The recent meeting of the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers [Edvard Nalbandyan and Elmar Mammadyarov respectively] in Krakow [on 18 January] and the simultaneous supply of yet another consignment of Russian weapons to Azerbaijan are linked and, as Stepan Safaryan, the head of the Armenian Institute of International and Security Affairs (AIISA), said the latter is a threat to Armenia's security, he said at yesterday's [23 January] discussions of "Security dynamic in Armenia's neighbourhood" held in AIISA.
A statement on reinforcing security mechanisms was made after the meeting of the foreign ministers. Yerevan and Artsakh [Azerbaijan's breakaway Karabakh] said that they wanted international security guarantees to be ensured. For their part, co-chairmen [of the OSCE Minsk Group – Russia, USA, France – mediating in the settlement of the Karabakh conflict] spoke about the implementation of the Vienna agreements, which was said to be a direct step on the path to building trust.
However, Stepan Safaryan's description of the events is as follows: "Russia is unable to publicly speak against the implementation of the Vienna agreements, which has been confirmed on a lot of occasions over the past years, so it is trying to prevent the building of trust between the sides with methods characteristic of it. I think that the Kremlin, including [Vice] Prime Minister [Dmitry] Rogozin, who paid an unexpected visit to Baku a few weeks ago with the agenda that was not very public, realised full well that Azerbaijan could not fail to take this as a message and to comprehend the implications behind the Russian arms supplies to Azerbaijan". The political analyst thinks that this is yet another proof of the fact that Russia is not interested in building trust between the sides.
The speaker said that in this context, the meeting in Krakow will make no essential changes in the implementation of previous agreements and resumption of the negotiating process, particularly as Armenia's strategic partner [Russia] continues to send such messages.
He is sure that such behaviour of the Russian Federation will have a certain impact on the public opinion in Armenia, even if Yerevan keeps silent. "With its business step, Russia will lead to the deterioration of Armenian-Russian relations," he stressed.