ArmInfo. The Karabakh problem is not and is unlikely to become anyone's domestic affair in the foreseeable future, Russian analyst Sergey Markedonov says.
"This is proved by the fact that the OSCE Minsk Group does exist, the conflict is being discussed on various international platforms and the sides are trying to gain advantages even due to their foreign political ties. The sides are naturally making such attempts with respect to Russia as well," Markedonov says, adding that it is for the sides to decide whether to take offence at Sergey Lavrov or not for the fact that Baku and Yerevan have neither enough will nor resources for compromises to resolve the problem independently.
To remind, at a conference in Moscow on January 17, when asked whether Russia will keep aloof or interfere in case of an "Azeri counter operation in the occupied territories", Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that he conflict over Karabakh is no longer anything abstract or domestic affair of Azerbaijan.
The analyst recalls that during the "four-day" war it was Russia that played the role of the key mediator, which resumed trilateral talks with the consent of Yerevan, Baku, as well as Paris and Washington. In this light, Markedonov sees no diplomatic know-how in the Russian minister's statement. He thinks Lavrov just conducted a political diagnostics of the Karabakh conflict.
He thinks that the issue about Russia's interference is a considerable part of the paradoxical Karabakh dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia, where these two independent countries appeal to the third side as they suppose that the key to success is in the third side's hands. The analyst says that the Karabakh conflict was doomed to being beyond the Azerbaijani and Armenian agenda.
"Along with the Armenian-Azeri dimension, Karabakh has always had an international format and both sides were interested in it," he says, noting that the sides took different ways of the external interference. "The interference could be explained not only by the interest of the interfering superpowers, but also by the desire of the conflict parties to get additional advantages," he says.