Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 20 – The murder of
an Armenian family in Gyumri by a Russian soldier and the failure of Yerevan to
stand up to Moscow about his trial have outraged Armenians and led some experts
like Igor Muradyan to say that Russia “is losing Armenia,” its primary ally in
the South Caucasus (ekhokavkaza.com/content/article/26798215.html).
And that in turn has led some analysts
to suggest that Moscow might be interested in a new outbreak of the Nagorno-Karabakh
war between Armenia and Azerbaijan to remind Armenians and Yerevan about Russia’s
key role in restraining an ever more powerful Azerbaijan from retaking those
regions and thus helping Armenia maintain its control over them.
In a comment to Slon.ru yesterday,
Mikhail Zygar, the chief editor of Russia’s independent television channel “Dozhd,”
said that Moscow will not make the concessions Yerevan is demanding – handing the
soldier over to Armenian courts or ensuring an open trial – because under the
Russian constitution it doesn’t have to (slon.ru/insights/1205915/).
But the real explanation for why
Russia is behaving in a way that is infuriating its last ally in the south
Caucasus and one of the few on the territory of the former Soviet space, Zygar
says, is geoolitical situation which Armenia finds itself in – and which,
although he does not say so, Moscow is all too ready to highlight when it
thinks it needs to.
“One need not be a great expert on
Armenian-Russian relations,” he continues, to find the answer to Russian
behavior which may seem “at first glance” strange. And it is this: “The [Russian] military base
in Gyumri is the foundation of Armenian security. More precisely, it is a
guarantee that Azerbaijan will not attack Armenia and try to recover
Nagorno-Karabakh.”
He continues: “The war between
Armenia and Azerbaijan for Nagorno-Karabakh ended 20 years ago in 1994. Armenia
did not simply win it; it destroyed the Azerbaijani army and occupied
Nagorno-Karabakh and several Azerbaijani districts which separated the territory
of the autonomous republic from the territory of Armenia.”
At that time, Zygar says, the
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic was “proclaimed,” but formally it has not been “recognized
by anyone since then, including Armenia itself.”
Over the course of the last two
decades, “a great deal has changed. Azerbaijan has been transformed into a
wealthy oil producing country, and in the fat years of the last decade a
generation of Azerbaijanis who live with the dream of sooner or later
recovering” the territories their country lost earlier.
While there is a ceasefire in place, “the undeclared war
with Armenia and constant exchanges of fire on the border are the reality of
the last two decades,” Zygar says. And
he reminds everyone that the slogan “’Karabakh is Ours’” is a much more central
aspect of Azerbaijani identity than Crimean ever was or ever will be for
Russia.
That Moscow might want to remind Armenians of that
reality is thus plausible, but there is the danger that some in Yerevan might
be inclined to go along and launch what they might think would be “a short
victorious war” in order to save their own positions even or perhaps especially
because that would solidify their relations with Russia.
As one Armenian human rights activist, Artur Sakunts,
told “Nezavisimaya gazeta,” the problems at Gyumri are longstanding and have
their roots in “the absence of the necessary level of control over the base by
the Armenian authorities,” thus fueling anti-regime attitudes in Yerevan by
highlighting its subordination to Moscow (ng.ru/politics/2015-01-20/3_gumri.html).
No one is saying that either Moscow or Yerevan
will start a war, but it is clear that both the Russian government and its
Armenian counterpart might see such a conflict as in its interests, and that
alone justifies concerns that the events in Gyumri may lead to more violence
and claim more victims in the near future.
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