The Russian “Pravda” newspaper published analysis days ago over the Karabakh issue and Turkey’s acquisition of Russia’s most advanced S-400 missile defense system.
In the author’s conviction and as he claimed in the piece when Turkey reached an agreement with Russia over the purchase of the S-400 systems in April, FEW could suppose that could affect the balance of power between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
In an interesting way, they ‘came to that conclusion’ only after the comments by Azerbaijani lawmaker Rasim Musabekov, suggesting “Russian interference into the Karabakh conflict on the side of Armenia would inevitably lead to Turkey’s taking the Azerbaijani side.”
The time coincided with reports by Turkish sources, saying the country plans to deploy the newly obtained missile systems at the border with Armenia. Let us put aside the long-persisted Azerbaijani practice of intimidating us with its “big brother” Turkey, as do the fact why Russia acted so ‘naively’ to sell weapons in a region where it positions itself as a mediator. Similarly, it would be best to leave out the Russians’ ‘surprise’ over reports of Turkey’s initiative to deploy the missile systems at the border with Armenia, likewise Russian cynical justifications of arm sale to Azerbaijan for solely ‘business considerations.’
Let us only accept the fact that Russia sells weapons to Turkey with follow-up new questions, surfacing whether Russia plans to sell new arms to Turkey, what kind of weapons, if so, and whether Turkey can resell those arms to Azerbaijan. Does the Armenian diplomacy track those possible developments? We addressed the question about the possibility to resell arms to Armenian ministries of foreign affairs and defense.
In its official clarification, the foreign ministry referred to the Russian legislation mandating the required document of the so-called ‘end-user certificate’ for military devices and equipment which is a document used in international transfers, including sales and export of the arms to certify those will be used only for the stated purposes, that the buyer is the final recipient of the materials, and not planning on transferring or re-exporting of the materials to third parties without the agreement of the original supplier of the arms.
Thus, it remains to see what kind of ‘end-user certificate’ exits between Russia and Turkey!