ArmInfo.The prospect of activating the OSCE Minsk Group depends primarily on the prospects for resolving the military-political crisis actually observed between its co-chair countries. A similar opinion was expressed to ArmInfo by Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Artsakh Arman Melikyan.
"In this light, it seems necessary to wait, at least, for the intermediate results of the negotiations between Moscow and Washington. I think that these results, among other things, are also capable of bringing certainty to the future of the OSCE Minsk Group. Taking into account the results of the 44-day war, today the situation is such that in order to simply get to Stepanakert from Armenia, the co-chairs need to obtain the consent of the peacekeepers of the Russian Federation," he stressed.
According to the diplomat, an additional element of the problem is the need for Azerbaijan's consent to the entry of the Minsk Group Co-Chairs into Artsakh. First of all, due to the fact that the Russian Federation, which actually controls the entry and exit to Artsakh, being a co-chairing country, on the other hand, signed an agreement with Armenia and Azerbaijan on the normalization of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations.
On January 26, U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation John J. Sullivan handed over to the Russian Foreign Ministry a written response to Moscow's proposals on security guarantees. On the same day, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that "the U.S. response includes concerns about Russia's actions and the American side's proposal." "We will not publish the document in order to have space for closed negotiations. However, its content is similar to our public statements on this topic. We will not compromise NATO's open door principle. At the same time, there are positive aspects in the document, which can be worked on if Moscow is ready," Blinken stressed.
Returning to the topic of the current stage of the confrontation between the United States and the Russian Federation, Melikyan mentioned that Moscow does not aim at a military invasion or a large-scale war with Ukraine. According to him, at this stage, the conflict is characterized by hostile military-political rhetoric, even greater militarization of the already conflict region, through the importation of weapons, instructors and volunteers. At the same time, the diplomat does not forecast a large-scale war, considering the aggravation of the situation in the south-east of Ukraine as the most probable and maximum. In his opinion, due to a number of reasons that are different in nature, Moscow and Washington, having an interest in escalating the situation to the maximum possible, are not interested in their own direct military involvement in a possible conflict on the territory of Ukraine.
"I can state that, in fact, the start of a war between the Russian Federation and Ukraine is completely unacceptable neither for the Russian Federation and the United States, nor for their closest allies. In this light, they are making great efforts to create as much noise as possible, which they quite succeed in. The incident of the whole this situation is that, in fact, it has absolutely nothing to do with solving the problems themselves, moreover, both between the Russian Federation and Ukraine, and between the Russian Federation and the collective West as a whole. I personally do not see in favor of its early resolution," the diplomat summed up.