Cooperation between Russia and Azerbaijan to be extremely important in upcoming years, if not decades, Mikhail Khazin says

The Republic of Azerbaijan is one of the few countries in the modern world that are proposing a new model of the internal arrangement, the president of the Economic Research Foundation, Mikhail Khazin told Vestnik Kavkaza, speaking about Russia's benefits of strengthening the partnership relations with Azerbaijan in the sphere of economy.

"Obviously, our cooperation will only increase, because the role of Azerbaijan in the Caucasus region will grow, and the point is that the old model is now collapsing, it can be called conventionally a liberal American-centered one. There are few countries that could have shown a new model of the the internal structure,  and Azerbaijan is such a country in the region, " he said.

"We see that right now it is not the best situation in Georgia. A chaos that began there in the 1990s has not yet ended, in general. Russophobia of the previous Georgian leadership hampers Georgia economically. While Americans were paying Tbilisi, the republic could at least depict economic activity, and now it became clear that the country can not survive at its domestic market, and can only sell to the north - to Russia - where it is prohibited to sell,” Mikhail Khazin noted.

"Armenia is a very specific country, where diaspora plays a more important role than the internal leadership.Therefore, one should not expect that Armenia can act actively and independently. In particular, within the framework of the Karabakh conflict, the Armenian leadership, unlike Azerbaijan, is not a subject of the negotiations, because it does not make decisions and can not take responsibility, " the economist noted, concluding that only Azerbaijan was able to form a normal  model of internal and foreign policy.

"This is why the role of Azerbaijan will increase in the region and even in the world." As a rule, the old model is replaced by nationalism that does not lead to neither  economic, nor historical success, or chaos. Some countries have even managed to combine the both, for example, Ukraine. In my opinion, in the near future we will see a situation in the Eastern Europe similar to the one that was in the Caucasus in the late 1980s and early 1990. In this sense, I I think the cooperation between Russia and Azerbaijan will be extremely important in the upcoming years, if not decades,’’ Mikhail Khazin concluded.