ArmInfo.The leadership of Azerbaijan is postponing the granting of a mandate to the Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh in order to get some new favorable conditions from Moscow. Russian political scientist Sergei Mikheev expressed a similar opinion to ArmInfo.
Hikmet Hajiyev, assistant head of the foreign policy department of the Azerbaijani presidential administration, told the BBC that "certain discussions regarding additional legal mechanisms related to the mandate of the Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh are still ongoing."
"It is clear that no one is going to withdraw the Russian peacekeeping contingent from Nagorno-Karabakh today. How long this situation will last and what conditions Baku is putting forward to Moscow is unknown. It is clear that no one is talking about this openly," he said.
According to Mikheev, by not giving the Russian peacekeepers in Artsakh a mandate to stay in the territory that Baku considers its own, the Azerbaijani leadership, in the event of a similar situation, is quite capable of blackmailing Moscow by the very fact of their presence in this territory.
"One thing is clear - a fairly cynical game is going on around the legitimization of the stay of our peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh. And keeping our military in limbo, Baku, apparently, pursues far-reaching goals. In other words, they hold this trump card in case the geopolitical situation changes in the region will allow them to declare the presence of Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh illegal, "Mikheev summed up. A Russian peacekeeping contingent of 1,960 servicemen and 380 units of military and special equipment is deployed in Artsakh on the basis of a statement signed on November 9, 2020 by the leaders of Armenia, Russia and Azerbaijan on the cessation of hostilities in the zone of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.