ArmInfo. The third Pashinyan-Michel-Ali meeting,scheduled for May 22, speaks of the final revival of the OSCE Minsk Group, which fell into an artificial coma after a 44-day war. Associate Expert of the Armenian Institute of International Relations and Security David Stepanyan expressed a similar opinion to ArmInfo.
On May 22, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan will leave for Brussels on a working visit, where he will meet with Ilham Aliyev and President of the European Council Charles Michel. Separate negotiations will also be held in Brussels in the Pashinyan-Michel format. This is the third meeting in this format. At the last meeting in Brussels, an agreement on the establishment of a commission for the delimitation and demarcation of borders was reached.
"We also have to admit that the settlement process, the settlement process may finally move from Moscow to Brussels. We see that if the first meeting in this format was preceded by calls from Michel and French President Macron to Russian President Putin, then the second was preceded by calls from US Secretary of State Blinken to Pashinyan and Aliyev. Thus we can state that there is no coordination between the actions of Moscow and the actions of Brussels, behind which Washington undoubtedly stands," he stressed.
Causing such a situation with new geopolitical realities created after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Stepanyan believes that, at least at this stage, the plans of the collective West to remove the Russian Federation from the negotiation process to resolve the Armenian-Azerbaijani problems are being successfully implemented. And the fact of the resuscitation of the settlement process within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmanship, but without the direct participation of the third co-chair in the person of Russia, clearly confirms this.
"As for the Brussels-3 agenda, I don't think we should expect quick decisions on the issues of delimiting the borders between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Not to mention such a fundamental problem as determining the status of Artsakh. In all likelihood, the parties will take another small step in Brussels to launch the work of the already established border clarification commission. And this work will last for years. Besides, Brussels-3 will be disguised as a humanitarian shell, ant it is possible that another batch of Armenian captives, hostages, will be returned to their homeland in the form of another promise by Aliyev," the analyst concluded.