO, Which will be more of an occupation force than a peacekeeping armed contingent. As Aliyev has repeatedly stated, Azerbaijan has more friends in the CSTO than Armenia, and, unfortunately, he is right. While discussing the CSTO's peacekeeping mission, Lavrov avoids making a political assessment of Azerbaijan's aggression. Moreover, his speech in the last interview with Kiselyov was more of an attempt to justify Azerbaijan and legitimize Azerbaijan's struggle. Therefore, Russia continues to ignore Armenia's request to give a political assessment of Azerbaijan's actions, personally and at the CSTO level. This needs to be done, and in this context, the coefficient of valuable operations of the CSTO peacekeeping troops toward Armenia is zero. There is no potential to rise above that level. Moreover, taking into account the composition of the CSTO and the level of relations of the member states of that structure with Armenia and shared interests with Azerbaijan, the CSTO is becoming an increasingly dangerous unit for Armenia. It is evident that if the CSTO does not recognize the sovereign borders of Armenia, then the latter will not monitor peacekeeping or border patrols but will deprive Armenia of any geopolitical maneuver and become an institutional tool for Russia's occupation of Armenia. In this context, there is no need to have any expectations from the CSTO, and everything should be done so that the CSTO peacekeeping contingent does not enter Armenia in any way.

- In the current situation, how do you see the resumption of Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations? under whose moderation?

- No negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan are expected in the foreseeable future. The parties are in the mode of silent confrontation, a diplomatic war conducted in international organizations, already in the international court of justice, in the military-technical sphere. And the parties continue to arm themselves. As well as seeking security guarantees, Armenia's behavior shows that no peace process can be initiated shortly. The reason is that Azerbaijan entirely relies on Russian-Turkish support against Armenia. Considering its economic and political situation, Russia relies on the help of the Turkish-Azerbaijani tandem and is ready to satisfy any of its whims, practically ding Armenia. Turkey and Azerbaijan have big Turanian geopolitical ambitions; they present direct claims to the south of Armenia. And taking all that into account, the interests of the Turkish-Azerbaijani tandem and Russia coincide in the short term. This means that Azerbaijan has no chance to start a peaceful and constructive dialogue with Armenia as long as the regional superpower, Russia, supports the power scenario and is included by Turkey. Taking all this into account, I think that the year 2023 will pass in silence or with the slogan of a diplomatic confrontation, a diplomatic war, if, of course, Azerbaijan does not receive the indulgence of military escalation from Russia and Turkey. The probability of such a scenario depends on Russia's situation in the Russian-Ukrainian war, which, according to experts, should worsen, but unpredictable developments are also not excluded.

Hayk Magoyan