Forecast: Changing the President of Armenia will further complicate the Karabakh settlement

ArmInfo. The forthcoming change of the Armenian president in March will further complicate the Karabakh settlement, - Stanislav Pritchin, an analyst of the program "Russia and Eurasia" of the Royal Institute of International Relations Chatham House, is convinced. In the March 2 elections, the Armenian president will be elected by the parliament, in which the majority of the seats belong to the Republican Party of Armenia. Further in April, the new president will appoint a new prime minister from the same RPA. The new president will be deprived of levers of influence on foreign and defense policy. The armed forces will report to the Minister of Defense, and the functions of the supreme commander-in-chief are assigned to the prime minister during the period of military operations. The main candidate for the premier's post from the RPA is its leader Serzh Sargsyan. "The president elected by the people is technically less dependent on the parliament and those factions that are part of the coalition to form a majority in the parliament." At present, the prime minister will become the head of Armenia, elected by the parliament, and, accordingly, his relationship with the parliament, and dependence on the partners the coalition will be the strongest, and this fact can not not affect the negotiations on Karabakh, "said the analyst. At the same time, the analyst does not expect serious changes in the South Caucasus in 2018, when presidential elections will be held in Armenia, Russia and Azerbaijan, considering that the same president and the same team will come to power in Russia, as in Azerbaijan. In Armenia, in April, the question will be resolved who will become prime minister in the conditions of the parliamentary system of government. He predicts that after all these elections a long inter-electoral period will begin, which, at least initially, will give a certain carte blanche for solving regional problems, including the Karabakh conflict, when the forthcoming elections will not pressure the government of the countries. According to Pritchin, the development of relations between Russia and the West will largely predetermine the approval in February of a new package of US sanctions against Russia. If sanctions are implemented in the form in which it is stated, the analyst predicts laying the foundation for an even deeper crisis in bilateral relations. "In this situation, any foreign policy initiatives of Russia will be based on the logic of confrontation, but today the Karabakh conflict is not an apple of discord between the West and Russia, and moreover, it is the only conflict in the post-Soviet space in which countries do not support the warring sides. for Russia and the United States to work together to resolve the conflict, but a very serious confrontation obviously excludes the possibility of working together. "Everything will depend on the situation," summed up the Chatman House analyst.