Today marks the second anniversary of the second agreement on ceasefire on the contact line in Nagorno-Karabakh: on April 5, 2016, the ceasefire agreement was reached at the meeting of the chiefs of General Staff of Armenian and Azerbaijani Armed Forces in Moscow following three-day-fighting, which resulted in the liberation of a few occupied regions of Azerbaijan.
On the night of April 2, 2016, Azerbaijan's frontier positions were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side. On the same day, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces launched a counteroffensive and threw the invaders back into the occupied territories, taking the Lele Tepe strategic height, the heights near the Talish village and the Seysulan point under control, thus protecting Naftalan and Goradiz from further shelling, while local residents were able to return to neighboring villages, in particular Jojug Marjanli, for the first time in 20 years.
The presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia held two rounds of talks in Vienna and St. Petersburg, but then the peace process of the conflict settlement slowed down again until the next large-scale provocation of the Karabakh invaders in the summer of 2017, when Sahiba Guliyeva and her two-year-old granddaughter, Zahra Guliyeva, were killed in their village of Alkhanli as a result of shelling by the Armenian armed forces. After that, the number of contacts of the foreign ministers increased, the presidents met in Geneva in October, but Yerevan continued to adhere to the tactics of delaying negotiations, and the second anniversary of the new status quo in the conflict zone, was approached by the parties in the same positions that were fixed on April 5, 2016.
Political scientist Rovshan Ibragimov, speaking with Vestnik Kavkaza, noted that Azerbaijan has lived these two years with confidence that the occupied territories of the republic will be liberated in the foreseeable future. "There has been no doubt that the Azerbaijani lands will be deoccupied. There has always been an understanding that either it will happen peacefully or by military means. After the April clashes,there has been a sense of confidence that if the war was resumed, the Azerbaijani army would solve the tasks assigned to it," he said.
In addition, Azerbaijan has started to pay even more attention to equipping the army with high-tech weapons. "Such weapons are not only purchased abroad now, but also produced in the country. Several types of unmanned aerial vehicles are being developed, the use of which in the April clashes has shown its effectiveness. Technologies for destroying the electronics of enemy military equipment are being developed as well. In addition, there is a military reform, training is being conducted to improve the use of high-technology weapons by the army in the event of the resumption of war," Rovshan Ibragimov pointed out.
"The April clashes for Karabakh started because of sabotage on the line of contact of troops by the Armenian side, which was rebuffed. The invaders have started to lag behind during the arms race and the balance of power changed in favor of Azerbaijan. Yerevan violates the ceasefire on the daily basis, and new active hostilities are quite possible. Everything will depend on how constructively the Armenian side will act with respect to the peaceful resolution of the conflict," the political scientist said.
The chairman of the economic commission of the Armenian National Congress, ex-mayor of Yerevan Vahagn Khachatryan, in turn, noted that the defeat of the Armenian Armed Forces and the change in the status quo with the liberation of part of the Azerbaijani territories was a shock to the Armenian society. "Before that, all the citizens of Armenia were convinced that there should not be any problems in the case of major military operations. But then, what happened happened and the society understood that changes are needed," he said.
"Much has been done to upgrade weapons, strengthen the borders and protect soldiers, as well as citizens in the border areas. It is very unfortunate that this happened at the expense of the death of our soldiers. Of course, the likelihood of a resumption of the war is large. I believe that the Nagorno-Karabakh problem should be decided as fast as possible, moreover - it was worthwhile to solve this problem already yesterday," Vahagn Khachatryan stressed.
A political analyst, Candidate of Historical Sciences Oleg Kuznetsov, drew attention to the continuation of the strengthening of Azerbaijan's military potential and the increasing decline in Armenia's defense capacity for two years. "During this time, the Azerbaijani army was strengthened quite seriously due to the purchase of Russian and Israeli weapons. In addition, the Azerbaijani army took into account the combat experience gained in April 2016 and conducted a huge number of command staff exercises and drills," he said.
"The Armenian army, in turn, received almost no weapons except for several hundred small arms. I also do not think that the level of its combat training has increased during this time. This means that in the case of an escalation of the conflict, Azerbaijan will have a qualitatively higher position than Armenia. Now the resumption of active hostilities is unlikely - Armenia will not launch an offensive because of the lack of any serious military and technical potential, although it will continue to pursue tensions on the front line," Oleg Kuznetsov concluded.
