Having Alienated Both Armenia and Azerbaijan, Moscow Can No Longer Play Its Traditional Divide and Rule Approach to in the South Caucasus, Inozemtsev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 5 – Lost in most discussions of the deteriorating relationship between Moscow and Baku is the fact that Moscow’s relations with Yerevan are now so bad that the Kremlin is in no position to play the divide-and-rule game that it has used in the South Caucasus in the past, Vladislav Inozemtsev says.

            Until the last few months, if Russia’s relationship with Azerbaijan deteriorated, Moscow would promote its ties with Armenia; and if Russia’s links to Armenia were shaky, the Kremlin would seek closer ties with Azerbaijan, the Russian analyst says  (t.me/kremlebezBashennik/42533 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=6868D731DFCDD).   

            But Moscow’s behavior, including by not limited to its duplicity and unreliability has driven both countries away from it, opening the way for each to act ever more freely on its own, something that will further divide them from the Russian Federation and may even make it possible for Yerevan and Baku to take steps they could not do in the past.

            And that Russian failure in both Armenia and Azerbaijan is likely to prove more important for the future of the South Caucasus and indeed the broader region than the tanking of ties between Moscow and Baku over Russian behaviors regarding the shooting down of an Azerbaijani airliner and its brutal arrest of ethnic Azerbaijanis in Russia.