The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has no military solution, Russian political scientists said in an interview with correspondents of Vestnik Kavkaza, commenting on the escalation of the conflict, which began on Saturday night after the provocative shelling of Azerbaijani villages near the front line between the two republics.
The director general of the Institute for Foreign Policy Studies and Initiatives, an advisor to the Director General of the MIA ‘Russia Today’, Veronica Krasheninnikova, drew attention that "Russia, in the first place, and other countries have expressed great concern about the military actions in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. The leadership of Russia and the CSTO calls for hostilities to cease immediately and to move to a political format." "A military solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict does not exist," she noted, expressing regret about the fact that Azerbaijani and Armenian citizens are being killed.
A member of the Russian Presidential Council for Interethnic Relations, Maxim Shevchenko, said that the new battles over Karabakh clearly showed the impossibility of resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict by military means. "Now, when the intensity of the fighting has declined, I think the sides understood that there is no military solution. According to the available information, it is clear that the fighting was heavy and losses were severe enough for a local conflict," he said.
According to the expert, further bloodshed can only delay the settlement of the conflict. "The loss of lives, despair and desire for revenge create an additional obstacle to a settlement. Of course, the deepening of trenches and the strengthening of military positions, along with the demonstration of the fact that there is no military way out of the situation, are working on the Armenian side to a greater extent, as the party which is defending itself," Maxim Shevchenko said.
The director general of the Institute for Caspian Cooperation, Sergey Mikheyev, agreed with him. "The situation has worsened, since any war destabilizes the situation in the neighboring countries and on the borders," he said, expressing concern that "a really big war, which would bring neither happiness, nor joy, nor prosperity" may break out in the Caucasus region.
According to the expert, despite the active official reaction of the leading countries of the world, in fact the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has not become more important for the international community than it was before these events. "I think the level of the international community's attention to the conflict didn't increase. We shouldn't expect that after these battles someone will pay any attention to the conflict and will settle it," Sergey Mikheev stressed.
The political analyst Andrei Yepifantsev believes that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will continue to deepen in the absence of an effective peace settlement and become more complex with new and stronger armed clashes, due to which "sooner or later the war will begin." "I think that in the current situation the Russian position is correct: we are trying to dampen the conflict and bring the parties to the negotiating table.This is the only correct option. Another thing is that the conflict is still insoluble, and the international community needs to start developing a joint position and to impose it on the sides," he pointed out.
