Putin doesn’t want third parties involved in demarcation process – Russian pundit

President Putin really doesn’t want a third or fourth party to be involved in the process of demarcation and delimitation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, Russian analyst, military expert Alexander Khramchikhin says.

“I don’t know to what extent he will be able to solve the problem alone, but he doesn’t want the involvement of other parties for a very simple reason: no one needs rivals. In this situation, the question arises as to which other countries want to participate in the process. Besides, Russia itself wants to be the main one here, as all the maps of the Soviet times are kept in Moscow,” Khramichkin told Factor.am.

Putin has said that only Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia should be engaged in border demarcation as the maps are in the General Staff of the Russian Army, which show how the border between the two countries was crossed during the Soviet years and that the borders should be determined.”

Khramchikhin says both Armenia and Azerbaijan want the issue to be resolved, but the problem is that each of the parties imagines the solution differently. As for the involvement of other parties in the process, Khramchikhin noted that everyone will have their interests and desires here.

“The question arises, what mechanisms will they offer in this process? Everyone still wants the problem to be solved,” he said.

He says the optimal solution to the problem is to start a process of mutual delimitation along the entire border, so that the parties can officially sign a relevant document.

He added that “the issue will not be resolved soon, unless, of course, a situation is created that will force the parties to resolve the issue as soon as possible.”

“I still don’t know what it could be,” he said. In the current situation, he said, the escalation of tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan, even war is not ruled out because the Nagorno Karabakh problem has not been finally resolved yet.

“Now there are simply Russian peacekeepers reducing the possibility of a new war,” he said.

He noted that the Karabakh issue seems to have been pushed to the background, there are no discussions about it.

“Azerbaijan declares that there is no more such an issue, and after the defeat Armenia does not know how to start a discussion on the issue.