By Alexander Fomenko
It seems the establishment of the Eurasian Economic Union by Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus should be insignificant to humanity. There are many other more important problems. The confrontation between Western and Russian (which is turning into Eurasian) civilizations is growing. The confrontation defines the differences in approaches to a settlement of the Arab issue, including the Syrian crisis. It turned into a real conflict after the February overthrow of the Ukrainian government. Meanwhile, other countries play a static role, or an active static role, as with China.
But is not so.
Sooner or later life in the Middle East will get back into a routine. Ukraine will sooner or later return to its native coast. And the EaEU has every chance of going into the history of humanity as the starting point of a turn toward a new balance of forces in the world. The initiators of the Union believe that it will radically change moral directions and reconsider human values. And in the future this will help people to avoid global disasters.
Whether the initiators have enough wisdom and political will to use the chance thoughtfully, we will know in late June. The intrigue will be maintained till the end and tensions will rise. The atmosphere is tense already. All facts confirm that the battle for the Eurasian space is as heavy as the battles in Ukraine. Russia is almost economically isolated. And the whole EaEU is under siege.
A Trojan horse can’t wait to enter the EaEU. Will presidents Nazarbayev and Lukashenko let him in? We will know on July 1st. The decision was made in Astana in May.
Of course the Trojan horse is Armenia. Armenia is a vicious force, which is able to ruin “Troy,” i.e. the EaEU at the initial stage.
Armenia insists on its membership of the EaEU common economic space with the illegally-occupied territories of a neighboring state. Azerbaijani resources have been being stolen for years; the infrastructure of the occupied Azerbaijani lands (20% of the whole territory of Azerbaijan) is interwoven into the Armenian economy by thousands of invisible threads. Nursultan Nazarbayev insists on accession of Armenia to the EaEU only within the borders which are defined by the UN, without the occupied territories. But it would be impossible to control this. To control this, they will need more resources than Armenia could earn in the EaEU. Nobody will agree to this. Moscow, Minsk and Astana are able to count. And what can be said about following moral and peaceful principles in the situation?
Even representatives of the state authorities in Armenia call for the accession of the occupied Azerbaijani territories into Armenia. And they don’t speak about Nagorno-Karabakh only, which is considered to be native Armenian territory by Yerevan; however, this is quite doubtful. Today Armenia discusses the accession of all the occupied regions. Obviously they want to join the Lachin District, which is situated between Armenia and NK. There is no border between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, even by air.
If NG joins Armenia, a war will be started. If Azerbaijan still has hopes that the international community will somehow make Armenia withdraw its troops from the occupied Azeri territories, then when the hopes turn into illusions, Azerbaijan will send all its military capacities accumulated during the years to restore its territorial integrity. And the question of Armenia’s membership of the EaEU will be irrelevant. Armenia won’t deal with losing NK and become a place of instability in the South Caucasus. Does the EaEU need this? In case of a war Yerevan couldn’t count on its allies in the CSTO, as Azerbaijan wouldn’t cross any border established by the UN. Azerbaijan wouldn’t invade a territory of the sovereign Armenian state. Mothers of soldiers who serve in Russia and other CSTO countries can sleep tight. If the Armenians hinted that they had religious ties with Russia, we would say that Georgia and Ukraine were much closer to us in this sense… Until they crossed a red line. And why should Russia shed the blood of its and foreign citizens for the groundless whims of Armenia? Russia gave a lot of lands for the settlement of Armenians on its territory. Should it help Yerevan to occupy new lands of foreign states? As for other foreign military support, Armenia cannot count on anything. To prove it, we should simply look at the map of the South Caucasus and neighboring territories.
Russia has already clearly explained its position on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict through its representative in the OSCE Minsk Group. Strange as it is, but it completely coincides with the position of the two other members of the OSCE MG – France and the USA. The position is: if it doesn’t belong to you, return it. The Azerbaijani side is generally satisfied with the mediators’ view. Armenia isn’t. But why should we coax Armenia?
Many Armenian politicians, political scientists, journalists and bloggers criticize the Supreme Board of the EurAsEC – Russia with Crimea has a right, and Armenia with Karabakh doesn’t. Let’s analyze the situation and start with Crimea.
On March 16th Crimea became independent through people’s free will. Simultaneously, residents of Crimea decided to merge to Russia. Russia responded to the request. What’s the problem? It should be noted that no Crimean resident of any nationality was forced to leave the region. And the fact that Russia could have deported all Ukrainians from the peninsula several years before the process is absurd.
Now let’s look at the Armenia of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Thousands of Azerbaijanis were forced from the country. Didn’t this provoke the Armenian massacre in Sumgait? Didn’t this lead to the launch of Soviet troops into Baku in January 1990?
The Azerbaijanis had no developed international communication network, unlike the Armenians, and information on ethnic cleansing in Armenia wasn’t spread all over the world. Even in the USSR few people knew about it. But when the Armenian massacres started, after indiscriminate expulsion of the Azerbaijanis from Soviet Armenia, the whole Armenian world stirred up and cried: Help! They are killing us!
And the world heard them and was furious. But how does the murder of an Armenian differ from the murder of an Azerbaijani? Why is one act perceived as recompense and another as a crime?
It should be noted that in self-declared South Ossetia and Abkhazia there are Georgian villages; ethnic Moldovans are a significant part of the population in the unrecognized Transdniestrian Moldavian Republic; even in Albanian Kosovo there are Serbian villages; but in Nagorno-Karabakh no Azerbaijanis are living. I mean there are several dozen Azerbaijanis who are citizens of Iran. Of course there are not so many Armenians in Azerbaijan. Most of them are women and their children. And all of them are citizens of Azerbaijan.
In the late 1980s Armenian militants and international terrorists came to the Nagorno-Karabakh region from all over the world. Armenian terrorist organizations acted on the territory of the region. And these people who organized many terrorist attacks were connected with the former and current presidents of Armenia. Did these people use such methods in NK to provide free will of the population? And now remember how Russian soldiers who were cantoned there on legal grounds acted in Crimea.
So what? Will we continue the talks on fulfillment of international laws by self-declared Nagorno-Karabakh? On the right of a nation to self-determination? What will be the result? I hope we won’t be dealing with guns in the end.
