Clashes on the border of Armenia and Azerbaijan in the State Duma are considered inevitable without a peace treaty

Baku’s actions are provocative, they are aimed at nullifying the progress made in the course of negotiations with Yerevan earlier. About it declared Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan at a government meeting after the aggravation on the border of states on the morning of May 11.

“If Azerbaijan recognizes the territorial integrity of Armenia, then why is it shelling the sovereign territory of our country, especially if, according to the Sochi tripartite agreements, the parties must refrain from using force or the threat of using force,” Pashinyan said. According to him, Baku “grossly violated” trilateral public agreements [Армении, Азербайджана и России].

Around 6 am on May 11, the country’s Ministry of Defense reported that Azerbaijan was shelling Armenian positions near the village of Sotk in the Gegharkunik region from artillery and mortars. “Azerbaijani armed forces opened fire in the direction of an ambulance carrying a wounded soldier,” the Armenian Defense Ministry said in a statement. As a result, four soldiers were injured, there is no threat to their lives. Baku reported that one Azerbaijani soldier was wounded as a result of the skirmish.

The trilateral meeting of the heads of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan Vladimir Putin, Nikol Pashinyan and Ilham Aliyev on the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict in Sochi took place in October 2022. Both sides of the conflict then promised to resolve all issues peacefully and stressed the importance of preparing for the conclusion of a peace treaty between Yerevan and Baku. May 1-4 negotiations between the heads of the foreign ministries of the republics passed in Washington. Aliyev and Pashinyan are scheduled to meet in Brussels on May 14, and then, on June 1, in Chisinau on the sidelines of the European Political Community summit.

“The actions of the Azerbaijani side are provocative and, among other things, are aimed at nullifying the progress that was recorded during the talks in Washington on May 1-4. Today’s provocation is also aimed at disrupting the meeting in Brussels in a trilateral format on Sunday and in a five-sided format on June 1 in Chisinau,” Pashinyan said.

According to the prime minister, he did not change his decision to go to Brussels, but he believes that the likelihood of signing a bilateral peace treaty is “very small” and its text is only preliminary.

Clashes on the border of the two states will continue until a peace treaty is signed, said Leonid Kalashnikov, chairman of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration and Relations with Compatriots. “I don’t really believe that now the parties [Азербайджану и Армении] manage to sign [в Брюсселе] peace treaty,” he told Vedomosti.

The deputy believes that the settlement of the conflict is possible only with the participation of Russia. He recalled that in 2020, hostilities in the conflict zone were stopped after the signing of a tripartite agreement by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev and Pashinyan.

So far, Pashinyan and Aliyev are not ready to sign a peace treaty, and such aggravations involuntarily give a delay, Dmitry Kornev, a military expert and editor of the Military Russia portal, believes. At the same time, Azerbaijan has a “definitely stronger position” in the conflict. “He has a very powerful and peremptory support for Turkey, which has the most powerful army in Europe. If Azerbaijan receives the Lachin crossing [соединяющий Армению с Нагорным Карабахом]he will have a land connection with Turkey,” he told Vedomosti.

The meeting of the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders in Brussels did not herald any breakthrough in the negotiation process, Stanislav Pritchin, senior researcher at the Center for Post-Soviet Studies at the IMEMO RAS, believes. “It is politically unprofitable for Pashinyan to sign any documents recognizing the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, his power in Nagorno-Karabakh. He does not want to go down in the history of Armenia as a political leader who recorded this,” he told Vedomosti.

Another goal of Armenia is to wait for the results of the presidential elections in Turkey in the hope of losing the incumbent leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the expert believes. Pashinyan expects that if the president loses, then Azerbaijan will not have such confident support from Ankara and Armenia will be able to achieve more favorable negotiation conditions by building a dialogue with Turkey, Pritchin noted.

The concession of Karabakh will provoke opposition in Armenia, which could lead to the overthrow of the prime minister, says Kornev. According to him, it is unprofitable for Russia that the peace agreement be signed in Brussels. “Moscow does not need a peace agreement to be signed anywhere but Moscow. And it is necessary that it is she who organizes the conclusion of a peace agreement between the two future union republics, ”the expert emphasized.