MOSCOW (REALIST English). What is the Baku regime trying to achieve in Artsakh? Why are the Russian authorities silent on the issue of the blockade of the strategic highway Stepanakert-Goris? Mikhail Alexandrov, Doctor of Political Sciences, answered these and other questions of the Realist News Agency.
What prevents the Russian Armed Forces from unblocking the Stepanakert-Goris highway?
Mikhail Alexandrov: It’s not that they should unblock the highway, the question is that our leadership should decide/take a stand. The Russian Foreign Ministry must correctly assess the situation, draw the right conclusions and give correct assessments. Maybe then it will not come to the need to unblock the route by force. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, if it had acted within the framework of Russia’s national interests, and not been influenced by Azerbaijani lobbyists, it should have first of all made a statement that Azerbaijan violated the trilateral agreement.
They should have fixed this violation, if there was no reaction, it was necessary to demand the withdrawal of these environmentalists from the Lachin corridor, because the Azerbaijani side must fulfill its obligations under the trilateral agreement, and it violates its allied obligations to Russia. This is recorded in the declaration on allied relations.
What will be Azerbaijan’s reply to this? Will it ignore again? This means that the Russian side must denounce the treaty on allied relations with Azerbaijan. And after that, I think Azerbaijan will think about it and begin to withdraw these environmentalists, and if not, then the Russian side should submit this declaration of denunciation to the State Duma, and if this does not work, then our hands will be untied in order to resort to a forceful action — to use force. It is not necessary to shoot, but to gather 200-300 of our troops and clear this place.
Our Russian base is located in Armenia, we could deploy more servicemen in this zone. And if Azerbaijan opens fire on our servicemen, then we must do as we did with the regime of [Mikhail] Saakashvili and strike already at the infrastructure of Azerbaijan.
I have already said this, for which I was fired. Azerbaijani experts think that we are now stuck in an operation in Ukraine and we can just knock out our peacekeepers and occupy the whole of Karabakh. So, they should know that the blow will be such that they will be paralyzed, even without any military clashes between Russian and Azerbaijani servicemen.
They have to weigh what is more important to them: is it this disgrace in the Lachin corridor or their entire energy infrastructure. I think [Ilham] Aliyev is still a reasonable person, not a psycho, and he should make the right decision at a certain stage. And if he behaves like Saakashvili, he will get it in full!
Why do Western parliamentarians pay attention to violations of the rights of Artsakh Armenians, while Russian parliamentarians are silent?
Mikhail Alexandrov: Because Western parliamentarians don’t need to do anything, they can chatter as much as they want, and Russia, Russian peacekeepers, and not French or American ones, will solve the problem. Therefore, they can afford to wag their tongues. But if we have to say “A”, then we will have to say both “B” and “C”. I have already outlined the entire chain of events.
But they don’t want to do this, because we have a very strong pro-Azerbaijani lobby, and they don’t want us to expel these environmentalists. They want to put the Lachin corridor under the control of Azerbaijan. And the Russian Foreign Ministry is playing along with them in this.
What are the goals pursued by Aliyev and the pro-Turkish political circles in Moscow?
Mikhail Alexandrov: At first, their goal is to block the Lachin corridor, then starve people, force most of them to leave, and then say that no one lives there and Russian peacekeepers have nothing to do there, they have been there for 5 years already. There are no people, they don’t have to do anything there. And you will get a soft ethnic cleansing, stretched over time. This is what they are trying to achieve.
