Some Western hawks might flirt with backing Armenian revanchism as a means of dividing and ruling the South Caucasus, Andrew Korybko, an American political scientist and Ph.D. in political science, who lives in Moscow, told Report.
He stressed that this attempt won’t succeed but could still destabilize everything and bring about needless deaths.
The analyst believes that one of the best ways to possibly deter that dark scenario is for Russia, Azerbaijan, and Türkiye to cooperate more closely on military-strategic issues.
"Additionally, it would also help for Azerbaijan and Türkiye to explore membership in BRICS or at least formalize partner relations with that association in which Russia and Iran already participate so as to further strengthen trust between them all," he said.
Korybko noted that Russian-Armenian relations have been toxified by Pashinyan’s hostile rhetoric since Azerbaijan’s one-day anti-terrorist operation in mid-September liberated the rest of its occupied lands. Because Pashinyan blames Russia for his country’s military fiasco. This false pretext was then exploited to accelerate Armenia’s gradual embrace of the West to a full-blown pivot of NATO members France and the US.
The expert also said that Pashinyan’s latest remarks about his country suspending its participation in the CSTO imply that it’ll eventually leave the bloc, but not before clinching security guarantees of some sort from NATO. Armenia is pathologically afraid that leaving the CSTO without them could entice Azerbaijan and/or Türkiye to attack it, despite neither having signaled any such intent.
“For its part, Russia doesn’t want to kick Armenia out since that would reflect poorly on one of its oldest post-Soviet integration projects. Instead, it hopes that Pashinyan will either be convinced to reconsider his country’s pro-NATO pivot or that he won’t complete it before another government comes to power and possibly reverses this policy. The Kremlin is also sensitive about how its reaction to these provocations will be interpreted by Armenians and doesn’t want to worsen their anti-Russian sentiment,” he said.
