ArmInfo. The influence of the Russian Federation in the South Caucasus, Central Asia and Eastern Europe will sharply decrease in the foreseeable period. This is due to the intermediate Ukrainian results of the geopolitical confrontation between the Russian Federation and the collective West. Independent political analyst Saro Saroyan expressed a similar opinion to ArmInfo.
"In particular, the Russian Federation and Turkey have a very specific plan regarding the South Caucasus, namely, to finally turn the region exclusively into their zone of influence, excluding any role of the West here. It is clear that this, in turn, implies the withdrawal of the USA and the EU from the Karabakh settlement, along with the destruction of the Armenian factor in the region. However, the current course of military operations in Ukraine has completely defeated the implementation of all these agreements between Moscow and Ankara," he emphasized.
According to the analyst, as a result, Moscow was forced to reckon with the Brussels negotiation format between Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as some other new geopolitical realities in the region, which still remains its priority zone of influence. While the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war was laid precisely by the 44-day war. In Saroyan's opinion, in this way, Russia tried to insure its southern borders against possible destabilization, in fact, anticipating it. And after that, try to solve its problems in Ukraine. According to him, all this was due to the impossibility for Russia to solve such problems without the consent of Turkey.
According to the analyst, over the past few hundred years, the essence of relations between the Russian and Ottoman empires, by and large, has not changed and, as before, rests on rivalry for the straits and hegemony in the Black Sea. That is why Moscow did not have the opportunity to resist the West, ensuring tectonic shifts in Ukraine, in particular on the Black Sea coast, without agreements with Ankara. And regarding Artsakh, Turkey and the Russian Federation fulfilled the agreements. However, all this did not find a continuation in the Ukrainian direction, primarily due to Moscow's inability to force Kyiv to stop the war and secure its own territorial and other acquisitions.