Carnegie Europe: Russia Losing Control in the Caucasus

Carnegie Europe has published an article on Russia’s involvement in the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The article included a section on the superpower’s involvement with the occupied Georgian regions of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali (South Ossetia) and stated Russian ‘meddling’ is likely to do more harm than good.

“Nagorno-Karabakh, the former Soviet Union’s oldest and most dangerous conflict, is waking up again. The 1994 ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan is under severe strain. Where there was occasional sniper fire two years ago, mortars are now being fired. Rockets are raining down on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border and the ceasefire line east of Karabakh itself. There have been around a dozen casualties in the last week,” the article states.

According to the publication, it is still too premature to talk about a return to the kind of full-scale war that raged for 3 years in the 1990’s “…But  the leaders in both Baku and Yerevan are digging themselves into warlike positions that they will find hard to give up.

“This is not about the “hand of Russian”- although Russia’s behaviour is not helping. The danger of the Caucasus is that no one is fully in charge and that Karabakh is becoming another link in a chain of disorder stretching from Ukraine to Syria, in which Russia meddles but is not fully in charge.”

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